NMI gears toward digital mobile telephones

How would you like your mobile telephone to be capable of sending and receiving text or full word messages, or surf the Internet while being able to call your friends or business partners at one time?

If this sounds far-fetched to you, wait until you hear the good news from telecommunications players in the Northern Marianas, who are all aligning themselves to the growth and development of the industry in other parts of the world.

SaipanCell Communications General Manager Hans Mickelson disclosed future plans of the company to go digital to be in the same playing field with the rest of industry players in the mainland United States and in neighboring countries in Asia.

“At present, we are now seriously looking into going digital. We’re going to use the Code Division Multiple Access technology in Guam by next month. We’re looking at launching it on July 1, 2000,” said Mr. Mickelson.

SaipanCell also plans to bring the same CDMA technology on Saipan for use by its mobile telephone subscribers in the Northern Marianas who are still hooked to the analog band system.

CDMA, which was developed by software company Qualcom, is characterized by high capacity and small cell radius that uses same frequency band as AMPS and it supports AMPS operations.

The technology, adopted by the telecommunications industry in 1993, was the second phase of digital mobile telephone system following the Time Division Multiple Access, which is currently used by GTE Pacifica here.

TDMA was the first digital standards to be developed for cellular communications and was utilized by the telecoms industry association in 1992.

“The whole digital cellular industry is fairly young. The mergers that are now taking place between Internet and telecommunications companies are pressuring industry players to align themselves with these ongoing developments,” Mr. Mickelson pointed out.

He said SaipanCell is looking at the possibility of providing both the analog and digital mobile telephone services in the Northern Marianas but stressed that some important factors have to be considered before the technology can be brought here.

“We’re in a very small market. Operational and maintenance costs are very important factors that we should carefully take into considerations but we are definitely going digital here soon,” he added.

Mr. Mickelson said industry players have to be wary about the economic and business climate in the Northern Marianas. “The way I see Saipan now, I would think that possibly by next year, we could start looking at going digital.”

He said there needs to weigh the possible return of revenues and the operational and maintenance costs, which both depend on the size of the available market on the islands.

Once the mobile telecommunications industry in the CNMI goes full blast in digital technology, cellular phone subscribers can start sending and receiving text messages from their friends in the Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and the mainland U.S.
GTE Pacifica’s TDMA technology is currently capable of all the enhanced features enjoyed by mobile telephone subscribers in the Philippines and in Asia, that include short text messaging, systems that allow computers to hook into the Internet, and units that can receive local and international news.