BAND III BUILD UP
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• Between 400,000 and 500,000 British vans and lorries have a radio link with their head office or warehouse. Just over 1,000 of those are using a completely new kind of radio system: Band III radio services.
The name Band III comes from the part of the radio spectrum allocated for new radio services — the third waveband. Until 1985 it was used by the broadcasting industry for transmitting the old 425-line black-and-white television channels. Now it has been handed over to the mobile radio fraternity.
The 1,000 customers using the Band III frequencies at the moment are all on the network of the rather confusingly-named Band Three Radio. That is a consortium set up between electronics giants Philips and Racal, security specialist Securicor and mobile communications company Digital Mobile Communications, which began services back in October 1987. From the beginning of April this year a second operator will be licenced to give a nationwide service; National One, part of the mammoth industrial conglomerate GEC.
Several operators have also been licenced to operate Band III services on a regional basis in urban areas. Solihullbased National Mobile Radio won the lion's share of the regional licences and is now offering services in London, Merseyside, Manchester and parts of the Midlands.
As with the booming cellular radio market, the two national and numerous local radio operators are not allowed to sell radios and airtime directly to fleet operators. Instead they have to go through a number of service providers, or airtime retailers, who determine which equipment they sell to their customers and exactly how the charges are packaged. Although GEC's National One will not go live for commercial traffic until 6 April, it already has 14 airtime suppliers, including manufacturers Marconi and Motorola. Band Three Radio has over 30 airtime retailers, including its own shareholders, Philips, Racal, Securicor and Digital Mobile Communications. Other retailers include cellular radio specialists like Midas, ECT, Carphone, Cellcorn and the International Communications Group (ICG).
Airtime retailers on Band Three Radio's network charge customers for the number of radios they have on the network, not Picture above: Radio operators sell equipment through service providers.
the length of the calls, which is the traditional way of charging for fleet communications. ICG, for example, charges 65p per day for every radio in service, says marketing manager Bill Ilendsley. On top of that there are monthly charges of 215 outside London, and 220 inside London, where there is the greatest demand.
When GEC Launches its National One service it plans to charge on a rail-by-call basis, but, although the service will start in April, the call-by-call charging method will not be introduced until later this year, as the company wants to make sure the billing computer is working properly first. "We don't want customers to suddenly get bills for thousands of pounds," says National One marketing manager Mark Chatt. "We will be charging on a per mobile basis to begin with, because we can only be sure of the accuracy of the billing system once we have got live commercial traffic on the network."
All in all, the services offered by the new breed of Band III operators are not dissimilar from the old generation of fleet communications. The services are "simplex": only one person can speak at a