Misplaced Pages

#385614

57-423: The Mobile Telephone Service was one of the earliest mobile telephone standards. It was operator assisted in both directions, meaning that if one were called from a land line the call would be routed to a mobile operator, who would route it to one's phone. Similarly, to make an outbound call one had to go through the mobile operator, who would ask for the mobile number and the number to be called, and would then place

114-609: A Canadian national telecommunications company that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access , voice, entertainment, healthcare, video, smart home automation and IPTV television. The company is based in the Vancouver , British Columbia, area; it was originally based in Edmonton , Alberta, before its merger with BC Tel in 1999. Telus' wireless division, Telus Mobility , offers UMTS , and LTE -based mobile phone networks. Telus

171-406: A timeslot because DS0s are aggregated in time-division multiplexing (TDM) equipment to form higher capacity communication links. A Digital Signal 1 (DS1) circuit carries 24 DS0s on a North American or Japanese T-carrier (T1) line, or 32 DS0s (30 for calls plus two for framing and signaling) on an E-carrier (E1) line used in most other countries. In modern networks, the multiplexing function

228-443: A base station were started by signaling the operator by pressing the microphone button. The operator would plug into the channel (automated TOPS systems routed the incoming call through the normal queue), announce availability and the channel name, and the customer would identify their mobile number. (Security systems were sometimes adopted later to prevent fraud, by the customer giving a confidential number. In an automated connection to

285-653: A benchmark for the development of the Telecommunications Industry Association 's TIA-TSB-116 standard on voice-quality recommendations for IP telephony, to determine acceptable levels of audio latency and echo. In most countries, the government has a regulatory agency dedicated to provisioning of PSTN services. The agency regulate technical standards, legal requirements, and set service tasks may be for example to ensure that end customers are not over-charged for services where monopolies may exist. These regulatory agencies may also regulate

342-475: A cellular system to use signal strength to choose channels and split cells into smaller units also helps expand channel capacity. The driver for replacement in remote areas, however, is not network congestion, but obsolescence . Because the equipment is no longer manufactured, companies still using the service must struggle to keep their equipment operating, either by cannibalising from retired equipment or improvising solutions. Due to insufficient traffic, cellular

399-466: A digit (often 1), then five more digits for the individual customer. AGT in Alberta used seven-character numbers. Soon enough, customer equipment, "selective call", was developed that had a built-in circuit that could be programmed to recognize a five-digit code as its own, in a manner similar to IMTS systems and crude compared to cellular phones. The phone company would assign the customer a number and

456-569: A network of fixed-line analog telephone systems, the PSTN is almost entirely digital in its core network and includes mobile and wireless networks, all of which are currently transitioning to use the Internet Protocol to carry their PSTN traffic. The technical operation of the PSTN adheres to the standards internationally promulgated by the ITU-T . These standards have their origins in

513-566: A pause. The called party had to have their unit on and the volume set at a level that allowed them to notice a call and then listen to the called number. If the called party heard an incoming call, they would then use the microphone to announce they were receiving the call, and the operator would allow the two parties to speak, monitoring for the end of the call and marking a manual ticket for billing. The format of such "voice-called" mobile customer numbers varied by jurisdiction. B.C. Tel , for example, used seven-character numbers starting with N or H,

570-594: A radio closer to the terminal will sometimes take over the channel due to having a more powerful signal. The service uses technology that has been manufacturer discontinued for more than three decades. The driver for replacement in most of North America, particularly large cities, was congestion, the inability of the network to carry more than two dozen channels in a geographic area. Cellular service resolved this congestion problem very effectively, especially since cellular frequencies, typically UHF, do not reach as far as VHF frequencies and can therefore be reused. The ability of

627-448: A three digit sequence for the base station, then the customer number. The base station would signal the five digit sequence; any and all radios tuned to that base station would detect the sequence and compare it with their own; if it matched, the unit would signal its user with a bell or buzzer, and the user could then answer and announce the identity of their unit, similar to how a voice-call user would respond. Calls from mobile units to

SECTION 10

#1732798558386

684-425: A very close-by rate center of an automatic exchange. However, if there was no nearby rate center, they became an "Other Place Point". Phone companies typically identified these, and single points such as an individual telephone in a rural area, using a six-digit combination of 88T-XXX, where T is a digit from 6 to 9, and X is any digit 0-9. For example, Fox Lake, Yukon Territory, was 889-949. This combination would serve

741-550: Is a conglomerate , and its wholly owned principal subsidiary is Telus Communications Inc (TCI), according to the 2010 Telus annual report. After the Telus-BCTel merger, unionized employees voted to certify the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU) as the sole bargaining agent for the expanded company's workforce. The TWU had previously been the union representing BCTel employees – it replaced

798-488: Is moved as close to the end user as possible, usually into cabinets at the roadside in residential areas, or into large business premises. These aggregated circuits are conveyed from the initial multiplexer to the exchange over a set of equipment collectively known as the access network . The access network and inter-exchange transport use synchronous optical transmission, for example, SONET and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) technologies, although some parts still use

855-584: Is not a cost-effective replacement. Currently, the only viable solution is satellite telephony , as the small number of "base stations" which orbit the planet serve large geographic regions as they pass over. Cost, however, has been an issue, and the replacement has become acceptable to VHF mobile customers gradually, as the cost of satellite telephony has been dropping and will continue to drop. Many MTS frequencies are now used for local paging services. They are only found in some parts of rural North America, having been replaced in most areas by cellular service in

912-399: Is switched using a call set up protocol (usually ISUP ) between the telephone exchanges under an overall routing strategy . The call is carried over the PSTN using a 64 kbit/s channel, originally designed by Bell Labs . The name given to this channel is Digital Signal 0 (DS0). The DS0 circuit is the basic granularity of circuit switching in a telephone exchange. A DS0 is also known as

969-727: Is the incumbent local exchange carrier in British Columbia and Alberta. Its primary competitors are Rogers Communications and Bell Canada . Telus is a member of the British Columbia Technology Industry Association . Telus Corporation was formed in 1990 by the government of Alberta as a holding company to facilitate the privatization of Alberta Government Telephones (AGT), a crown corporation that provided telephone service to most of Alberta outside of Edmonton . In 1995, it acquired Edmonton Telephones Corporation (EdTel),

1026-552: Is the aggregate of the world's telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local telephony operators. It provides infrastructure and services for public telephony . The PSTN consists of telephone lines , fiber-optic cables , microwave transmission links, cellular networks , communications satellites , and undersea telephone cables interconnected by switching centers , such as central offices , network tandems , and international gateways, which allow telephone users to communicate with each other. Originally

1083-622: The Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (B-ISDN). The B-ISDN vision was overtaken by the disruptive technology of the Internet . At the turn of the 21st century, the oldest parts of the telephone network still used analog baseband technology to deliver audio-frequency connectivity over the last mile to the end-user. However, digital technologies such as DSL , ISDN , FTTx , and cable modems were progressively deployed in this portion of

1140-620: The Gaspé Peninsula and the north shore, were served from 1927 by an entity known as Corporation de Téléphone et de Pouvoir de Québec, and in 1955, this became known as Québec Téléphone. In 1966, the Anglo-Canadian Telephone Company, a subsidiary of General Telephone and Electronics of Stamford, Connecticut (later GTE), became a majority shareholder in Québec Téléphone. In 1997, Groupe QuébecTel

1197-685: The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) in Alberta. A labour dispute between Telus and the TWU began after the previous contract, negotiated with BCTel before the Telus merger, expired at the end of 2000. After Telus made its final offer to the TWU it informed the union of its intention to bring an end to the dispute by unilaterally implementing its April 2005 offer to employees in Alberta and British Columbia . The next day

SECTION 20

#1732798558386

1254-931: The Telus Vancouver Open . Telus is the namesake tenant in several office buildings, including The Telus Convention Centre and Telus Sky in Calgary, Tour Telus in Montreal , Telus House in Edmonton, Telus Garden in Vancouver, the currently under construction Telus Ocean in Victoria , and Telus Harbour in Toronto . Beginning in 2014, Telus began sponsoring Canada's largest nationwide technology education event: The HTML500 . In November 2017, Telus announced it would take over as title sponsor for

1311-686: The United States and Canada . The channels are identified by pairs of letters taken from positions on a North American telephone dial that, when changed to digits, form (for 12-channel mobile sets) 55, 57, 95 and 97. In the 1960s plan, the VHF high-band allocations provided for 11 channels in the United States: JL, YL, JP, YP, YJ, YK, JS, YS, YR, JK and JR. In Canada, two additional channels were available: JJ and JW. These channels are prone to network congestion and interference since

1368-421: The last mile from the exchange to the telephone in the home (also called the local loop ). To carry a typical phone call from a calling party to a called party , the analog audio signal is digitized at an 8 kHz sample rate with 8-bit resolution using a special type of nonlinear pulse-code modulation known as G.711 . The call is then transmitted from one end to another via telephone exchanges. The call

1425-485: The 1970s, the telecommunications industry began implementing packet-switched network data services using the X.25 protocol transported over much of the end-to-end equipment as was already in use in the PSTN. These became known as public data networks , or public switched data networks. In the 1980s, the industry began planning for digital services assuming they would follow much the same pattern as voice services and conceived end-to-end circuit-switched services, known as

1482-479: The 1980s in large portions of North America. On October 2, 1946, Motorola communications equipment carried the first calls on Illinois Bell Telephone Company 's new car radiotelephone service in Chicago . Due to the small number of radio frequencies available, the service quickly reached capacity. MTS was replaced by Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS), introduced in 1964. MTS uses 25 VHF radio channels in

1539-412: The 1980s or later. All calls were placed by a suitably equipped telephone operator. Outgoing calls were placed when the operator connected to a base station (originally using a cord board, but by the 1990s could be done by dialing a code sequence from a TOPS position), then announced the call over the channel (giving the channel's name first), e.g., The page would usually be repeated twice more after

1596-596: The Clearnet brand as a limited market trial in Kelowna, British Columbia , and Red Deer, Alberta . The company again closed to new business in June 2012. In February 2013, Telus exchanged all non-voting shares into common shares on a one-for-one basis. In October 2013, Telus acquired minor mobile phone provider Public Mobile and relaunched it in 2015 as a "value brand" MVNO on the Telus network. In October 2008, Telus

1653-567: The PSTN evolved over time to support an increasing number of subscribers, call volume, destinations, features, and technologies. The principles developed in North America and in Europe were adopted by other nations, with adaptations for local markets. A key concept was that the telephone exchanges are arranged into hierarchies, so that if a call cannot be handled in a local cluster, it is passed to one higher up for onward routing. This reduced

1710-480: The PSTN, usually for military purposes. There are also private networks run by large companies that are linked to the PSTN only through limited gateways , such as a large private branch exchange (PBX). The task of building the networks and selling services to customers fell to the network operators . The first company to be incorporated to provide PSTN services was the Bell Telephone Company in

1767-646: The TOPS operator. Very few companies automated MTS to use TOPS as most were able to discontinue MTS services due to the reasons above: they could not meet the service demand except by switching to cellular. Northwestel was one company still offering MTS that tied the base stations into TOPS. A variant of MTS used short-wave frequencies, and was known as High Frequency or High Frequency-Single Sideband, so named for using frequencies between 3 and 30 MHz. These services required far fewer base stations and were used to reach distant locations over vast territories. The drawback

Mobile Telephone Service - Misplaced Pages Continue

1824-715: The United States. In some countries, however, the job of providing telephone networks fell to government as the investment required was very large and the provision of telephone service was increasingly becoming an essential public utility . For example, the General Post Office in the United Kingdom brought together a number of private companies to form a single nationalized company . In more recent decades, these state monopolies were broken up or sold off through privatization . The architecture of

1881-525: The call. This service originated with the Bell System , and was first used in St. Louis, Missouri , United States on June 17, 1946. The original equipment weighed 80 pounds (36 kg), and there were initially only 3 channels for all the users in the metropolitan area, later more licenses were added bringing the total to 32 channels across 3 bands (see IMTS frequencies ). This service was used at least into

1938-436: The customer would have it programmed into the set by the phone company or by a dealer. The operator would connect to the base station by cord board and key the five-digit number; in the 1990s, phone operators at TOPS positions would key the five digits after dialing the code to initiate the call and then identify the base station; a typical TOPS operator code would consist of a two digit sequence for voice-call or selective call,

1995-413: The development of local telephone networks, primarily in the Bell System in the United States and in the networks of European ITU members. The E.164 standard provides a single global address space in the form of telephone numbers . The combination of the interconnected networks and a global telephone numbering plan allows telephones around the world to connect with each other. Commercialization of

2052-578: The end of the 1990s, very few companies still had need of the Other Place Point codes, and other rating arrangements were made. For example, Northwestel would use the nearest exchange for calls to its mobile points from other phone companies, and would code the locations in its billing software for calls within the company's operating territory. The rate impact was negligible for calls over longer distances. Public switched telephone network The public switched telephone network ( PSTN )

2109-399: The end of the 20th century. The growth of the PSTN was enabled by teletraffic engineering techniques to deliver quality of service (QoS) in the network. The work of A. K. Erlang established the mathematical foundations of methods required to determine the capacity requirements and configuration of equipment and the number of personnel required to deliver a specific level of service. In

2166-412: The exchange principle already employed in telegraph networks. Each telephone was wired to a telephone exchange established for a town or area. For communication outside this exchange area, trunks were installed between exchanges. Networks were designed in a hierarchical manner until they spanned cities, states, and international distances. Automation introduced pulse dialing between the telephone and

2223-521: The exchange so that each subscriber could directly dial another subscriber connected to the same exchange, but long-distance calling across multiple exchanges required manual switching by operators. Later, more sophisticated address signaling, including multi-frequency signaling methods, enabled direct-dialed long-distance calls by subscribers, culminating in the Signalling System 7 (SS7) network that controlled calls between most exchanges by

2280-482: The interface to end-users remaining the same. Several other European countries, including Estonia, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, have also retired, or are planning to retire, their PSTN networks. Countries in other continents are also performing similar transitions. Telus Telus Communications Inc. ( TCI ) is the wholly owned principal subsidiary of Telus Corporation ,

2337-576: The main telephone provider for Edmonton itself, from the city of Edmonton making Telus the sole provider of telephone service in Alberta. In 1996, Telus was introduced to the public as the consumer brand, replacing both AGT and EdTel. In 1998, Telus and BC Tel announced a proposed merger. The proposed merged company, BCT.Telus Communications Inc., was incorporated separately in British Columbia, with headquarters at BC Tel's office in Burnaby . After shareholder approval BCT.Telus acquired BC Tel and Telus;

Mobile Telephone Service - Misplaced Pages Continue

2394-516: The merger was completed in 1999. In 2000 the combined BCT.Telus changed named back to Telus Corporation, and the BC Tel brand was retired. The merger created Canada's second largest telecom company, with 22% of market share compared to Bell Canada 's 42%. American company GTE had held a slight majority of ownership in BC Tel prior to the merger with Telus, and retained a 26.7% share of the post-merger company. Large swaths of rural Quebec , mainly

2451-432: The messages conveyed about the current labour dispute". An Alberta court injunction ordered the blocked website, Voices For Change, to remove postings of "Telus employee photos" and other "intimidating or threatening material". The site owner agreed to comply and Telus unblocked the website. Telus and the TWU ratified a tentative agreement on November 18, 2005, ending the dispute. In April 2011, Telus Mobility relaunched

2508-505: The network, primarily to provide high-speed Internet access. As of 2023 , operators worldwide are in the process of retiring support for both last-mile analog telephony and ISDN, and transitioning voice service to Voice over IP via Internet access delivered either via DSL , cable modems or fiber-to-the-premises , eliminating the expense and complexity of running two separate technology infrastructures for PSTN and Internet access. Several large private telephone networks are not linked to

2565-415: The number of connecting trunks required between operators over long distances, and also kept local traffic separate. Modern technologies have brought simplifications Most automated telephone exchanges use digital switching rather than mechanical or analog switching. The trunks connecting the exchanges are also digital, called circuits or channels. However analog two-wire circuits are still used to connect

2622-506: The older PDH technology. The access network defines a number of reference points. Most of these are of interest mainly to ISDN but one, the V reference point , is of more general interest. This is the reference point between a primary multiplexer and an exchange. The protocols at this reference point were standardized in ETSI areas as the V5 interface . Voice quality in PSTN networks was used as

2679-415: The operator, other radios on the base station could hear the transmission from the station, not what the radio user was transmitting.) The customer would then specify the details of their call, either to another mobile or to a landline number, which the operator would then place. The call was manually ticketed prior to the use of TOPS, and automatically ticketed if the mobile user was automatically connected to

2736-437: The prices charged between the operators to carry each other's traffic . In the United Kingdom, the copper POTS and ISDN-based PSTN is being retired in favour of SIP telephony , with an original completion date of December 2025, although this has now been put back to January 2027. See United Kingdom PSTN switch-off . Voice telephony will continue to follow the E.163 and E.164 standards, as with current mobile telephony, with

2793-699: The regulatory system governing the Canadian telecommunications industry. Telus currently sponsors the Telus Spark Science Centre in Calgary , Telus World of Science in Edmonton and Science World in Vancouver . Telus funds the annual Kokanee Crankworx freeride mountain bike and World Ski & Snowboard festivals, both held in Whistler, British Columbia . Telus was a sponsor and marketing partner of Hockey Canada since 2004 and

2850-546: The same purpose as the NANP area code and central office code, with its own latitudinal-longitudinal coordinates, to allow a distance to be calculated for rating of a call. This coding system, which was in its zenith of usage during the 1980s and 1990s, was rendered unusable when the North American Numbering Plan administrator withdrew the 88X codes for future use as toll free (e.g. 1-800-) services. By

2907-407: The site, saying it identified employees crossing picket lines and encouraged disruptive behaviour, while the union alleged it amounted to censorship. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association issued an official objection to the unilateral blocking on July 26, stating "Telus is leveraging its power as a telecommunications service provider to censor a specific group, shut down debate and limit

SECTION 50

#1732798558386

2964-502: The telephone began shortly after its invention, with instruments operated in pairs for private use between two locations. Users who wanted to communicate with persons at multiple locations had as many telephones as necessary for the purpose. Alerting another user of the desire to establish a telephone call was accomplished by whistling loudly into the transmitter until the other party heard the alert. Bells were soon added to stations for signaling . Later telephone systems took advantage of

3021-650: The title sponsor of Canada's national midget hockey championship, the Telus Cup , since 2005. Telus has been a sponsor of Rogers Sportsnet 's regional broadcasts of Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers games. Telus has been the title sponsor of the Telus Skins Game in addition to several tournaments on the Canadian Tour , including the Telus Open , Telus Calgary Open , Telus Edmonton Open and

3078-434: The union went on strike in British Columbia while Telus locked out its unionized workers in Alberta, although (as is common in disputes where an employer attempts to unilaterally implement a new contract) the union consistently referred to the dispute as a "lockout." On July 25, 2005, Telus blocked its Internet subscribers from accessing a website supporting striking union members. The company expressed concerns over content on

3135-790: Was established to own Québec Téléphone. GTE sold its interests in Québec Téléphone to Telus in August 2000, which renamed it Telus Québec on April 2, 2001. GTE was itself acquired by Bell Atlantic in 2000, and the company changed its name to Verizon Communications . Verizon inherited GTE's share of Telus, but in late 2004 sold its remaining 20.5% stake. This was so that Verizon could focus more on its own services. In October 2019, Telus Corp announced it would buy home security provider ADT Inc. 's Canadian operations for CA$ 700 million (US$ 527.27 million). In January 2022, Telus Communications acquired London -based ISP Start.ca. In June 2022, Telus Communications acquired Altima Telecom. Telus Corporation

3192-483: Was named one of British Columbia's Top Employers by Mediacorp Canada Inc., which was announced by The Vancouver Sun , The Province and the Victoria Times-Colonist . In recent years, the company has been accused of taking actions to hinder the emergence of competition in Canadian telecommunications. This, along with other industry concerns, has led to consumer and industry pressure to reform

3249-437: Was that the frequencies were extremely noisy from various interference, and were subject to propagation problems due to time of day, mostly due to the sun's effect on the ionosphere. Northwestel, which discontinued the service shortly after 2000, could not tie this system into TOPS, and had to aurally monitor the channels using speakers to listen for incoming calls. For billing purposes, many MTS base stations were identified with

#385614