271 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
271 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
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# <Tolmes News Service> #
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# ''''''''''''''''''''' #
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# > Written by Dr. Hugo P. Tolmes < #
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#######################################
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Issue Number: 19
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Release Date: December 20, 1987
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Well, here's another issue. Nothing much has been going on lately. I'll just
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get to the articles for this issue.
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-Hugo-
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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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TITLE: 'If you need help, press 3'
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FROM: The Chicago Tribune
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DATE: December 13, 1987
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By Christine Winter
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"Seasons Greetings from XYZ. If you're calling from a Touch Tone phone and
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want to bypass the store operator, press 1 now, or 0 anytime for operator
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assistance. If you have a rotary phone, remain on the line for operator
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assistance...."
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You are in the first stages of having your call "processed." You have a
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chance to get out of the computer loop, as some analysts call it, or continue.
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Press 1, and the message rolls on, unfailingly polite, and careful to provide
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an immediate escape hatch to a human operator.
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"Thank you. I fyou know the extension you want, dial it now, or dial the
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operator anytime. Or, listen for the department you want, and press that
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number anytime during this message. If you want automotive parts, press 1;
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catalogue, press 2; furniture or major appliances, press 3..."
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That's your category, so to get another directory for furniture and
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appliances, you press 3.
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"Thank you. If you want furniture, press 1; TVs, VCRs or stereos, press 2;
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sewing machines or vacuums, press 3; refrigeration or laundry equipment, press
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4; ranges, microwaves or dishwashers, press 5."
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Appoximately 1.2 million calls in the U.S. are answered each day by a
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computerized message that is some variation of the above.
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Some users are offended, some are confused, but proponenents of the
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automated devices say that most eventually become comfortable with the
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systems. A few users even learn to love them, they say.
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The latest technology in call handling is a combination of three separate
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features that are gradually being integrated into one system that includes
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automatic answering, voice messaging and voice response.
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An example of automatic answering is the above suburban retail store,
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where a call is answered and routed to the correct department by offering the
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caller a series of options.
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A voice-messaging system allows a caller to leave a spoken message in a
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"voice mail box" that can then be reached via phone call and manipulated in
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a number of ways: It can be duplicated, forwarded, or returned with a response
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to others within the system.
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A voice-response system allows a caller to perform an actual transaction
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over the phone by providing a lwhich responds with
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data that is spoken, instead of displayed on a screen. For example, a
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caller might be able to punch a number of a replacement part into the phone
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and be told if it is in stock; or he might be able to get his bank account
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balance, or get a stock quotation.
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All of this technology is availiable now. Analysts predict that call
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processing will be a multibillion-dollar business early in the 1990s.
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But today it is still fragmented, and growing slowly.
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According to Probe Research, a Marstown, N.J., consulting firm, there
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are about 4,200 voice-messaging systems in use, most of which offer an
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automatic answering and routing function. Probe Research estimates industry
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sales at about $270 million for 1987.
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Corporate America is beginning to recognize the potential for
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productivity gains and labor reductions from such systems, but that doesn't
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mean they are sold on the concept.
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The Museum of Science and Industry, for example, is able to handle
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as many as 3,000 calls a day on 20 incoming lines, with just one human
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operator and an Automated Attendant system from Schaumburg-based Dytel Corp.
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"Sure, there are some people who don't like machines," said Steve Brandt,
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office services manager for the museum. "But we figure that more people would
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have been frustrated by listening to the phone ring forever than will be
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upset by getting a computer. This way they get their information much faster."
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Aware that many such systems are considered little more than digital
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nags by their detractors, Sanford Morganstein, president of Dytel, likes to
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explain his Automated Attendant as something more than just a recording.
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"We like to describe it not as a machine, or a recording, but as a
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replacement for lousy service," he said. "The idea is to handle phone calls,
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not just answer the phone or take a message. That annoys people. We want to
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let them be in charge of their phone call, let them choose the option they
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want, let them keep trying if they feel like it, or leave a message if they
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don't. We found much better acceptance when we stopped calling it a recording."
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Nonetheless, there is still a certain wariness among major corporations
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in turning their most valuable commodity- clients and customers - over to
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an automated system that just might might irritate them so much that they go
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elsewhere.
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as a result, the technology seems to be sneaking in the back door.
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"Right now it's used a lot for after hours, overflow and friendly
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callers," said David Yedwab, senior consultant at Eastern Management Group,
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a consulting firm based in Stamford, Conn. "Corporations want both worlds:
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a high-tech ssolution to improve productivity and a soft-touch approach to
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deal with their clients."
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"We don't want to risk offending or losing our clients," empasized a
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partner in a major Chicago consulting firm that has a sophisticated answering
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and messaging system. The system is not hooked up to the firm's main number.
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"We sort of look on it as our back door number," she said. "We give the
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automatic anumber to people who have to be nice to us, like
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suppliers and vendors and family members," she laughed. "Never clients."
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"We would prefer that our customers speak to a human during the day,"
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said Robert Gordon, a spokesman for Applied Data Research, a major software
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house, which used an automated system in its Princeton, N.J., and Dallas
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offices after hours and on weekends.
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"We're very happy with it for non-normal business hours," he said.
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"We have a 24-hour tech-support hotline, but if people forget that number
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and dial the main number at our headquarters, they can get transferred over
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with a two-digit code by the system."
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Sears, Roebuck & Co. uses and automated system in its Schaumburg and
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Oak Brook stores, but is almost defensive about it.
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"It's only a backup measure for when our operators are all busy," said
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spokesman Jim Podany. "We consider it for extenuating circumstances only. We
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prefer human operators."
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"A lot of companies are only using these systems internally for their
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service personnel," admitted Eugene Mathews, technical specialist at
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American Telephone & Telegraph Co., which also makes such a device.
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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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TITLE: A National Radio Paging System
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FROM: Radio-Electronics
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DATE: January 1988
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You can run but you can't hide- from satellite paging
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HERB FRIEDMAN, COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR
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It was a dark and stormy night... somehwere back down the road Snoopy had
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fallen out of the family's pickup truck, and Charlie Brown had just
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discovered he was gone. Faster than Clark Kent changing into Superman,
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Charlie Brown rushed to a roadside telephone booth, punched in an 800
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telephone number plus a few more digits, and out in the night Snoopy heard
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a small brown box on his belt go beep...beep...beep, and when he looked
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down at the box he saw the telephone number of Charlie's phone booth. A
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quick call and Snoopy was rescued.
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Snoopy's rescue worked like this. the 800 number that Charlie called is
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the free access for the Cue Paging Corp.'s (Box 7789, Newport Beach, CA
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92658.) NATIONAL paging system. Cue Paging uplinked the next set of
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touch-tones punched in by Charlie Brown- which represented the access
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code for Snoopy's "brown box" pocket-pager and the telephone number of
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Charlie's phone booth- to the Westar 4 satellite. Across the U.S., satellite
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downlinks set the data signals to more than 100 FM stations, which
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rebroadcast the data on a 57-kHz SCA subcarrier.
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Meanwhile, the pocket-pager on Snoopy's belt, which is a scanning FM
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receiver with a 12-digit LCD display, was searching for an FM station that
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was broadcasting a 57-kHz SCA subcarrier modulated with Cue Paging's
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attention code. (The attention code is broadcast so the receiver can
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distinguish between a Cue Paging subcarrier and all others). The receiver's
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tuning locked onto the FM station having the strongest Cue Paging subcarrier.
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When the FM station broadcast Snoopy's access code, the receiver beeped and
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displayed the data, which was the telf Charlie Brown's
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phone booth. When Snoopy heard the beep, he simply looked at the receiver's
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LCD display and saw Charlie's telephone number.
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A lot of technology.
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As you can gather from our comicstrip scenario, many high-tech
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disciplines go into nationwide radio-paging. Figure 1, which is a
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pictoral of the system, gives a better idea of the various technologies used.
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Assuming you're the subscriber, the system works this way. Anyone who
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wants to reach you- even if they have no idea whether you're around the block
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or on the other continent- uses their touch-tone phone (1) to dial a toll-free
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800 number that accesses Cue Pagin's computer (2) in Virginia. Depending on
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where the telephone is located and the long-distance carrier used by the
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800 connection, the telephone signal travels to the computer via ordinary
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telephone wires, fiber optics, microwave, satellite link, or any
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combination of communication paths. A digitized voice from the computer asks
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the caller to input the subscriber's access code. A tone beep informs the
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caller that the computer has recognized the code will accept 12 touch-tone
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digits, which can represent a telephone number, or anything else (like a
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secret code).
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The data representing the access code and up to 12 digits is stored in
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the computer for possible Voce Message Retrieval (we'll explain that later)
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and sent to a Westar 4 satellite uplink (3). The Westar 4 satellite (4)
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downlinks the signal to local or regional satellite receiving facilities
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(5), which send the data to one or more local FM stations (6) via telephone,
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radio relay, or a microwave link.
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For example, because of its unusually large metropolitan area and its
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"canyons" created by many tall buildings, New York City requires several
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Cue Pagin SCA stations for complete coverage (right down into the subway
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system). The satellite signal is received by WQXR's SRO (Satellite
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Receive Only), which passes the signal along to WCBS by conventional radio
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line. Another pagin station, WNYE, get's its paging data feed from a
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special receiver that is tuned to the WCBS SCA.
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Each FM station is equipped with automatic Cue Paging failure detection,
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central monitoring station notification, and a satellite-signal bypass
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via the telephone switched network (dial-up). We will cover that part of
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the system later.
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Six memories
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Your pocket pager (7)- called an FM/SCA Cue Unit -received the message
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from a participating FM station and stores it in one of its six 12-digit
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memories.
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The Cue Unit can be set to either beep or remain silent when it receives
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new data. Either way, you can read the data in any of the six memories on an
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LCD display and save or erase the data as desired. A memory without data
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cannot read, therefore not time is wasted stepping through empty memories.
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Since every FM station in the system receives the data at the same
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time, you can receive your message anywhere as long as you're within
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range of an FM station that supplies Cue Paging. Presently, all major
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metropolitan areas from coast to coast are serem, as well as
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some not-so-major but important industrial areas.
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Coverage is not complete, however, and there are some surprising holes
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in the system. For example, although we can't expect coverage in the
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wide-open-spaces of Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Idaho, at the time
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this article was prepared Cue Paging's service map showed there was no service
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in Virginia (outside the D.C. area), Oklahoma, and New Mexicao. However,
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Cue Paging plans to expand coverage as FM station access premits.
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The individual pieces
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The Cue Unit is a special 87-108-MHz scanning receiver that is
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manufactured in Finland. It is powered by four 100-mAh Ni-Cd batteries that
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are recharged in 12 to 16 hours by a supplied trickle-charger base. A full
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battery charge can carry the reciever for about three days. The functional
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block diagram of the receiver is shown in Fig. 2. (Remember, Fig. 2 is
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functional for ease of understanding; it does not represent the actual
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digital/microprocessor circuits.)
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An internal antenna feeds the received FM signal into an RF amplifier,
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then into the mixer and on to the IF amplifier. Tuning is done through a
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VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator) that automatically sweeps the FM band.
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The output of the IF amplifier feeds through to a 57-kHz SCA detector, a
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digital identification decoder, a data decoder, the memory stack, and the LCD
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digital display. A sampling circuit from the SCA detector's output senses
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the attention signal of a Cue Paging SCA and locks the VCO on frequency.
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Assorted trigger circuits sound an internal beeper when data is received,
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the battery is low, or the SCA signal fails (due to low or no SCA signal
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strength).
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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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NOTA:
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This is not the entire article but you get the picture of how the national
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beeping system works.
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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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