British Telecom experiments in radiopaging via satellite

British Telecom´s radiopaging service first opened in London in 1976 and has since grown to be the largest national paging service in the world, serving well over 400,000 customers throughout the UK. However, many users of radiopaging services often travel outside national boundaries and therefore lose the opportunity of being contacted `on-the-move´. Furthermore, there is growing interest in the application of one-way messaging services which would be particularly attractive to international travellers such as hauliers. There is thus an identifiable need to extend the service-area of radiopaging networks, and one approach under active consideration within British Telecom (BT) is the use of satellite communications. The author describes experiments conducted by BT using prototype L-band receivers to pick-up paging messages relayed via a MARECs maritime communications satellite operated by INMARSAT. The author includes background information leading up to the prototype receiver satellite test phase, a description of the prototype receiver, results of the experiments, a summary of the demonstrations conducted and a brief look towards the future