What Is PCS?

PCS means Personal Communication Service. It is a pie of the radio frequency band. Its primary use is to serve wireless phones in Canada, Mexico and United States. Following describes the function of PCS in today’s world.

There was a need of assigning some particular bandwidths for the signals that are used in cell phones. A radio band was studied which was exclusively for cellular phones. So a frequency of 1850-1990 MHz range was finalized by the FCC in United States and Canada. This frequency was assigned to ensure that there would be no interference with the frequencies that were used for government functions and public broadcast. Both the countries assigned a 1900 MHz band as a standard for every service based on wireless network in 1994. Due to this the first unified PCs were created.

Although this assigned bandwidth performed well by not interfering with other bandwidths and also helped interacting with wired network in an easier way. But issue of cell phone interaction with Countries in Europe and Asia was not addressed. Eventually dual band phones were developed to process signals and to make them compatible between North America and rest of the world. Today, the GSM signals that operate at a frequency of 1900 MHz are also called PCS signals in various parts of the world.

Sprint was the first company to use pure PCS service in United States. Its base station was established in Baltimore-Washington DC area. To utilize the service with other international standards, the station was optimized to work with GSM-1900 standards. But eventually Sprint adopted the CDMA technology for cell phones although they continued their former service within the new defined PCS range. The PCs range of 1850-1900 MHz is used by almost every cellular provider in United States. PCS had helped in making many modern cell phone plans possible.

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