American Telephone and Telegraph, Co.

At&t Information Systems Inc.

David B Kunkee

Robert T Saizan

Shyamal Sengupta

Joseph F Focarile

A pager arranged for operation in a cellular radio system provides economy to subscribers and technological flexibility to a system operator. Paging service is available in any geographical area covered by the advanced mobile phone service system. Subscribers are thereby able to travel at will while continuing to receive page signals in the cellular system. A special set of geographically dispersed channels in the advanced mobile phone service system are dedicated nation-wide to signaling and call control functions. These channels are used by the pager to properly configure itself to receive a page signal. The pager scans these channels, tunes to the channel with the best received signal strength and synchronizes with a received data stream on this or a second best channel. The pager then awaits receipt of the page signal. The pager also automatically rescans the special channels periodically to insure that it is always tuned to the channel with the best received signal strength. Paging service to subscribers in a cellular radio system is provided by the pager when the full service of a cellular telephone is not desired. Alternatively, the pager is assigned the same number as an associated cellular telephone for providing a backup for telephone calls intended for the associated cellular telephone which is not 'ON' because the subscriber is temporarily unavailable to answer the incoming call.

Growing community of inventors

Holmdel, NJ, United States of America

David B Kunkee