Sprint pcs cellular phone

Sprint Cellular has launched a 600-customer Las Vegas market trial of FutureLink, a personal communication service that allows users to communicate with wireless telephones from their homes, offices or while traveling via a single phone number.

Each customer has been assigned a personal phone number, along with a Motorola pocket telephone and desktop base station for home or office environments. Calls automatically reach trial customers wherever they are, said a Sprint spokeswoman.

When users are at their homes or offices, calls are delivered over the local landline network and the pocket phone functions as a cordless phone, but with higher quality reception than most cordless units, she said. When users leave the range of their miniature base stations, calls travel via Sprint's cellular network.

Customers are paying for the service, with prices varying depending on whether they want to make and receive calls or just initiate them, and the level of call management they want from Sprint.

The Las Vegas trial will last until December of this year and might be followed by commercial availability, though Sprint Cellular's plans for the service have not yet been solidified, said the spokeswoman.

The market trial comes on the heels of a successful six-week test involving about 75 employees of Sprint Cellular in Las Vegas. It also follows a trial of a less advanced single number service in Norfolk, Va., last year, and the distribution by Bellcore of 500 series access codes, which are intended for use for similar "follow me" services (Telephony, July 18, page 6).