New Technology to Tie Cellular Phones, Portable Computers

Major players in the U.S. wireless communications and computer industries plan today to unveil a new system allowing portable computers to access data cheaply with cellular telephones, sources said.

Such a system would allow field workers, reporters and traveling sales representatives to communicate with their head offices over cellular telecommunications networks virtually nationwide using laptop or palmtop computers, they said.

The industry sources, who declined to be identified, said the new communications standard will be backed by major U.S. cellular telephone companies. It will be based on International Business Machines technology.

A Bellevue, Wash.-based public relations firm said “a major announcement regarding cellular data communications” will be made in Santa Clara, Calif., this morning.

A spokeswoman for the firm said the announcement involved a breakthrough in cellular data communications, but declined to give details.

Industry officials familiar with the plan said it involves transmission and reception of data using digital cellular systems that could be reached by a portable handset or a cellular computer modem.

The system involves only an incremental cost for updating the cellular infrastructure and could be available in some locations in the first quarter of 1993, they said.

Pacific Telesis Group predicts that the system could have as many as 13 million subscribers by the year 2000, according to a person familiar with the plans.