Cellular Firms Seek ‘Seamless’ U.S. Phone Link : Telecommunications: The plan could enable the current patchwork of local carriers to function as a homogeneous unit nationwide.

The cellular telephone industry, in a move that adds momentum to the revolution in personal communications, began soliciting proposals Wednesday for a “seamless” network that would allow cellular users to receive calls anywhere in the country.

The proposed system, which could hasten the arrival of wireless personal communications technologies as portable and unobtrusive as a wristwatch, could be in place as early as the end of next year, cellular officials say.

The move caps four years of efforts by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn., a Washington-based trade group, to develop a seamless network with standardized signaling technology that would allow cellular customers to complete calls outside their local service areas.

With existing technology, most cellular customers can place outgoing calls from any location using their car or portable phones, but cannot receive calls if they travel to areas not served by their cellular companies. The new network would overcome that problem by linking cellular systems with software that would allow them to talk to each other.

Development of a seamless national network would make cellular more competitive with a nascent technology known as personal communications services, or PCS. Still in the planning stage, PCS would improve on cellular by enabling phone sets to be smaller, cheaper, more portable and capable of working inside buildings.

The cellular industry’s efforts to develop a seamless system does not require the approval of the Federal Communications Commission.

The General Accounting Office has urged the FCC to bar cellular carriers from the PCS market, arguing that the cellular industry would be unlikely to encourage its development since it is a potential competitor.

CTIA, which represents 150 cellular companies operating more than 1,400 systems nationwide, said it is sending requests for proposals to develop a seamless network to more than 40 firms, including American Telephone & Telegraph Co., MCI Communications Corp., Sprint Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp.

“It’s a very significant development,” said analyst Frederic A. Moran, president of a Greenwich, Conn., investment firm. “Cellular is moving toward a fully integrated nationwide system that does everything a land-based line system does.”

“The real breakthrough here is the portability of the phone numbers,” said Robert W. Crandall, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. That portability, he said, would move Americans a step closer to the day when they can communicate with other callers or computers through a single phone, no matter where they may be at the time.

The cellular industry’s move comes just a month after the antitrust division of the U.S. Justice Department notified the regional Bell telephone companies that it would not prevent their cellular affiliates from participating in development of a seamless national network.