U S West rolls out advanced PCS: Services include mobile dial tone

U S West last week introduced U S West Advanced PCS, a service that includes mobile dial tone and advanced routing and messaging capabilities.

"We tried to replicate the touch and feel of a home and office phone," said Sue Schaefer, vice president of marketing and sales for U S West.

The dial tone service combines a handset-generated and a network-generated dial tone. The handset portion, available through an exclusive agreement with Qualcomm, allows users to press the talk button to hear a dial tone. Like using a cordless phone, they then dial a number that will connect the call immediately. The network-generated portion allows users to hear a dial tone while they are initiating features.

"Our customers continue to tell us that dial tone means reliability and quality," Schaefer said. "They want the simplicity of the phone back."

Dial tone might be attractive to consumers who haven't used wireless phones and may feel more comfortable with a phone that operates like a landline phone, said Naqi Jaffrey, wireless analyst for Dataquest.

The service also includes a same number feature that routes calls made to a home, office or PCS number to the PCS phone. It can also route all messages to a single mailbox, notifying users of messages via an indicator light on the handset.

Schaefer believes that a variety of customers will be interested in U S West Advanced PCS. One key group that can benefit is small business people, such as real estate agents or plumbers, who are "people whose phone is a lifeline to their business," she said.

Another group likely to show interest will be what Schaefer calls integrated users, which are "people who mix business and personal," she said. These users tend to buy from the consumer base but use mobile phones for both business and personal reasons.