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From: ndallen@contact.uucp (Nigel Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Bell Cellular to Offer Users Snoop-proof Scramblers
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Date: 8 Jun 90 10:39:03 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 433, Message 1 of 8


Excerpted from {The Globe and Mail}, Toronto, June 7, 1990
 
Bell Cellular has developed a new scrambling service that will allow
its cellular radio-telephone subscribers to encrypt all their voice
and data communications.

   The optional service, dubbed Privacy Plus, will be available in
mid-July and will sell for $89.95 (Canadian) a month.

    Users of the service must install an encryption device in their car
that is affixed to the dash and plugs into the phone.

    The device contains the programs for scrambling and descrambling
messages.  It is made by Cycomm Corp., a unit of Sonatel
Telecommunications Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia.

   Although Bell Cellular is targetting the defence and national
security market, the scrambling unit has not yet been certified that
it meets the rigid Tempest standards set by the U.S. National Security
Agency. Only equipment that meets the Tempest standards set by the top
secret communications spy agency can be used by NATO governments to
communicate classified military and intelligence information.

   Bell Cellular's new system is the first in North America to install
encryption equipment in its cellular network for use by subscribers.

    The system uses a powerful communications program that randomly
breaks up the frequency band used for cellular communications into
smaller bands and then jumbles up a message by randomly assigning
parts of a call to those bands.

    The message is then descrambled either at the Bell Cellular switch
if it is destined for a non-encrypted user or by another subscriber's
equipment if destined for a user who also has the encryption service.

   Bell Cellular is a subsidiary of Montreal-based BCE Mobile
Communications Inc., which in turn is a subsidiary of BCE Inc.,
formerly Bell Canada Enterprises.

It has 141,000 subscribers in Ontario and Quebec and provides service
in competition with Rogers Cantel Inc. of Toronto.