E * city call

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Various radio message receivers for city calls

e * Cityruf , formerly Cityruf , is a paging service in Germany that has been in operation since March 1989 and is available throughout Germany.

history

The public Cityruf trial operation began in November 1988 in Berlin and Frankfurt / Main, and in March 1989 Cityruf was officially introduced as a service of the Deutsche Bundespost TELEKOM. In May 1990 it was introduced by Deutsche Post in the starting region of Leipzig as the only radio paging service in the GDR , apparently in anticipation of the foreseeable reunification . The establishment of 12 call zones was planned in the area of ​​the Deutsche Post by 1991, as well as others, which were later connected to form even larger radio zones. In the meantime, the service belonged to Deutsche Telekom .

At the end of 1999 the company e * Message WIS Deutschland GmbH, e * Message for short, took over all paging services from DeTeMobil, including Skyper and Scall (both discontinued in the meantime).

technology

The transmission of acoustic, numeric and alphanumeric messages is possible.

The subscriber numbers must be communicated to the sender by the recipient. Messages can be sent via the Internet (web, e-mail), modem and - limited to T-Mobile - via SMS. It is also possible to send calls by phone:

  • Area code 0164 and subscriber number - transmit tone signal or phone number
  • Area code 0168 and subscriber number - Send numeric message via DTMF or alphanumeric message using a tone generator (e.g. Telekom TipSend)
  • Area code 016951 and subscriber number - operator service

Radio calls made via a web interface or by e-mail are limited to 200 messages per day for regional calls (Germany is divided into 16 regions for this purpose). This relatively high quota makes the service attractive for the purpose of e-mail notification. A notification service is operated by a private person under the name mAirGate and is offered for free use. For national calls, which are always broadcast in the entire transmission area, the number of calls is limited to relatively few, namely 30 per day.

With Cityruf, unidirectional communication is used on a lower frequency than other cellular networks ( e.g. GSM ) between transmitter and receiver ( POCSAG ). For the transmission of only regionally valid messages, the coverage area is divided into sub-areas in which the respective transmitters are used in single- frequency operation. Adjacent sub-areas are separated from one another by a time division multiplex process .

Comparison with other types of notification

Advantages of Cityruf:

  • Due to the greater range and higher penetration of the frequency used, the mains supply is usually better despite a lower number of transmitters, so that reception is usually also possible in building basements, garages and elevators.
  • The system is also more reliable in times and places with heavy traffic on the cellular network (for example at New Year's or major events) because it is used in a more disciplined manner.
  • Even if pagers according to LuftEBV (like almost all electronic devices) in aircraft have to be switched off during take-off and landing, as passive receivers they are often not subject to the restrictions for mobile phones (hospitals, broadcasting stations, chemical plants, etc.).
  • Cityruf receivers cannot be located physically and are therefore preferable from the perspective of protecting metadata (location), but the transmission takes place without cryptographic protection.

Disadvantage of Cityruf:

  • Receipt of a message cannot be confirmed by the recipient. This means that sufficiently serious reception errors (for example reception that is too weak or receiver / transmitter switched off / defective) cannot be corrected; This is different, for example, with the delivery of short messages (SMS).

Customers

The services are therefore mainly used by people who require constant availability, e.g. emergency services , hospital staff, police , fire brigade , disaster control , winter services, service and on-call technicians, especially since the Cityruf service sends the same message to up to 200 recipients at the same time can. New fields of application are opening up in the logistics sector (truck flow control) and in the service sector (queue management) for patients (medical centers, doctor's offices) and customers (shopping centers, hardware stores, car repair shops, hairdressing salons, etc.). Baden-Württemberg schools use the service to notify teachers in the event of rampages.

Others

The wireless network operator e * Message was in a legal dispute with Apple before the Braunschweig Regional Court until November 2018. The company saw a risk of confusion with the short message service iMessage. E * Message has been using its brand since 2000, Apple launched the iMessage product in 2011. E * Message wanted Apple not to use the name iMessage for professional applications. On November 21, 2018, the Braunschweig Regional Court ruled that Apple's iMessage product did not infringe any trademark rights to e * Message. There is no risk of confusion, since the fields of activity of the two companies are different and also have different target groups (Apple's customers are mainly end users, while e * Message is mainly used by fire departments or doctors). Furthermore, the court found that “eMessage” could not be protected at all, since the “e” only stood for “electronic” and thus the name only describes the business purpose.

literature

  • Wilfried Plaßmann, Detlef Schulz (Hrsg.): Handbook of electrical engineering. 5th edition, Vieweg & Teubner Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-8348-0470-9 .
  • Wolfgang Böge, Wilfried Plassmann: Vieweg Handbook Electrical Engineering. Basics and applications for electrical engineers, 2nd edition, Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 978-3-322-99400-4 .
  • Volker Jung, Hans-Jürgen Warnecke (Hrsg.): Handbook for telecommunications. Springer Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 1998, ISBN 978-3-642-97703-9 .
  • Reinhold Eberhardt, Walter Franz: Cellular networks. Technology - Systems - Applications, Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn Verlag, Braunschweig 1993, ISBN 978-3-322-83114-9 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ City radio network for Leipzig. Short text of the article from May 25, 1990 in the archive overview
  2. ^ City radio network for Leipzig. Short text of the article from May 25, 1990 in the archive overview
  3. ↑ cf. Development program "Telekom 2000" (rough concept) Deutsche Post (GDR), General Directorate Telekom, Berlin 1990 (under point 3: First expansion phase 190/91 and Appendix 3 for further expansion goals)
  4. ↑ FAQ on the eMessage website , click on "F", then entry number 1
  5. ↑ Martin U. Müller : iMessage: Berlin entrepreneur is suing Apple . In: Spiegel Online . October 19, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed October 20, 2018]).
  6. ^ Leo Becker: iMessage: Berlin company e * Message fails with lawsuit against Apple. Retrieved February 3, 2019 .
  7. ^ E * Message and iMessage: paging service company sued Apple "daughters" for infringement of its trademark rights. Retrieved February 3, 2019 .