TIME SHARING PAGING SYSTEM

摘要

A communication system (100) includes more than one paging terminal (102, 104 and 106) communicatively coupled to a single paging network controller (108) operating on a radio channel using a synchronous time-division communication paging protocol having frames, with the radio channel shared among the paging terminals on a frame-by-frame basis, allowing more than one service provider to share most of the infrastructure of a paging system. Each paging terminal has a different System ID (212) and provision for a different System Collapse Value (214). A System ID is transmitted within each frame (903) of the protocol, allowing each frame to be allocated to a particular paging treminal and to selective call receivers associated with the particular paging terminal. In an alternate embodiment, a single paging terminal (300) has more than one System ID (315, 317) and provision for more than one System Collapse Value (312, 314).