Radio Common Carrier (RCC)

Parallel to IMTS in the U.S. until the rollout of cellular AMPS was a competing mobile telephone technology called RCC. An RCC was a common carrier engaged in Public Mobile Service, which also was not the business of providing land line local exchange telephone service. The service from RCC’s was provided from the 1960s until the 1980s when cellular AMPS made RCC equipment obsolete. These systems operated in a regulated environment in competition with the Bell System’s MTS and IMTS. RCC’s handled telephone calls and were operated by private companies and individuals. One impediment of the service was that RCCs were not governed by any single interoperable technical standard. If you had RCC in Omaha, for instance, your phone would not be likely to work in Phoenix. Thus, the concept of “roaming” did not apply which made interstate traveling with RCC extremely difficult. The fact that there was no centralized industry billing database for RCCs contributed to this as well.