now rigorously defined to enable equipment from different manufacturers to be used together.
However, some of this standardization came late, and it means that many older components
are proprietary makes, enabling only BSCs and BTSs from particular manufacturers to be
connected.
The BSC manages one or more BTSs. It handles the radio channel set-up, frequency hopping
control and handovers. It link s with the MSC or mobile switching centre via an interface termed
the A interface. A further task normally handled by the BSC is to translate the 13-kbps voice data
rate used over the radio link to the standard 64 kbps used by the PSTN.
The core of the network sub-system is the MSC, or mobile switching centre, acting like a
switching node of the PSTN . In ...