What is BCCH carrier?

information & signalling. • TCH Availability Rate: It is the number of TCH . available divided by maximum number of TCH . channels possible for carrying traffic .

A broadcast control channel (BCCH) is a point to multipoint, unidirectional (downlink) channel used in the Um interface of the GSM cellular standard .

GSM has two types of traffic channels TCH/FS and TCH/HS. It is used both in the uplink and downlink after mobile has established connection with the GSM cell (BTS). It uses 26 frame multi frame structure. TCH/FS stands for traffic channel at Full rate speech and TCH/HS stands for traffic channel at half rate speech.

The radio frequency (RF) carrier used to transmit the BCCH is referred to as the BCCH carrier. The mobile station (MS) monitors the information carried on the BCCH periodically (at least every 30 secs), when it is switched on and not in a call.