2000

IBM Corp. and American Mobile Satellite Corp. took their existing business relationship to another level last week, allowing AMSC to better target the potentially lucrative business-to-business market IBM commands. The …

AT&T Wireless Services Inc.’s two largest affiliates, TeleCorp PCS Inc. and Tritel Inc., agreed to merge in an all-stock, tax-free transaction. The deal is valued at about $5.3 billion. TeleCorp …

ORLANDO, Fla.-Triton Network Systems Inc., a provider of broadband fixed-wireless network products, entered into an agreement with IBM Corp. to purchase the assets and hire approximately 50 employees associated with …

TOKYO-An NTT laboratory is gearing up its efforts to develop Advanced Wireless Access (AWA), a next-generation wireless system that will enable users to access data at a speed of up …

JERUSALEM-Bezeq Israel Telecom Ltd., the state-owned telecommunications company, announced a plan to allow cellular telephone users to route incoming calls through either their mobile phones or the nearest fixed-line phones. …

HANNOVER, Germany-After a year of industry enthusiasm and the wild market forecasts that have surrounded the short-range wireless technology Bluetooth, the silicon-chip developers used the giant CeBIT 2000 exhibition to …

PHOENIX, United States-Some observers have compared the broadband wireless industry to a hockey game: lots of skating around, many dramatic clashes, but not much scoring. Still, like a hockey game, …

HONG KONG-After courting competing bids for several weeks, Cable and Wireless plc accepted a US$35.9 billion cash and stock offer for its Hong Kong wireless operation from Pacific Century CyberWorks …

BEIJING-China Unicom and Qualcomm signed a landmark agreement in February, paving the way for Chinese manufacturers to get CDMA production licenses. Unicom wants to build a 10 million-line CDMA network …

MELBOURNE, Australia-Telstra’s new CDMA mobile phone network has come under fire from rural Australians following the closure of about 80 percent of the carrier’s analog AMPS network on 31 December. …

DUBLIN, Ireland-The news that Mannesmann has conceded defeat in its battle with Vodafone AirTouch merely underlines the momentum behind consolidation in the European mobile communications industry. However, few observers appear …

CANNES, France and HANNOVER, Germany-Visitors at the ever-expanding GSM World Congress, held in February in Cannes, France, could have mistaken the huge exhibition as focusing exclusively on Wireless Application Protocol …

Motorola and Psion agreed to build products, expected to be released in the first half of 2001, using a new platform from Symbian. Symbian announced a wireless computing platform for …

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expects to hold an auction for the remaining narrowband PCS licenses as early as mid-2000. In preparation for the auction, the FCC plans to issue …

Much has been made of the battle for supremacy of the operating system for the wireless data terminal market. With the number of Internet-enabled wireless devices expected to outnumber PC …

The focus on the mobile industry has been enormous during the last year. Device vendors, service providers, application developers, infrastructure vendors and content providers have all been jostling to position …

TOKYO-The number of Japanese PHS subscribers expanded in the December-January time frame, demonstrating that the long-ailing PHS business is starting to revitalize. The number of PHS users in the country …

Handsets Philips Philips introduced several new handsets. The Ozeo GSM dual-band mobile phone offers a new user interface and a large LCD display with five text lines. The carousel icon …

MONTREAL-The transmission was delayed 20 minutes because the test PC had crashed. And the picture quality, to put it kindly, was choppy. Nevertheless, in February, Rogers AT&T Wireless and Ericsson …

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Cell C, the consortium backed by Middle Eastern conglomerate Saudi Oger with CellSaf as a local partner, has been officially named as the preferred consortium for the third …

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina-A change in the Argentine cellular telephony scene will take place in April when the current regional duopoly model is replaced by national competition among four operators. In …

SINGAPORE-Singapore has fast-forwarded its liberalization plans for the telecommunications sector by a staggering two years, effectively throwing the industry wide open almost immediately. The move, which comes into effect on …

International roaming is a key selling point for all three digital cellular standards. The GSM community in particular often claims that roaming capability is not only a prime factor in …

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The wireless market in Tanzania is gaining momentum with Vodacom’s pending rollout of a new GSM network. The new entrant is no small force to contend with and …

DENVER, United States-SBC Communications said it will convert the remaining Ameritech wireless properties it owns from CDMA technology to TDMA technology. SBC and Ameritech merged last year and sold 20 …