Editor’s Note: The RCR Wireless News Time Machine is a way to take advantage of our extensive history in covering the wireless space to fire up the DeLorean and take a trip back in time to re-visit some of the more interesting headlines from this week in history. Enjoy the ride!
Clinton requests relief for nation’s 911 system
President Clinton, continuing to pitch low-risk, low-cost initiatives linked to telecommunications, last week called on Attorney General Janet Reno, the Federal Communications Commission and the private sector to create a community policing number for non-emergency calls to relieve over-congested 911 systems. The directive, made in Sacramento, Calif., during a campaign swing through the state last week, follows Clinton’s July 17 announcement of a 50,000 cellular phone donation by industry to neighborhood watch groups. … Read More
Digital wiretapping to be funded and scrutinized under new bill
Indirect digital telephony wiretap funding was approved by the House last week but not before Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) tacked on strict reporting and congressional review requirements opposed by the FBI. The funding provision, included in a $29.5 billion Commerce appropriations bill for fiscal 1997 that passed by a 246-179 margin, allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies to transfer unspent monies to a new Department of Justice Telecommunications Carrier Compliance Fund. The fund will be used to reimburse wireless and wireline carriers that modify networks in keeping with the 1994 digital telephony bill, known officially as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. … Read More
Cellular participants possess key advantages over PCS players: PCS is opportunity to make more money
From Wall Street to Main Street, the outlook for the cellular industry remains positive, especially for major players abroad and minor players at home that exploit markets with lower competition and penetration levels. The new Telecommunications Act has unleashed forces that could transform the entire communications industry, including the cellular sector, into something completely different than it has been, in the view of Dan Pakenham, senior telecommunications analyst for Moody’s Investors Service Inc., New York. … Read More
Deregulation forces cellular industry to compete in LEC arena
Deregulatory gains by the cellular telephone industry during the past three years have given way to a series of setbacks that could come back to haunt policymakers in the brave new world of regulation that started in 1993 and culminated with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Prior to President Clinton signing the telecom reform bill on Feb. 8, the two cellular carriers in each market were bound by rules unique to the wireless industry. While that will continue, the cellular industry now also is part of something bigger. That something is at the core of the new telecommunications law: local competition. … Read More
Champion adds trunking to repeater technology
Champion Communication Services Inc. is pursuing a trunking strategy to bring enhanced capabilities to its network of community repeaters-a wide area dispatch technology that has been around since the 1970s. The Houston-based company acquired 1,500 community repeaters located in 22 states from Motorola Inc. in 1994, making it the largest operator in North America, according to Ken Notter, the company’s senior vice president of marketing and sales. … Read More
Analyst: MSS promises good return on investment
At a coverage cost of $7 per population equivalent-one-tenth the cost of cellular-satellite communications promise $300 million in cash flow for each 1 percent of market penetration. That is one aspect of a positive outlook on wireless satellite telecommunications offered by Robert B. Kaimowitz, satellite communications analyst for Unterberg Harris, New York. He spoke last week at a conference here on “Space and Satellite Finance,” sponsored by the Institute for International Research. “I am optimistic,” said Kaimowitz, who has followed the satellite industry for more than a decade. “I’ve staked my career on it.” Of the approximately four billion people in the world today without access to telephones, he said, “I believe there are 30 million who can afford mobile satellite services (now), and 200 million who are potential MSS customers.” … Read More
Cable & Wireless enters U.S. cellular industry via BANM pact
Cable & Wireless Inc. has signed a cellular resale agreement with Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile, one of the first steps in introducing its own branded wireless service package into the United States. CWI said it initially will offer its Business First Cellular service this fall in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The company, a subsidiary of the international telecommunications giant Cable & Wireless plc, said it is already an established long-distance service provider to more than 100,000 business customers in the nation. It reported $736 million in revenues for its most recent fiscal year, ended March 31, and has some 2,500 U.S.-based employees. … Read More
Competition, not capacity, is motive for move to digital cellular
Not wanting to be elbowed aside by rival new suitors, cellular carriers are beginning to serenade subscribers with their own chorus of “Digital! Digital! Digital!” But unlike emerging personal communications services networks that are digital by design, incumbent cellular carriers have some unexpected leeway in timing their digital service rollouts. “In 1987, when they started talking about digital there was a panic on the part of carriers over capacity problems,” according to Herschel Shosteck, president of Herschel Shosteck Associates Ltd. “But engineers have learned to optimize systems, and new technologies have evolved to increase capacity,” he said, lessening the need for a digital solution. … Read More
Low-priced extras bring carriers added revenue
Enhanced services deliver greater convenience, mobility and security to cellular customers, but how much value these “value-adds” provide carriers is uncertain. Depending on the sophistication and expandability of the platform, enhanced services can be expensive for carriers to implement in their networks. But customers who use the services use additional airtime, generating more revenue for carriers. Just what are enhanced services? “Anything and everything that adds value to a basic dial-up mobile call,” said Mirva Anttila, analyst for North Business Information, New York. … Read More
Feds ponder spectrum pollution problem
Could there be such as thing as spectrum pollution? That’s a question federal regulators are now pondering. While it has not been established that a problem exists, the Federal Communications Commission believes the issue is worth investigating because of the potential adverse economic impact to wireless devices. “Our hypothesis is the noise floor has been going up for the last 50 years,” said Bernard Stuecker, director of equipment standards in the FCC’s Compliance and Information Bureau. The proliferation of electronic and electrical devices, such as computers and microwave ovens, has upped the amount of unintended radio frequency emissions in the airwaves. … Read More
