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!
Carriers struggle with data prices
The future of cdmaOne technology was the theme of this year’s CDMA World Congress in Hong Kong, and while data services are the future, wireless executives are struggling with how to price and package services. Industry experts point toward Canadian CDMAOne operator Bell Mobility as an example of how to price data services to gain widespread acceptance in the market. Bell Mobility last month launched Digital Data to Go, pricing the Internet-access service at 15 cents per minute, 5 cents lower than its voice service. The company doesn’t charge a monthly or activation fee, and the services don’t count toward voice minutes. … Read More
House telecom subcommittee passes new encryption bill
Despite threats that legislation to relax export controls on encryption technology will hand over that technology to terrorists and weaken American national security, encryption legislation continued plugging along on Capitol Hill last week. The House telecom subcommittee passed a new version of the Security and Freedom through Encryption, known as the SAFE Act. The new version will create an encryption facility within the FBI and increase the length of time the Secretary of Commerce has to evaluate export applications. … Read More
Bell Atlantic’s Strigl hints of IPO
Bell Atlantic Corp. continues to study ways to take its wireless business public, said Dennis F. Strigl, chief executive officer of Bell Atlantic Global Wireless. Strigl also was a featured speaker at the Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp. conference. Strigl said a spinoff of Bell Atlantic’s wireless business in the form of an initial public offering remains “on the planning horizon. … Read More
Microsoft launches MSN Mobile with OmniBrowse buy
Microsoft Corp. launched its MSN Mobile service, a wireless extension of its MSN.com Internet portal that allows customers to receive their information services on pagers, cell phones and other wireless devices. To make this possible, Microsoft May 20 acquired OmniBrowse Inc., a wireless data company specializing in content delivery services for wireless handheld devices. OmniBrowse service has been re-branded as MSN mobile and its content offerings have been added to that of MSN. … Read More
FCC to halt procedures if TV channels on block this year
As industry opposition to Pentagon spectrum bills mounts, the Federal Communications Commission confirmed last week it is prepared to suspend the normal regulatory process for deciding how to auction 36 megahertz from TV channels 60-69 if Congress votes to hold the wireless license sale this year. Currently, the FCC is grappling with a myriad of complex issues on the auction that-under a 1997 law-is not supposed to be held before Jan. 1, 2001. But a Department of Defense appropriations bill passed by the Senate requires the FCC to conduct the auction of prime 700/800 MHz frequencies this year. DOD and the White House support an accelerated auction and hope to raise $2.6 billion from it. … Read More
Nextel, Justice settle 900 MHz dispute
In reaching an out-of-court antitrust settlement with Nextel Communications Inc. last week, the Department of Justice found itself defending a deal on grounds that its own antitrust lawyers shot down just months earlier. The proposed settlement would halt Nextel’s purchase of Geotek Communications Inc. for now, but lift the 1995 antitrust consent decree in October 2000-five years ahead of schedule. In addition, the pact would let the nation’s top dispatch operator buy more 900 MHz channels immediately. … Read More
Telecoms tower in high-yield debt markets
For bond investors, high-yield debt deals by telecommunications and media companies are hard to ignore since they have constituted 30 percent to 40 percent of all new dollar-denominated issues in the last several years. Of the $617 billion in this type of debt outstanding as of mid-June, nearly $112 billion in principal was sold by telecommunications companies and $90 billion by media companies. Amid that issue surge, investors seeking to balance their portfolios and their risks must separate the wheat from the chaff before putting their money on the line, said Les B. Levi, a managing director at Chase Securities Inc., New York. … Read More
China Unicom’s CDMAOne decision to influence region
China United Telecommunications Corp.’s plan to deploy Code Division Multiple Access technology ensures its survival into the next generation and creates momentum for cdmaOne technology throughout the Asia-Pacific region, cdmaOne proponents indicated at the CDMA Development Group’s fourth annual CDMA World Congress in Hong Kong last week.
CdmaOne backers have fought a bloody battle over 3G technology for more than a year in their attempts to harmonize their cdma2000 proposal with W-CDMA technology, an incompatible proposal Japanese and European’s standards bodies have selected for greenfield networks and as a migration path for Global System for Mobile communications networks. … Read More
Carriers with re-auction markets quiet about buildout plans
Now that the Federal Communications Commission has completed the re-auction of 365 C-, D-, E- and F-block personal communications services licenses, it still could be months or even years before service in many of the markets is deployed. All the winners had met their payment obligations as of June 11, at which time the commission issued a Ready to Grant public notice requiring licensees to make their final payment by June 25, according to an FCC source. Licensees who fail to make the payment by Friday will be given 10 business days to make a late payment plus a late fee equal to 5 percent of the amount due. … Read More
FCC says calling party pays to be national, optional service
To the delight of the wireless industry, the Federal Communications Commission last week declared that if and when calling-party-pays service is authorized, it will be a nationwide optional service. It is seeking comment on exactly what role states will play-particularly in protecting consumers. The notice of proposed rulemaking seeks to bolster the information the FCC has on CPP. The FCC expects to make a final decision on CPP early next year, said Thomas Sugrue, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. … Read More
