WASHINGTON-The wireless industry is on the verge of arguably its biggest victory since congressionally mandated state deregulation in 1993: liability protection.Congress is poised this fall to give wireless carriers liability protection on par with wireline carriers across the country.In California state court, carriers have nearly...
About the time PCS licenses were first up for grabs, industry prognosticators predicted that four or five mega-carriers would one day rule the U.S. wireless industry.Are we there yet?As Bell Atlantic admits it is talking with Vodafone AirTouch plc about a link-up between their...
Moving on its promise to step up promotion of Time Division Multiple Access technology worldwide, the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium said it recently met with Chinese government officials to promote TDMA technology."This was an introductory meeting for different organizations in China to reintroduce China...
Official dollar losses from wireless fraud have decreased significantly in the past several years, but whether that means the wireless industry is truly winning its war against fraud is a matter of debate.Tom McClure, vice president for wireless fraud and security at the Cellular...
WASHINGTON-The Personal Communications Industry Association last week urged regulators to question certain aspects of an agreement by giant wireline telcos on how to reduce the amount long-distance companies pay local exchange carriers to connect their customers' calls.The agreement by the Coalition for Affordable Local...
NEW YORK-The Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce is engaged in a monumental juggling act with significant implications for levies on telecommunications in general, judging by comments at its two-day hearing last week.Charged by Congress with recommending whether and how Internet transactions should be taxed,...
Portals have a hidden agenda to capture the wireless e-commerce market.Carriers had better beware.Greek mythology chronicles the fall of the once-prosperous city of Troy, misled by the promise of a gift in the form of a Trojan horse. Looking back, it seems hard to...
Bell Atlantic Mobile purchased six 10-megahertz personal communications services licenses from Rivgam Communications L.L.C. to increase voice capacity and prepare for the onslaught of high-speed data applications.The cellular operator purchased D- and E-block licenses in Buffalo, N.Y., Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Washington, D.C., and two...
U.S. TDMA operators must make some critical decisions about competing in the wireless data market during the next year as they witness their CDMA counterparts begin to launch circuit-switched data services in large scale.Time Division Multiple Access operators-which in the late 1980s banked on...
WASHINGTON-A recent agreement by giant wireline telcos about how to reduce the charges long-distance companies pay to local exchange carriers to connect their customers' calls may end up costing the wireless industry, said the Personal Communications Industry Association."Wireless is not part of the problem...
AT&T Wireless Services Inc. introduced new pricing plans last week that could build on the success of the carrier's Digital One Rate plan by adding more phones into the home. Bell Atlantic Mobile also introduced a group calling plan for the Southeast.AT&T Wireless unveiled...
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.-Wynd Communications Inc. announced it has completed the beta testing of its AAA Emergency Roadside Service for deaf and hard of hearing users, and said the service is now available to all WyndTell users.The solution allows AAA members who are also...
Ericsson Inc. said last week its displacement from AT&T Wireless Services Inc. as the majority vendor hurt the company and conceded part of the reason it lost AT&T Wireless contracts was because of problems supplying equipment throughout the year."It hurts," said Gary Pinkham, vice...
BANGALORE, India-Foreign investors are reconsidering their investments in India, with press reports naming several European and U.S. companies lining up to back out of operations there.Swisscom, the Switzerland-based telecommunications operator, decided to pull out of its joint venture with Essar group of India several...
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina-PCS arrived in South America a year ago, and various signs already point to its success. Already, one PCS operator in Chile has surpassed the number of subscribers held by a traditional cellular operator in the country. In addition, payment of US$1.273...
Aether Systems Inc. announced it will acquire mobeo Inc., a company that provides financial news and stock updates on wireless devices such as pagers.Formerly called DocuPro Inc., mobeo delivers quotes on more than 150,000 stocks, options, futures, treasury, foreign exchange and other market data...
ATLANTA-BellSouth International Wireless Services launched BellSouth Net eXchange, a Web-based interface that facilitates the upload and download of customer data files, said the company.BellSouth Net eXchange can transfer encrypted data files, detailing carriers' financial position with their cellular roaming partners, securely across the Web,...
SAO PAULO-Brazilian cellular operator Telesp Cellular S.A., operating in the state and city of Sao Paulo, announced today it launched a new prepaid product, "Peg & Fale," designed to meet the needs of lower income segments.Peg & Fale has neither an activation fee nor...
The paging industry made further progress toward implementing content services last week, as both Motorola Inc. and Arch Communications Group Inc. introduced products and services targeting the space.Arch said it will offer personalized information services to customers via an agreement with Datalink.net Inc. Datalink.net...
WASHINGTON-A federal appeals court has thrown out recently changed rules on how telecommunications carriers use information about their customers.The court issued the ruling as the wireless industry celebrated the Federal Communications Commission's decision to relax some of its rules regarding how carriers use information...
The Ginger Media Group, owners of U.K.-based Virgin Radio, is collaborating with L.M. Ericsson in early trials of wireless third-generation technology that would allow local or national radio stations to reach global audiences, said Ericsson.The manufacturer's concept is to allow anyone, anywhere in the...
LucentLucent Technologies Inc. introduced software that will turn down transmitter power levels when the user is not speaking into the handset, effectively increasing talk time by extending battery life up to 30 percent. The discontinuous transmission feature will be generally available for network operators...
The economy is rolling along, wireless subscriber additions are climbing and merger and acquisition activity is heating up.This is good news for the personal communications services industry, which last year found itself suffering from tight financing and a general underperformance in small capitalized stocks....
Analysts have long criticized operator-assisted dispatch as the weak link in the alphanumeric paging chain, citing its inherent lack of privacy and potential for misinterpreted messages.But users have accepted these faults because there was no other way to get text messages to alphanumeric subscribers....
