WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.-The government late Friday was granted a last-minute emergency stay in its appeal against the bankruptcy reorganization of NextWave Personal Communications Inc., despite a stinging rebuke from another judge earlier in the week that blocked FCC appeal plans.The stay, signed by Chief...
WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission rejected privacy and industry concerns in approving six of nine additional capabilities to an industry interim technical standard implementing the digital wiretap act.The decision was not surprising. Last October, the FCC tentatively concluded five of the nine so-called punch-list items...
German telecom operator Mannesmann AG said it executed its option rights on shares of Italian mobile operator Omnitel, raising its stake in the company by 1.5 percent to 55 percent.TSR Wireless L.L.C. signed a two-year connectivity agreement with Internet provider ZipLink Inc., under which...
SAN FRANCISCO-AirTouch Cellular announced prepaid customers who purchase talk time in standard denominations of $30, $50 or $100, now will have six months rather than 90 days to use their allotment of minutes.Also, long-distance service, which used to cost prepaid customers an extra 20...
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...
Telecommunications operators could benefit from embracing fixed mobile convergence, according to a new report released by Ovum, an independent research and consulting company.The convergence market is expected to reach $35 billion by 2005, up from $2 billion this year, said the report, "Fixed Mobile...
The next round in the fight to popularize voice paging has begun, this time in Latin America, as Mexican paging operator RadioFlash became the first carrier to launch a voice paging service over a FLEX network using speech compression technology from OmniVoice Technologies Inc.OmniVoice's...
NEW YORK-World Access Inc., Atlanta, announced Aug. 17 it would acquire FaciliCom International Inc., Washington, D.C., by paying FaciliCom's shareholders about $436 million and assuming $300 million in FaciliCom debt.World Access, a publicly traded company, terminates international long-distance voice and data traffic in at...
NEW YORK-It was just this year that the camel's nose of wireless intelligent networks appeared under the mobile communications' tent, and it is not expected to rise to its full height until the dawn of the new millennium in 2001.A creature of technology to...
WASHINGTON-Whether the spectrum cap should stay or go-one issue that distinguishes incumbent cellular operators and upstart personal communications services operators-"will hopefully" be decided by the Federal Communications Commission at its September meeting, said Thomas Sugrue, chief of the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.The Cellular Telecommunications...
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....
While most of the recent attention surrounding specialized mobile radio services has circulated around enhanced SMR provider Nextel Communications Inc., some smaller dispatch providers have been quietly finding creative ways to use their spectrum to compete in the marketplace.One such company is Regionet Wireless....
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....
Personal communications services carriers can be credited with spurring huge demand for wireless service, but they continue to struggle with brand awareness and perceptions customers have about coverage."It's a brand game and a consumer-marketing game," said Andrew Sukawaty, president of nationwide carrier Sprint PCS,...
Originally expected in May, two-way paging devices based on ReFLEX 25 technology will not be available for commercial deployment until the fourth quarter, at the earliest, according to pager manufacturers.Motorola Inc. said its ReFLEX 25-based PageWriter 2000 two-way pager will be available mid-October, while...
WASHINGTON-With telephone penetration as low as 20 percent on some Indian reservations, the Federal Communications Commission last week began exploring ways to extend telecommunications services to tribal lands.The lack of telecom services on tribal lands stunned the FCC. By comparison, 90 percent of Americans...
NEW YORK-Since the launch of carrier competition in the duopoly wireless market, third-party distributors have had to work hard to manage increasingly complex distribution issues. Carriers, meanwhile, are dealing with this same level of complexity-trying to improve sales processes for existing distribution channels while...
AT&T Wireless Services Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse says enough is enough when it comes to the press his company has received in recent weeks about capacity problems in New York."It isn't a story anymore," said Hesse in an interview with RCR. "Compared...
MANCHESTER, N.H.-Transcept Inc., previously the telecommunications business unit of Sanders, announced last week its inception as an independent, privately held company.Transcept's focus is on offering equipment that helps carries deploy and improve their networks while building fewer towers by using surplus bandwidth on cable,...
The fallout from the C-block debacle continued last week as Wisconsin-based C-blocker Airadigm Communications filed for chapter 11 protection at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Madison, Wis.Meanwhile, C-block winner NextWave Personal Communications Inc. was handed a favorable ruling in its own bankruptcy proceeding.Airadigm has...
BOSTON-Smart cards are poised to move beyond their role in identifying Global System for Mobile communications subscribers, due to momentum outside wireless and beyond U.S. borders.The challenge both for telecommunications carriers and for smart-card manufacturers is to harness these forces or risk losing their...
I had an interesting conversation about wireless communications with the maintenance manager of the downtown Denver hotel where RCR had its recent editorial staff meeting. He is the supervisor for several center-city hotels. His wife is a sales rep whose territory covers the greater...
WASHINGTON-The telecommunications industry has come out against the Federal Communications Commission's proposal to impose truth-in-billing rules on commercial mobile radio service carriers.Additionally, both long-distance carriers and local exchange carriers oppose certain aspects of the truth-in-billing requirements.The CMRS industry is so competitive that misleading bills...
When the clocks roll over at midnight on Dec. 31, the world will welcome not only a new year, but a new decade, a new century, a new millennium and, by many accounts, a new paradigm in the way people communicate.What took decades to...
