WASHINGTON-In 1998, the wireless industry started paying into the Universal Service Fund. In 1999, the industry could find out how much money can be withdrawn from the fund.The government uses USF money to connect schools, libraries and rural health-care centers to the Internet, and...
Qualcomm Inc. may be ready to sell off its handset division as competition in the cdmaOne handset business intensifies and costs increase.Sources say Qualcomm is in discussions with Siemens Wireless Terminals concerning the sale of Qualcomm's cdmaOne handset division. Qualcomm and Siemens declined to...
NEW YORK-The United Kingdom started off 1999 with a bang, becoming the first country to implement local number portability for wireless telephony customers.All four cellular operators-Orange plc, Vodafone Group plc, Cellnet and One 2 One-had agreed to license amendments in the fall of 1997...
NEW YORK-"Much to the shock of my sales team, vendors are not partners with an equity stake in carriers, and loans are not investments without repayment expectations," Leslie L. Rogers said at International Business Communications' recent Wireless Finance '98 conference."It's not just, 'By gosh,...
While many independent tower companies grapple with the issue of whether to offer construction services as part of a one-stop shop, one company believes it can succeed purely in the tower construction arena.Formed by a 1994 merger between Burnup & Sims and Church &...
WASHINGTON-The wireless industry last month urged the Federal Communications Commission to look at options other than local number portability to conserve telephone numbers.The ever-increasing exhaust of numbers has caused many in industry and government to look for ways to conserve numbers without having to...
LOUISVILLE, Colo.-The Federal Communications Commission has ruled that a prohibition on cellular phone use in airplanes should not apply to a new air-to-ground wireless phone system designed by AirCell Inc.AirCell provides air-to-ground wireless communications to the general aviation and commercial airline markets by connecting...
The State Department late last month urged the European Commission to allow U.S. third-generation wireless equipment and service providers a fair opportunity to compete in Europe.In a letter sent to EC Commissioner Martin Bangemann Dec. 19, the United States expressed concern Europe may be...
NEW YORK-As 1999 debuts, wireless companies seeking to raise money should be encouraged by news the venture capital market is flush with cash and ripe for picking."On the private-equity side, there is more competition to finance deals (because) there is so much money out...
Following a declaratory ruling issued by the Federal Communications Commission, California Gov. Pete Wilson issued an executive order directing the state's Department of General Services and the California Highway Patrol to implement a more efficient procedure for handling wireless 911 calls."This is a very...
OXFORD, United Kingdom-The European paging industry entered 1998 with the loud disclaimer that it had, at long last, found its high-growth niche in mobile communications. With reports they had managed to grow the total user base by more than 50 percent during 1997, European...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Competition in the South African wireless telecommunications sector is likely to be fierce this year, with two new cellular operators scheduled to enter the arena. This will delve a blow to existing operators MTN and Vodacom, which have had exclusive preserve of...
BEIJING-"The investigation into China Unicom's unprincipled and wrong foreign fund-raising practices has been completed," Wang Jianzhou, director of the planning department of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII), announced at a press conference in Beijing on 1 December. That's pretty close to saying...
NEW YORK-When it comes to getting airtime to the end customer, no distribution issue is captivating carriers like cost reduction. As international competition increases and markets mature, carriers will be even more pressed to trim costs to ensure healthy profit margins, according to most...
Cellcom Israel completed a trial using Nortel Networks' multi-beam antenna and array processing technology aimed at reducing the per-subscriber cost of mobile radio access infrastructure by increasing base station capacity. The carrier, which operates a TDMA IS-136 network from Nortel, conducted the trial in...
LONDON-The Baltic region covers an area of 174,000 square kilometers, with approximately 8 million people generating US$13 billion in gross domestic product (GDP). But while Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania may seem similar countries to an outside eye, in reality they boast quite different cultures,...
In the paging industry today, money talks.Carriers know this and are pursuing every avenue available to bulk up the bottom line. One relatively new road eyed by some carriers in the United States is prepaid paging.At first it sounds suspect, as prepaid cellular services...
WASHINGTON-Did the Federal Communications Commission's further notice of proposed rule making on implementing the digital wiretap act show the industry interim standard is deficient, as the government claims? Or did the notice show that law enforcement has overreached in its interpretation of the act,...
NEW YORK-Echoing Rodney Dangerfield's complaint, wireless carriers continue to say, "I don't get no respect" as they fight skirmishes over local exchange carrier interconnection fees while the decisive battle is pending at the U.S. Supreme Court.Winter's fallow time finds the Federal Communications Commission in...
SEATTLE-Go to any trade show where mobile phone operators congregate, and you will hear grumbling about how AT&T Wireless Services Inc.'s Digital One Rate pricing plan has wreaked havoc on business plans. The play for the high-end business user seems to be falling in...
WASHINGTON-Paging Network Inc. was expected last week to complete the last of 13 interconnection agreements with Bell Atlantic Corp."We are pleased that PageNet and Bell Atlantic have been able to agree on interconnection terms in all of the states in which Bell Atlantic operates,"...
Studies indicate the mobile phone industry may be in for more alarming churn figures as increased competition threatens to erode carriers' customer bases.Richard Siber, associate partner with Andersen Consulting in Boston, expects the industry's churn rate to average between 33 percent and 36 percent...
SEATTLE-Thirteen states passed enhanced 911 legislation this year, according to Xypoint Corp., a wireless intelligent network services provider that tracks legislative efforts on E911 across the country.A total of 27 states have adopted some form of E911 legislation since the Federal Communications Commission mandated...
WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission this week plans to begin reviewing comments on what technical capabilities are necessary to implement the digital wiretap act.The comments are expected to better focus the FCC's attention on cost, said Steven Berry, senior vice president for congressional affairs for...
