As an industry, we are all too aware of the fundamental changes in our business. The days of high average revenue per minute of use, phenomenal subscriber growth numbers, low churn rates and duopoly markets are long gone.Industry transformation has resulted in eroding economics: decreasing...
Competition is changing the customer satisfaction landscape in wireless markets, according to J.D. Power and Associates' 1998 U.S. Wireless Customer Satisfaction Study.Carriers who previously led in customer satisfaction changed in 10 out of 18 markets, said the study."With as many as four or five...
ORLANDO, Fla.-Samsung Telecommunications America and Tecore announced they will partner to offer Code Division Multiple Access equipment to small personal communications services markets."No one is targeting the D, E and F carriers" with CDMA equipment, said Jay Salkini, president and chief executive officer of...
WASHINGTON-Despite action by the Federal Communications Commission earlier this month to extend the compliance date on the digital wiretap act, the debate over its implementation rages on.In two separate luncheon briefings last week, the telecommunications industry-specifically the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and the United...
WASHINGTON-Federal agency head William Kennard said he is not backing off from support of the strongest-signal proposal to ensure emergency 911 calls are completed, and indeed, is interested in a new proposal that calls for an adequate signal to place 911 calls.Kennard "is still...
NEW YORK-Domestic wireless carriers "now have prepaid (services) fully introduced throughout their geographic territories," but they lag behind their peers abroad in fully tapping its potential, said Scott R. Cassell, president of Globalnet Communications, an Indianapolis consulting firm."It's exciting to see prepaid take off...
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 is prepaid paging.At first it sounds suspect, as prepaid services traditionally cater to low-tier, credit-challenged...
NEW YORK-By incorporating Silicon Germanium into its components for wireless handsets, CommQuest Technologies, Encinitas, Calif., announced Sept. 14 it has advanced significantly toward its goal of offering a Global System for Mobile communications phone-on-a-chip within a few years.The IBM Corp. subsidiary said Silicon Germanium...
Colorado MicroDisplay Inc., a Boulder, Colo.-based supplier of microdisplays, announced it is taking orders for its CMD View Cube Optics Developer's Kit.The kit provides a visual interface development platform for optimizing microdisplays in display headsets, third-generation smart phones, global positioning system map readers, pagers...
NEW YORK-It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's `super craft'!Look up in the sky over California's Mojave Desert on the morning of Sept. 22, and you're likely to see the first public flight of the High Latitude, Long Operation Proteus Aircraft.Built by Mojave-based...
BELLEVUE, Washington-Advanced Radio Telecom Corp. launched commercial services on its new metropolitan area network in Seattle and the surrounding areas, following an eight-week service test by more than 20 business.ART's integrated broadband wireless and fiber-optic technology uses a packet switched Internet Protocol and asynchronous...
BANGALORE, India-State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) last year announced its plans to give private cellular operators in New Delhi and Mumbai a run for their money by launching a low-tariff mobile telephone service to cater to the salaried middle-class and students.Ever since MTNL...
Seventy years ago, the mobile radio industry was born when the Detroit Police Department installed the first one-way radios in their squad cars. Today there are approximately 19 million two-way radios in use in the United States, including 3.1 million specialized mobile radio units.Cellular...
NEW YORK-Gearing up for next-generation wireless, Texas Instruments has developed a digital signal processor that is able to execute 2,000 millions of instructions per second."Two thousand MIPS is 10 times the performance of our nearest competitor," said Thomas Brooks, digital baseband products marketing manager...
The wireless industry currently uses many different customer-retention strategies and retention campaigns, including win-back teams, welcome calls, competitive rate plans and loyalty programs. However, even with these comprehensive programs in place, churn continues to plague the wireless industry and today remains a critical business...
Nearly a year into office, Bill Kennard has defied all attempts to be pigeonholed as the newest chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He was general counsel and an understudy to former FCC chief Reed Hundt. Yet Kennard is not Hundt like. He's not...
In preparation for PCS '98, RCR sat down last month with Jay Kitchen, president of the Personal Communications Industry Association to talk about the trade show, the wireless industry in general, and PCIA specifically. The following is a transcript of that interview: RCR: What is going...
NEW YORK-JVC Company of America, Wayne, N.J., and PocketScience Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., have teamed up to provide a portable e-mail system that is both complementary to and competitive with wireless services.At a news conference Sept. 16, Neil Peretz, a co-founder with Scott Fullam...
Investors are nervous when it comes to pricing competition in the mobile industry.
Just look at the effects of a Wall Street Journal article in April that described the competitive Jacksonville, Fla., mobile phone market. That article, in addition to AT&T Wireless Services Inc.'s introduction...
UltraTek, a Torrance, Calif.-based telecommunications equipment research company, has filed patent applications for a global wireless telecommunications system that would turn commercial airplanes into flying cell sites.The company has proposed a system that initially would make use of airplanes flying between North America and...
DALLAS-PageMart Wireless Inc. has created a Telemetry Strategic Business Unit as part of its strategy to extend in-progress ReFLEX 25 narrowband personal communications services network to more "off-the-hip" applications and customers.The new unit already has entered into an exclusive strategic alliance with Interactive Technologies...
AUSTIN, Texas-Motorola Inc. introduced a feature-rich, high-performance integrated microprocessor for high-end communications equipment, including cellular base stations.The MPC8260 PowerQUICC II Communications Microprocessor combines a high-speed PowerPC core, a communications engine processing up to 710 megabits of data per second and a circuit board's worth...
WASHINGTON-A few carriers in Latin America, such as in Colombia and Bolivia, have solved the problem of employees making personal calls on the their company's cellular phone-and budget-with an incoming-only cellular plan and calling party pays program.Although each company gives the service a different...
The latest rage in the wireless industry has been the rush to purchase and build towers and facilities and lease them to wireless carriers. This accumulation of vertical real estate has launched a cottage industry referred to as "build to suit."A multitude of companies...
