Trying to compete with satellite-industry giants, Celsat America Inc., a small, domestic player in the mobile satellite services arena, filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission opposing the allocation of any new spectrum to applicants that already have licenses."According to the FCC public notice,...
NEW YORK-"The Asian crisis is overstated; the real problem is Japan," said Joseph W. Duncan, chief economic adviser to The Dun & Bradstreet Corp., Murray Hill, N.J."The other countries (in the region) have currency and stock-market weakness, but they will continue to play a...
WASHINGTON-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, in what could become a model for other states, has signed into law a bill to give local communities without approved zoning plans the power to regulate the construction and dismantling of antenna towers; to enact maximum six-month moratoria; and...
WASHINGTON-The House Commerce Committee, raising the stakes in its probe of the Federal Communications Commission's planned headquarters move, last week authorized subpoenas to Portals developers Franklin Haney and Steven Grigg; lobbyist and former Clinton-Gore campaign manager Peter Knight; Jim Sasser, U.S. ambassador to China...
Midway through this year's legislative session, many states have considered and passed bills to provide a cost-recovery mechanism for wireless carriers deploying enhanced 911 systems.Phase I of the Federal Communications Commission's E911 mandate requires carriers to be able to transmit to emergency dispatchers the...
WASHINGTON-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Bill Kennard told Congress last week that public-safety wireless systems are at risk of succumbing to the Year 2000 computer bug, a problem that will cost the private sector an estimated $50 billion to fix and one the Clinton administration...
NEW YORK-The California State Board of Equalization decided April 30 to postpone voting until at least late June on a permanent extension of the state sales taxes to wireless devices sold in a bundle with services.The proposal would require retailers to pay sales, or...
WASHINGTON-The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and the Personal Communications Industry Association, unable to get wireline carriers and manufacturers on board, moved forward on their own last week with a lawsuit against the Justice Department and the FBI over the implementation of the 1994 digital...
BANGKOK, Thailand-Cellular and PCS operators in the Asia-Pacific region have doubled from 56 in 1993 to the current 113, according to the Yankee Group's recently released "Asia-Pacific Wireless Series." The research firm expects the region will house 184 million users or 34 percent of...
Since paging became available in 1983, the number of paging operators in China has mushroomed to more than 2,800, with more than 40 million customers. According to the Chinese language China Reform Daily, 70 million pager users are expected by 2000.China Unicom Paging Corp....
BEIJING-In the wireless world, China no longer is a forgotten backwater, but is rapidly moving to center stage. According to the new Ministry of Information Industry (MII), the country had a 92-percent growth rate last year, bringing total mobile users to 13 million, and...
LONDON-After years of uncertainty and confusion, the Russian wireless telecommunications market finally seems set to come out of hibernation and deliver what investors and analysts have been expecting for some time.There's certainly possibilities for growth following a slow start. At the end of 1997,...
TOKYO-The number of Personal Handy Phone System (PHS) subscribers in Japan has decreased for six straight months since last October. Suffering from a total of 590 billion yen (US$4.42 billion) in accumulated deficit, the PHS industry is being required to take drastic restructuring measures.Top...
BALTIMORE, United States-Millions of hearing-aid wearers in Europe and throughout the world could benefit from work underway in the United States on a national standard intended to eliminate interference from signals emitted by digital wireless phones.Unlike analog phones, which cause little or no interference,...
NokiaGSM phonesNokia Corp. introduced three new GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phones operating on the 900 MHz frequency band. The Nokia 8810 has a protective slide cover and is accented with a touch of silver. It offers built-in data communications capabilities with infrared...
To the Editor: Regarding your opinion article on April 13, (It's time for small businesses to be creative) great insight; however, in order for the small operators to succeed we need more than money, brains and marketing skills. We need frequencies!But guess what? Someone stole...
NEW YORK-As wireless carriers have closed off easier avenues for theft of services, subscriber fraud, including outright theft of identity, has emerged as the next generation of dirty dealing that carriers confront.The chemistry for this volatile situation results from an industry in the throes...
A movement is slowly growing toward developing a wireless handset that can operate around the world, though few carriers seem to be taking interest at this point.The Modular Multifunction Information Transfer System Forum (MMITS), an industry group comprising the defense and commercial wireless sectors...
SAN ANTONIO, Texas-SBC Communications Inc. added 112,000 wireless subscribers during this year's first quarter-and 919,000 during the past 12 months-bringing its total number of domestic wireless subscribers to 5.6 million.Subscriber growth during the quarter was driven by SBC's personal communications services offering in California...
RogersRogers Corp. introduced thin versions of its Poron urethane foam designed for making thin gaskets and pads used in pagers, personal organizers, cellular phones and global positioning systems. The Poron 4701-50 materials are cast in thicknesses down to 0.017 inch (0.43 mm), which produces...
DENVER-The Colorado Public Utilities Commission scrapped a plan that would have provided a new area code for wireless phones and pagers only.Citing legal and financial implications, the commission has instead opted to retain an original plan calling for an all-services overlay for area-code relief.The...
WASHINGTON-Federal Communications Commission member Harold Furchtgott-Roth, joining a growing chorus of critics, has charged the Democratic-led agency with subordinating the interests of rural and low-income universal service recipients to connecting schools, libraries and rural-health care facilities to the Internet by 2000.Rural and low-income "universal...
WASHINGTON-The paging industry's battle against pay-phone deregulation has picked up support from an unlikely source in Congress.Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), a leading opponent of federal pre-emption of local antenna-siting regulation, has introduced legislation to force pay-phone operators to make change for calls costing more...
As the popularity and penetration of wireless communications spreads throughout North America, wireless carriers increasingly will use mass-market retail outlets and their own direct channels to distribute handsets and services. Wireless consumers might put a cellular phone on their shopping list along with a...
