OXFORD, United Kingdom-Second-generation cellular has not been an entirely satisfactory experience for the United States. "We pulled up the beaches and said we are Island America," said Tom Wheeler, chief executive officer of the U.S. Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. But since then the wireless...
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam-While other countries in the region continue to liberalize their mobile phone markets, Vietnam will return to a status of near-monopoly by year-end.The merger of the two GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) providers, Mobiphone and Vinaphone, will tighten the...
OXFORD, United Kingdom-The game of musical chairs between telecom operators vying for a stake in the lucrative German market seems to have slowed down. There is now some semblance of stability following the launch of E2, Germany's fourth mobile phone network, at the end...
DUBLIN, Ireland-The trunked-radio industry in Europe is making confident noises about future growth, with much of this optimism based on development of new applications arising from the TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) digital standard. Proponents hope the voice and data service capabilities of the digital...
BANGKOK, Thailand-Like many high-tech firms in the United States, Motorola Inc. caught a cold from its exposure to the Asian flu and is working to recover. While no one can say for sure when Motorola will get back on the road to health, it...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Uganda has one of the lowest penetration rates of telephone services in the world. As of July 1995, the Uganda Posts & Telecommunication Corp. (UPTC) had an installed capacity of just under 70,000 lines and approximately 42,000 subscribers. The result is a...
HELSINKI, Finland-Nokia Corp. said it launched a new high-capacity GSM system offering a 10-fold capacity increase compared with conventional networks. Its switching capacity will more than double to serve 400,000 subscribers, and network investment costs significantly will decrease with this system, according to Nokia.The...
ORLANDO, United States-Both the TDMA and CDMA camps released their most recent subscriber numbers at the PCS '98 show in September in the United States.The CDMA Development Group (CDG) announced that cdmaOne subscribers now number 16 million globally as of 30 September, with Asia...
At a rate of nearly 400,000 new subscriber additions each quarter, U.S.-based Nextel Communications Inc. has been attracting a lot of attention, including from traditional wireless carriers that may try to imitate Nextel's unique Direct Connect dispatch feature.Wireless carriers in the United States have...
WASHINGTON-In a stunning turnabout, the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission late last week terminated negotiations with Pocket Communications Inc. debtors and called for the return of all but a few of the 46 personal communications services licenses for which Pocket pledged $1.4...
Royal Philips Electronics and Lucent Technologies Inc. last week said they will dissolve the consumer communications joint venture they established just more than one year ago.At the time of its formation Oct. 1, 1997, Philips Consumer Communications had high hopes it would be a...
NEW YORK-After a flurry of announced mergers and acquisitions earlier this year, amid booming stock and high-yield bond markets, the deal flow has slowed in tandem with deteriorating conditions in the public capital markets.Even if the appetite of investors remained strong into this quarter,...
A trial early next year could decide whether L.M. Ericsson owns key patents to Interim Standard-95 technology.Ericsson and Qualcomm Inc. are set to go to trial in February over eight patents Ericsson claims to own to cdmaOne technology. A hearing at the end of...
Microcell Telecommunications Inc. said it completed the final phase of its 1998 expansion in Canada with the launch of Fido personal communications services in London, Ontario. The PCS service, operating on the Global System for Mobile communications platform, expands the Fido footprint to 16...
STOCKHOLM, Sweden-L.M. Ericsson announced its first two products supporting the Wireless Application Protocol at the GSM Asia-Pacific Congress in Singapore.The products are the WAP Gateway and a WAP Service Developers' Kit for service and content providers.The WAP Gateway was created for Global System for...
WASHINGTON-Frustrated with failing to make progress after months of negotiations with European officials, Qualcomm Inc. last week declared war by formally invoking intellectual property rights to five third-generation wireless standards pending before the International Telecommunication Union.Qualcomm said its action, taken in an Oct. 12...
Patents are a common thread running through the great debates of the day concerning strongest/adequate signal, E911 federal land antenna siting, 3G, prepaid calling and other telecom issues.This should come as no surprise. In a new report, the Commerce Department links the United States'...
Amidst growing pressure from the Clinton administration, Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications is set to begin studying other third-generation radio transmission technology proposals-namely cdma2000 technology-besides the W-CDMA proposal it submitted to the International Telecommunication Union.The ministry's decision comes after the Office of the...
AustriaKyro Corp.'s Tecnomen Group announced Mobilkom Austria selected it to supply a new messaging system for Mobilkom's Global System for Mobile communications network expansion. The new system will add more than 600,000 voice and fax mailboxes to the Austrian GSM system, the company said....
ORLANDO, Fla.-To paraphrase a Bell Atlantic commercial, "wild things are happening" in dispatch radio, according to speakers at the recent PCS '98 show.Just outside the spotlight, which is focused on the apparent dominance of Nextel Communications Inc. and the demise of Geotek Communications Inc.,...
An open letter praising the UWCCTo the Editor: I feel compelled to write a letter of congratulations to the entire UWCC organization. It is the first time in my company's history that I have ever done this, but your rise to the wireless public consciousness...
Sources indicate Ericsson Inc. may be preparing to enter the cdmaOne handset business.Ericsson, the only major vendor that has yet to license Interim Standard-95 technology from Qualcomm Inc., has been in discussions with at least one cdmaOne handset vendor in an attempt to arrange...
The 15th Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union kicks off today in Minneapolis, a meeting whose focus on internal governance and strategic planning could be overshadowed by an item likely not to appear on the official agenda: third-generation wireless technology. The meeting lasts from...
ORLANDO, Fla.-"We here are circumscribed by a group that accepts and celebrates technology, but we are a very rare breed, a tribe that thinks it is uniquely important because our reality depends on it," said James A. Taylor, chief marketing officer for Iomega Corp.,...
