Now that the crisis is over and paging service has been restored, the paging industry is debating exactly what the pre-Memorial Day pager outage means for its future.Carriers that had backup plans felt they handled matters well. But since this was the first incident...
ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Metrocall Inc. announced it will collaborate on a joint distribution fulfillment strategy with Motorola Inc. according to a strategic partnership the two entered.Under the agreement, the two will develop an electronic database interchange and Motorola will ship product directly to Metrocall's retail presences....
They say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a lesson paging carriers learned in a painful way last Tuesday evening when an estimated 90 percent of all paging subscribers in the country found themselves without service due to a faulty...
ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Metrocall Inc. introduced Direct View, a paging service aimed at off-the-belt paging applications.With Direct View, subscribers can equip an LED display sign with wireless capabilities so it can receive news, sports, stock data and other general messages sent via Metrocall's network. In essence,...
Several paging carriers recently released their first-quarter earnings results. Five companies showed increased net revenues, while four reported increased net losses from first-quarter 1997 figures.PageMart Wireless Inc. said it added 139,106 domestic subscribers for the quarter, bringing its total domestic subscribers to 2.6 million....
ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Telephone carrier LCI International Inc. will begin marketing Metrocall Inc.'s paging and wireless messaging services to business and residential customers through its direct sales force and other sales and distribution channels.Under terms of the three-year agreement, LCI also will become one of Metrocall's...
WASHINGTON-The Personal Communications Industry Association filed comments last week at the Federal Communications Commission seeking to halt any merger of SBC Communications Inc. and Southern New England Telecommunications Corp. until SBC stops charging paging carriers for SBC-originated traffic."When it comes to interconnection, SBC has...
Cellnet, a United Kingdom-based cellular operator, selected Brite technology to deliver its traffic information services to its subscribers. Cellnet's Traffic Line provides in-car traffic reports on a digital network direct to a mobile phone. A small receiver placed in the car notifies customers of...
A few years ago, United Airlines aired a commercial that featured a company's chief executive officer admonishing his sales force for relying too much on faxes, phone calls and e-mail to keep in contact with clients. He then passed out plane tickets to everyone...
ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Metrocall Inc. announced the nationwide rollout of its new Pager ID service, which identifies the name of the person placing the call to the pager, as well as a return telephone number for the paged party to call. The call back can go...
Like the ugly duckling that was teased and spurned in its younger years only to mature into a beautiful swan, the two-way paging market is expected to someday spread its wings and lift the paging industry to new heights of subscriber growth and increased...
WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission denied a waiver request forwarded last December by AirTouch Communications Inc. that would have stayed any per-call pay-phone compensation until pay-phone service providers are able to provide pay-phone-specific coding digits to facilitate blocking.In an order released March 9, the commission...
VIENNA, Va.-Ventera Corp. announced it will build an Internet-based software application to track and report key engineering data for Metrocall Inc.'s nationwide paging network. Ventera said the software will capture, track and report engineering specifications, lease and license information on all Metrocall sites and...
DENVER-Daniels & Associates, an investment banking and financial services company specializing in media and telecommunications, announced its telecommunications group completed 20 transactions during 1997, including 15 mergers and acquisitions and five other engagements, valued at $907 million.The Daniels telecom group is a specialized team...
A commercial mobile radio service provider in Puerto Rico filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to appeal universal service rules established by the Federal Communications Commission.Celpage Inc. contends the FCC's universal service rules are not in line...
ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Metrocall Inc. released its fourth-quarter earnings report, in which the company announced a net loss of $16.9 million, or 58 cents per share, about equal to losses reported in the same quarter of 1996.Net revenues reached $68.7 million, a 52-percent increase over the...
The interconnection fight between paging carriers and local exchange carriers is far from over. LECs, wounded by a Federal Communications Commission Common Carrier Bureau letter denying them the right to charge paging carriers interconnection fees, have fired the first shots in the next battle...
WASHINGTON-While call blocking may be the easiest and quickest way of preventing pay-phone operators and long-distance carriers from charging excessive access fees on toll-free calls to messaging providers, all three industries realize that implementing this feature may be impossible in a global sense, and...
Metrocall Inc. announced it has filed formal complaints with the Federal Communications Commission's Common Carrier Bureau enforcement division, charging several regional Bell and independent telephone companies with continuing to violate the commission's recently clarified interconnection rules.Included as defendants are GTE Corp., Southwestern Bell Mobile...
The Federal Communications Commission late last week was expected to allocate 24 megahertz for public safety communications and reserve 36 megahertz in the same 800 MHz band for commercial wireless license auctions. The 1997 budget bill requires the reallocation of TV channels 60-69 to...
In an initial victory for paging carriers nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission's Common Carrier Bureau announced its current rules do not allow local exchange carriers to charge paging carriers for delivering traffic over the LEC network.Specifically, the bureau said its rules "do not allow...
InfoPower, a subsidiary of Motorola Inc., announced it has combined forces with Solo America and Metrocall Inc. to provide the ESPN To Go wireless sports information and paging service nationwide.The service will provide game information and score updates every five minutes from ESPN, resold...
Pathnet Inc. signed an agreement with Northeast Missouri Electric Power Cooperative to help upgrade the utility company's existing internal communications network. Under the agreement, Pathnet plans to begin preliminary construction and engineering of 11 paths, extending about 200 miles, during the first quarter of...
PHOENIX-TekNow Inc., which markets advanced wireless messaging systems to replace existing paging terminal equipment, announced Metrocall Inc. bought its platform of integrated messaging solutions.The platform includes TekNow's PhenX TK4000 Paging Terminal and its PhenX Network Paging Gateway TNPP message management solution.
