WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission last week released rules for the auction of Location and Monitoring Service spectrum. LMS is used to locate or monitor mobile radio units primarily located in vehicles and is expected to be a part of the emerging smart highways program...
HACKENSACK, N.J.-GoAmerica Communications Corp. announced it acquired the ZAP-IT business unit of DTS Wireless Inc. without disclosing the financial details of the transaction.ZAP-IT allows users to access e-mail, corporate intranets and the Internet, as well as messaging between faxes, pagers and telephones with short...
The June 29 story titled, "Wireless should strive for bigger piece of total minutes," should have stated residential landline subscribers use about 600 minutes per month while wireless subscribers use about 100 minutes.
WASHINGTON-The Department of Commerce is expected to ask other federal agencies for advice on applications filed last week by leading computer firms to export a new form of strong encryption.Encryption products are computer codes that scramble data so it can only be read by...
WASHINGTON-New public-safety spectrum will be denied to police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel well into early next century because of delays claimed by broadcasters in moving from analog to digital TV technology.The snafu is an embarrassment for Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.),...
WASHINGTON-The House Appropriations Committee last week approved the budget for the Federal Communications Commission for Fiscal Year 1999. The appropriation of $182 million is $5 million less than this year's budget. The full House is tentatively scheduled to debate the measure later this week.The...
RESTON, Va.-American Mobile Satellite Corp. said it will provide network services and solution development to Checkpoint Systems Inc. for a nationwide wireless field-service application.Under the terms of the agreement, Checkpoint will deploy more than 200 customer service engineers on AMSC's Ardis wireless data network.
SALT LAKE CITY-AirTouch Communications Inc. said it is offering pay-as-you-go voice-mail services-designed to eliminate monthly fees-to customers in Provo and Salt Lake City who are not voice-mail subscribers today.The service bills customers only for messages they choose to hear, at a flat fee of...
WASHINGTON-Legislation to protect companies from liability if they share erroneous information about solutions for the so-called millennium bug, proposed last week by President Clinton, won the support of the chairman of a special Senate committee on the Year 2000.At a National Press Club luncheon...
WASHINGTON-A proposal from Western Wireless Corp. to receive universal-service support payments for providing telephone service to rural areas seems to have gotten a lukewarm response from the Federal Communications Commission.A basic piece of the Western Wireless proposal-to have the FCC re-evaluate support for rural...
WASHINGTON-The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association scheduled a forum Aug. 18 in Washington, D.C., to deal with all aspects of number-portability requirements and implementation, said CTIA.Also, CTIA recently issued a document on number portability, outlining the network architecture and operational procedures needed to implement the...
NEW YORK-WinStar Communications Inc. agreed to purchase 850 megahertz of bandwidth in New York from CellularVision USA Inc. for $32.5 million in cash.The bandwidth is being disaggregated from CellularVision's local multipoint distribution service license in the New York area to be combined with WinStar's...
ENGLEWOOD, Colo.-U S West Communications Inc. said it added features to its personal communications services handsets to give customers the benefits of their home and office phones.The service, renamed U S West Advanced PCS, includes a dial tone and data mail services that allow...
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Reltec Corp. said it established a joint venture with Splice do Brazil Telecommunicacoes e Eletronica S.A. to capitalize on opportunities provided by the privatization of Telebras, the state-owned telecom holding company in Brazil.Reltec Sistemas de Energia Ltda., owned equally by Splice do Brazil,...
WASHINGTON-The European Commission last week gave conditional approval to the proposed merger between MCI Communications Corp. and WorldCom Inc.The approval is subject to the divestiture of MCI's Internet services business, which overlapped with WorldCom's to give the combined entity about 50-percent market share. The...
WASHINGTON-As Congress comes back to Washington after the July 4 recess, members again are poised to lean on the Federal Communications Commission on the sticky issue of how the agency is implementing the universal-service provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.Members are concerned the...
FORT LEE, N.J.-TSR Wireless L.L.C. launched a print ad campaign called Summer Necessities.The campaign targets retail customers of the more than 200 TSR Wireless store's nationwide and features newspaper advertisements and direct mail literature.The ads depict humanized versions of Motorola Inc. wireless products enjoying...
FORT LEE, N.J.-TSR Wireless L.L.C. announced the grand opening of its latest retail in northern California in Roseville, marking the sixth such retail presence in the area since the beginning of the year.TSR Wireless said it plans to open several other locations in Northern...
BURLINGTON, Mass.-Lightbridge Inc. announced that Southern California wireless reseller ConexOne Wireless Communications selected its Telesto suite of integrated customer acquisition and retention solution."Our subscriber base spans the greater Los Angeles area to San Diego and is growing rapidly at nearly 10 percent per month....
Irwin Jacobs, chairman of Qualcomm Inc., fought a David and Goliath battle during the 1980s to get Code Division Multiple Access technology accepted by the U.S. wireless establishment. Having accomplished that in a big way, Jacobs now is fighting another war of biblical proportion...
SPOKANE, Wash.-Itron Inc. was selected by the city of Houston to provide an automatic meter-reading system for the city. Itron said it is the second-largest AMR installation in the United States.The installation includes about 400,000 Itron ERT radio-based water- meter modules. The ERTs will...
Though most are based on some form of wideband Code Division Multiple Access technology, the proposals submitted to the International Telecommunication Union last month suggest a tough road toward achieving the family of systems concept to allow for global roaming, let alone convergence of...
Second-tier wireless companies are hot properties, helping to push wireless stock prices past the Standard &Poor's index.Centennial Cellular Corp. earlier this month became the third second-tier cellular carrier to be bought by an investment firm when New York-based Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe agreed...
WASHINGTON-A federal appeals court last week said mandatory resale of commercial mobile radio services can sunset in 2002, dealing a blow to wireless resellers who argued the government could not end mandatory resale.The decision comes on the heels of the Federal Communications Commission's decision...
