WASHINGTON-Federal Communications Commissioner Susan Ness last week added her voice to the growing drumbeat of U.S. opposition to European Union moves that could block the import of third-generation mobile phone technologies and limit harmonization of similar standards."A major concern I share with other U.S....
In the Top 20 Wireless Resellers list (Jan. 11), Discount Cellular Inc. and The Mobile Phone Co. were listed wrong. The companies are agents for Omnipoint. Discount Cellular also is an agent for Powertel and Sprint PCS and a reseller for several cellular carriers....
Qualcomm Inc. may be ready to sell off its handset division as competition in the cdmaOne handset business intensifies and costs increase.Sources say Qualcomm is in discussions with Siemens Wireless Terminals concerning the sale of Qualcomm's cdmaOne handset division. Qualcomm and Siemens declined to...
Welcome to 1999 and woe to pols that haven't discovered the digital age.No wonder House Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley (R-Va.) counts cellular privacy as a top priority in the 106th Congress.Analog cellular phones are wrecking political careers left and right.First, it was the...
WASHINGTON-Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard last week said he would consider further wireless deregulation and intends to streamline operations, objectives that could help defuse plans on Capitol Hill to reform the agency this year.Kennard came under fire in 1998-his first year on the...
NEW YORK-The United Kingdom started off 1999 with a bang, becoming the first country to implement local number portability for wireless telephony customers.All four cellular operators-Orange plc, Vodafone Group plc, Cellnet and One 2 One-had agreed to license amendments in the fall of 1997...
The nation's largest independent cellular carrier last week entertained bids from two potential acquirers in what could become a global bidding war.AirTouch Communications Inc. last week confirmed it was in discussions with Bell Atlantic Corp. for a possible tie-up and later confirmed it had...
The introduction of digital phone technology has changed dramatically the landscape of wireless communications across the globe and put the heat on the global paging industry.Paging's old advantages of small size and cheaper service are being whittled away, as digital phones shrink in size...
GENEVA-Stop in for a lunchtime croque monsieur at any of the bistros that line the Boulevard St. Germain in Paris, and you'll hear a new sound mingling with the clink and clank of plates and glasses. For better or worse, the chirp of the...
LONDON-The Middle East wireless sector continues to show positive signs, with several major contracts awarded and plenty of healthy GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) activity over the past year. In addition, carriers have begun to sign on with new mobile satellite services (MSS)...
BEIJING-"The investigation into China Unicom's unprincipled and wrong foreign fund-raising practices has been completed," Wang Jianzhou, director of the planning department of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII), announced at a press conference in Beijing on 1 December. That's pretty close to saying...
OXFORD, United Kingdom-Iridium L.L.C. launched its global mobile satellite service last November, and demand for the service reportedly is high, but so far largely unfulfilled. Shortage of handsets is being cited as the main culprit.Such a situation is not uncommon in the early days...
SEOUL, South Korea-Despite the financial crisis in Asia, the wireless telephony market has performed better than expected in South Korea. The number of cellular and PCS subscribers in the country more than doubled from 5.6 million at the end October 1997 to more than...
BRUSSELS-Belgacom launched its Duet service, which it says is the first step in the convergence of fixed and mobile telephony in Belgium.When customers are called on their Duet number, they receive the call on their mobile phone. If their mobile phone is turned off,...
M/A-ComM/A-COM, a division of AMP Inc., announced a new family of DC-2 GHz GaAs Field Effect Transistor Microwave Monolithic Integrated Circuit digital attenuators with integral Application Specific Integrated Circuit drivers. The attenuators in this family are multichip modules containing GaAs FET MMIC Radio Frequency...
WASHINGTON-With a panoply of prickly issues tied to major telecom policies of local competition, disability access, spectrum management and digital wiretap compliance, the future could not be cloudier for the wireless industry in 1999.Besides the fact wireless policy is in flux and wireless management...
At the end of each year, the RCR editorial staff looks back on the news events that made RCR headlines and decides which were the most significant, industry-impacting stories of the past 12 months. Here are our picks for 1998.1. March 16IPR issues spark...
WASHINGTON-The Justice Department's denial of Nextel Communications Inc.'s request to modify a 1994 antitrust consent decree kept the nation's top dispatch radio operator from bidding on bankrupt Geotek Communications Inc.'s licenses last week, a potentially major setback that could stifle the highly leveraged wireless...
As a call to arms goes out to prepare for cyberterrorism, we now know at least a few ways vital U.S. infrastructure can be shut down. There are errant construction crews and maintenance screw ups. Lights out San Francisco!Looking ahead a bit, Y2K could...
WASHINGTON-The Clinton administration progressed in getting more telecommunications and information technology products shielded from tariffs, but last week acknowledged problems persist in convincing China to open its market and hinted the United States was ready to consider retaliation."Our companies do not have market access...
SEATTLE-Go to any trade show where mobile phone operators congregate, and you will hear grumbling about how AT&T Wireless Services Inc.'s Digital One Rate pricing plan has wreaked havoc on business plans. The play for the high-end business user seems to be falling in...
WASHINGTON-Oral argument in the appeal of the Federal Communications Commission's 1996 radio-frequency radiation exposure guidelines has been postponed until February or March.The case, Cellular Task Force v. FCC, had been scheduled to be heard last June and, after numerous delays, appeared set for the...
The Palm VII personal digital assistant, announced this month by 3Com Corp. and Palm Computing Inc., continues to generate news and speculation, even though the product is not expected to be in consumers' hands until late next year.Convergys Corp. told RCR it has been...
Research companies predicting wireless handset market share have ruffled a few industry feathers.Qualcomm last week issued a statement disputing Dataquest research that had Qualcomm's market share dropping from 17.4 percent in 1997 to 8.2 percent for the first three months of this year."Although Qualcomm...
