LAS VEGAS-A group of California entrepreneurs have invented a robot to program phones in the retail environment."With only brief training, a nontechnical retail employee can program any phone in three minutes or less, without mistakes," according to Activator Systems Inc. of Tustin, Calif.The phone...
The cellular industry has taken numerous steps to package cellular for the mass consumer retail market, but a small gap remains between the industry's effort and the complicated process to activate a phone."Mass merchants are a substantial opportunity for everyone to make this business...
In these days of competitive, get-the-activation-at-any-cost retail marketing, can a cellular service provider that charges high airtime rates without discounting handsets or letting its subscribers roam find success in the nation's capitol?Well, maybe if it targets the "credit impaired."Phoenix-based Cellexis International Inc. is opening...
NEW YORK-With nearly $4 million in creditor claims against it deleted by a federal court in late December, Cellular Telephone Enterprises Inc. last week entered the end game of an acrimonious dispute. As a consequence, a key company subsidiary embarked on emerging from Chapter...
RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J.-MobileMedia Corp. completed the acquisition of BellSouth Corp.'s MobileComm paging subsidiary and its nationwide narrowband personal communications services license. MobileMedia said it paid about $930 million.The company said it now has a subscriber base of more than four million users-making it the...
TAMPA, Fla.-Nokia Corp. has announced a new version of its Nokia 232 cellular phone that enables the phone to operate on a Narrowband Advanced Mobile Phone Service network.The company also said Sears will distribute Nokia phones in its Brand Central departments throughout the United...
Happy New Year!The mark of a new year tradition ally brings resolutions for the fu ture and reflections on the past. That holds true for the wireless industry as well.What will 1996 bring this indus try? Some early economic indicators the most publicized being...
NEW YORK-Industry analysts remain confident in the outlook for Nokia Corp., despite the mid-December drubbing its American Depository Receipts took after the Finnish electronics manufacturer announced poor profit performance in its sales of mobile phones in the United States and televisions in Europe.By the...
CellStar Corp. said it formed a distribution relationship with Cellular One Group. The company said the agreement is a nationwide strategic cellular accessory program encompassing original equipment manufacturer products from Motorola Inc., NEC Corp., Nokia Inc., Ericsson Inc. and Oki telecom, as well as...
ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Metrocall Inc. has signed a distribution agreement with Crutchfield Corp., a national retail catalog sales firm in Charlottesville, Va.The Crutchfield catalog specializes in car, home, electronics and audio/video equipment, reaching millions of potential customers, Metrocall said. With the agreement, Crutchfield will feature Metrocall's...
While leading companies in all segments of the wireless industry are growing through consolidation, Dallas-based PageMart Inc. is flourishing by concentrating on the internal growth of its paging operations.Although PageMart started out as a private carrier paging company, it ranked sixth on RCR's list...
WASHINGTON-The future is here.Vice President Al Gore, father of the information superhighway, christened the broadband personal communications services industry with a call to Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke Nov. 15 on the Sprint Spectrum system operated by American Personal Communications."I'm proud to speak to you...
These days cellular phones are sold just about everywhere you turn, even the drug store. However, it may not be so easy to buy one. One company said it has designed a solution for people whose credit history has inhibited them from buying a...
Two kinds of private, in-building wireless systems are seeking the attention of today's large business customers-stand-alone systems that provide portable extensions of employee desk phones, and stand-alone systems that provide portable extensions but also can hand off calls to the external, macro wireless network.Both...
IFR Systems Inc. has named Dr. Samual Kyehung Lee director of business development for the Pacific Rim. He will also be the management contact for all IFR distributors in mainland Asia, Southeast Asia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.Dr. Lee joined IFR in 1987 as...
Glenayre Technologies Inc. announced it will supply equipment for narrowband personal communications services to Paging Network Inc. under a contract agreement. PageNet will use the equipment to beta test its VoiceNow service in San Francisco. The contract order, valued at $4.5 million, calls for...
The nation's major cellular handset manufacturers caused a little commotion on Wall Street recently when they noted handset sales hadn't grown at the phenomenal rate that analysts and industry execs are used to seeing.Does this mean the cellular marketplace is finally slowing down? Should...
WHEATON, Md.-Replacement sales of cellular phones has emerged as a key market segment, yielding profit opportunities, according to market research analyst Herschel Shosteck Associates Ltd., in the company's latest issue of "The Retail Market of Cellular Telephones."The quarterly study reported that from 1990 through...
As a native Washingtonian, I always become suspicious when Democrats and Republicans jointly embrace anything. My suspicions heighten when the executive and legislative branches-and the "independent" Federal Communications Commission-all rush to claim credit for their particular contributions to the field of communications. In this...
The two-way paging system recently launched by SkyTel Corp. is reasonably priced and clearly takes the paging industry across the threshold into next-century applications, say wireless analysts."The market is going to be very competitive on price," said Heidi Bomengen, associate director for the telecommunications...
ORLANDO, Fla.-A cellular phone battery with a built-in numeric pager has been introduced by Motorola Inc.'s Paging Products Group, in what the company says is a response to market demand.The battery slides onto the back of any Motorola MicroTac or retail pocket personal cellular...
AT&T's cellular and paging division and its wireless equipment business will soon belong to separate and independent publicly traded companies under AT&T Corp.'s plan to completely restructure the organization.AT&T Chairman Robert Allen announced the board of directors last month approved plans to divide the...
Accelerating consolidation in the wireless industry engulfs yet another prominent company as MobileMedia Corp. agrees to acquire BellSouth Corp.'s MobileComm paging subsidiary and its two-way nationwide narrowband personal communications services license for a total of $945 million, the largest acquisition ever in the paging...
Incidents of cloning fraud and associated revenue loss have dropped more than 80 percent in Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile's cellular markets since the company started aggressively using personal identification numbers and implementing other fraud control measures, said Nick Arcuri, the company's vice president of...
