NEW YORK-Home Wireless Networks, a Norcross, Ga., company in which Lucent Technologies Inc. has invested, Friday announced the commercial availability of a wireless home/office data and voice communications distribution system.Its function is to provide small-business customers with secure voice and data communications they can...
Sprint Corp.'s PCS Group added about 830,000 subscribers during the fourth quarter, positioning itself to top the industry in customers additions for the second consecutive quarter.Though most carriers are slated to release subscriber numbers within the coming weeks, analysts believe the Christmas season resulted...
DUBLIN, Ohio-SmarTalk TeleServices Inc. announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell substantially all of its assets to AT&T Corp. for up to $192.5 million in cash, subject to downward adjustment at closing.Separately, SmarTalk, a provider of prepaid calling cards and prepaid wireless...
Bundling continues to push forward, albeit at a slow pace.A recent Arthur Andersen survey of telecommunications companies found 66 percent of respondents offer bundled services to business customers, and 61 percent are offering these services to residential customers. About 71 percent of long-distance carriers...
ATLANTA-Sprint Spectrum L.P. announced it expanded its network into Atlanta and the surrounding communities.Sprint PCS said it will provide coverage on I-75 north through Knoxville, Tenn.; on I-85 north through Commerce, Ga.; south through Spalding County; east through Athens, Ga.; and west to Carroll...
LAS VEGAS-Topp Telecom Inc. unveiled its new $20 million national advertising campaign at the International Consumer Electronics Show last week, featuring TV ads produced by the director of the Little Caesar's "Pizza Pizza" campaign, as well as local radio spots.The company also announced Nokia...
Following an unannounced soft launch in November, Conxus Communications Inc. announced its long-awaited Pocketext text-messaging service is being rolled out market-by-market nationwide.The company began the service late last year in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington D.C./Baltimore. In the coming months, Conxus said it...
NEW YORK-Written comments are due March 17 on a proposed Internal Revenue Service regulation to implement a 3-percent federal excise tax on prepaid calling cards and services.The proposed regulation, No. 118620-97, is intended to implement a provision of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997...
Iridium Operating L.L.C. announced it closed $1.95 billion of new financing consisting of an $800 million senior secured credit facility, a $750 million guaranteed credit facility and $400 million in vendor financing from Motorola Inc. The new facilities will replace Iridium's existing $1 billion...
LAKE CHARLES, La.-US Unwired, a wireless communications provider in Louisiana and east Texas, announced it is expanding coverage to include all of Southwest Louisiana and will begin offering Sprint Spectrum L.P. personal communications services products at US Unwired retail outlets in Lake Charles and...
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)...
NECGraphics pagerNEC now is offering the APOP98 pager, which is a FLEX-based alphanumeric pager that is able to receive graphic images. NEC has developed software, which will be available from the company's Web site and runs on Windows. People wishing to send a graphic...
MEXICO CITY-Imagine the following scenario: A company enters into a government auction to obtain spectrum. After an extremely long process, it wins frequencies because other participants couldn't follow the pace of its high bids. Everything seems OK, until the deadline to pay for the spectrum...
NEW YORK-When it comes to getting airtime to the end customer, no distribution issue is captivating carriers like cost reduction. As international competition increases and markets mature, carriers will be even more pressed to trim costs to ensure healthy profit margins, according to most...
OXFORD, United Kingdom-Independent mobile dealers feel threatened in many countries in Europe.Those that have not been swallowed up by the national retail chains or taken over by a cellular network operator increasingly feel isolated and poorly served. Many now believe events surrounding the introduction...
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...
LITTLE ROCK-Alltel Corp. announced it has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Aliant Communications Inc. in a deal valued at $1.5 billion.Under terms of the agreement, each share of Aliant will be exchanged for $39.13 of Alltel stock, within a range of .67...
MINNEAPOLIS-WirelessNorth of Plymouth, Minn., announced it opened a new retail location in Duluth, Minn.WirelessNorth is a personal communications management company locally owned by independent companies that provide service in parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.
After months of aggressive buildout-beginning in late June with the Texas launch-PageMart Wireless Inc. announced its two-way, ReFLEX 25-based narrowband personal communications services network is available nationwide.The $310 million, Internet Protocol network upgrade adds two-way messaging capabilities to its existing FLEX network and, with...
MALVERN, Penn.-Triton PCS Inc. selected Lightbridge Inc. to provide integrated solutions for customer activation, retail management and fraud prevention.Triton PCS is building and will operate a digital wireless network in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, enabling AT&T digital wireless service to connect...
Brightpoint Inc. announced it entered into an agreement to provide integrated logistics services for Nextel Communications. Under the agreement, Brightpoint's wholly owned subsidiary, Wireless Stockroom, will provide a variety of services for Nextel's retail and direct-to-end-user channels. Brightpoint's services will include call center management...
SAN JOSE, Calif.-RangeStar International announced it has made deals with Let's Talk Cellular & Wireless and Everything Wireless to increase the RangeStar PCS Antenna's availability to consumers.Let's Talk Cellular & Wireless, an independent retailer of wireless products, services and accessories, will provide the antenna...
Palm Computing Inc., an affiliate of 3Com Corp., introduced the Palm VII personal digital assistant at the Palm Computing Platform Worldwide Developer Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., featuring out-of-the-box wireless connectivity to the Internet, World Wide Web and instant two-way personal communications.Through various partnerships...
CanadaResearch in Motion Ltd. announced it received a $1.3 million contract to supply its original equipment manufactured wireless modems to GMSI Inc.'s fleet management and communications systems. GMSI's systems are sold to taxi, trucking and transit companies and are used to transmit data between...
