SINGAPORE-The Asia-Pacific currency crisis has taken its toll on the Personal Communications Industry Association’s first venture into the international trade-show arena. Wireless Showcase Asia, held here last week and touted as the first all-wireless show in the region, drew only limited attendance from outside Singapore. Final attendance figures for the show were not yet available [...]

SINGAPORE-The main effects of the Asia-Pacific currency crisis on wireless carriers will be to make both foreign-manufactured equipment and foreign-debt servicing more expensive, said Jonathan Tarlin, senior vice president-international for The Strategis Group, last week at Wireless Showcase Asia. As a direct result, he said, network-infrastructure investment will slow and operators will look for ways [...]

CHICAGO-Ameritech Corp. announced annual net income grew by 7.6 percent to around $2.3 billion, and revenues increased 7.2 percent to about $16 billion for its fiscal year ended Dec. 31, compared with approximate 1996 figures of $2.1 billion net income and revenues of $15 billion. Net income for the 1997 fourth quarter was $610 million, [...]

STOCKHOLM, Sweden-L.M. Ericsson said it launched a network function called PrePaid Calling Service for wireless networks that use Advanced Mobile Phone Service and digital-AMPS standards. Ericsson’s new service allows for prepayment of value-added features like fax, voice mail and short message service, whereas operators previously could not account and charge for those services on a [...]

The World Trade Organization will meet again today in Geneva in hopes of reaching a compromise on a new date to put the basic telecom services agreement into effect. WTO members met Jan. 16, but had no success securing a date because 13 countries had yet to ratify the free trade accord. The agreement allows [...]

SmartLink Development L.P. and Transcrypt International Inc., which recently acquired E.F. Johnson Co., reached an agreement allowing SmartLink to implement Transcrypt’s enhanced LTR-Net protocol into its SMRLink multi-protocol trunking and networking system. The SmartLink/Transcrypt solution is an enhancement to the existing LTR protocol, said Craig Johnson, vice president of sales and distribution for SmartLink. The [...]

WASHINGTON-Greg Simon, telecom lobbyist and former domestic policy adviser to Vice President Gore, last week denied any wrongdoing regarding his 1996 meeting-undertaken at the request of then-White House aide Alexis Herman-with Mobile Communications Holdings Inc. officials who wanted administration help in obtaining a global satellite license. The Federal Communications Commission in 1995 declined to grant [...]

KANSAS CITY, Mo.-With the launch of digital service in Kansas City, Southwestern Bell said it now offers Time Division Multiple Access service in all of its major markets. The company’s digital cellular service, branded Digital Edge, will integrate the company’s existing analog network so customers will be able to travel between the digital and analog [...]

Samsung is not a household name in the United States, but the consumer electronics giant is hoping its $10 million brand promotion campaign introduced in the fourth quarter and its aggressive strategy to grab a 40-percent share of the U.S. CDMA handset market will do the trick. Samsung Group’s American telecommunications business, Samsung Telecommunications America, [...]

WASHINGTON-To say there is rancor in the ranks of C-block personal communications services licensees regarding the structure and timing of possible financial restructuring plans is akin to saying Maine residents are upset at several weeks with no power following a devastating ice storm. All both factions can do at this moment is sit back and [...]