Telemac Cellular Corp. agreed to license its patent-pending debit technology to Trimax Inc. of Taiwan. Trimax will use the technology to manufacture a switch independent cellular debit phone. The license is expected to result in the distribution of 500,000 phones into China during a five-year period. The debit technology allows cellular users to purchase a programmed phone and prepay for airtime with a credit card, ATM or cash.
AccessLine Technologies Inc. established AccessLine Europe, with headquarters in London and field offices in Brussels and Stockholm, to respond to its European customers and international opportunities. The establishment of AccessLine Europe stems from a series of international business developments including the company’s licensing agreements with NetCom GSM and Telia A.B. to deliver AccessLine services in Norway and Sweden.
Mitsui and Company Ltd. of Japan and The National Dispatch Center Inc., a San Diego-based corporation, have initiated a cooperative study to investigate paging and other wireless communications business opportunities in Japan. Fierce competition among mobile communications technologies has been intensified in Japan by the introduction of the Personal Handyphone System. Mitsui is considering providing an integrated service that will incorporate paging and other mobile communications services with simple and easy-to-use call center services, all via an NDC system.
L.M. Ericsson signed a contract with Etisalat to expand its Global System for Mobile communications network in the Dubai area in United Arab Emirates. The contract, valued at $23 million, includes a complete GSM system with new switches, base station equipment, operation and maintenance system and 10,000 cellular phones. Ericsson said it expects the first phase of the network to be operating in November.
RadioNota, a new full-service paging company in Mexico City, will commission an integrated management and information system from Subscriber Computing Inc. The Communications Resource Manager is a fully integrated information and billing system capable of simultaneously supporting paging, cellular, mobile data and second-generation cordless telephone services. “We looked for a billing system that could go on-line with our paging terminal interface and had multilingual capabilities-obviously Spanish in our case,” said Federico Bellot, RadioNota’s general manager. RadioNota currently supports 7,000 customers in Mexico. Within a year, the company plans to have 80,000 customers nationwide.
GTE Mobilnet Inc. announced its partnership with Astel Tokyo, a consortium consisting of Japanese, European and North American companies. The consortium plans to offer 1.9 GHz Personal Handyphone System service later this month to Tokyo. The two lead partners in Astel Tokyo are Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsui and Company Ltd. GTE will own 1.95 percent of the new company. GTE operates networks through affiliates in Canada, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Argentina.
