May 1996

The cellular telecommunications industry is making steady progress introducing advanced mobile data services as it works to overcome its own fragmented nature as well as the competition. According to the most recent “Report Card” issued by the CDPD Forum, carriers …

WASHINGTON-After a two-year process, the Federal Communications Commission established the Family Radio Service, a short-range two-way consumer system first proposed by the Radio Shack division of Ft. Worth, Texas-based Tandy Corp. According to the commission, the service will provide an …

NEW YORK-Excel Communications Inc., which plans to begin offering nationwide paging services this summer, sold an initial public offering May 10 with the share price rising dramatically by the end of the first trading day. The company offered 10 million …

NEW YORK-One of the independent companies left out of the merger between Cellular Communications Inc. and AirTouch Communications Inc. is considering its options, including sale of the company. Cellular Communications of Puerto Rico Inc. owns 10 markets in Puerto Rico …

WASHINGTON-“Auctions have revolutionized the way governments will distribute valuable resources and assets,” said Jerry Vaughan, deputy chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. “This will transfer to the states and then will go international.” “Sometimes auctions create an …

NEW YORK-Due to investor demand, Clearnet Communications Inc. sold 8 million shares of its common stock May 15, an increase of 1 million shares over the deal size anticipated when the company registered the planned offering with securities regulators last …

A cellular carrier loses the equivalent of its entire customer base in three to five years, say industry estimates. Not only does churn amount to missed revenue, but increasing industry competition, high subscriber acquisition costs and sinking revenue per subscriber …

ARLINGTON, Va.-Omnipoint Corp. has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to its proposed public offering of 7 million shares of common stock. Omnipoint said the offering will consist of 5 million shares of common stock …

SINGAPORE-Numerous announcements about Code Division Multiple Access technology came out of last week’s CDMA World Congress in Singapore. The event was attended by about 600 people from 40 countries. Motorola Inc. has formed a joint venture with two Chinese entities …

WASHINGTON-The United States and China are on the verge of a trade war that could hurt the wireless telecommunications industry’s ability to expand into one of the world’s fastest growing-and potentially one of its biggest-markets. Acting U.S. Trade Representative Charlene …

CHICAGO-Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems said it started authentication service in its Chicago market, which operates as Cellular One. The technology is expected to wipe out cloning fraud as it is known today. Called CloneBlock, Chicago’s Cellular One analog and digital …

PHOENIX-Cellexis International Inc. dismissed its $525 million trade secret lawsuit against GTE Corp., its subsidiaries and Open Development Corp. The company sued GTE and ODC in April claiming theft of Cellexis’ technology for a system allowing cellular telephone customers to …

PLANO, Texas-Paging Network Inc. has signed a long-term licensing contract with Cnet Inc. to provide network management and operational support capabilities, Cnet announced. PageNet will utilize Cnet’s basic operations system to manage its networks in Canada and the United States, …

DALLAS-Paging Network Inc. said Citizens Telecom, a U.S. independent telecommunications company, will market and distribute PageNet’s entire line of FLEX numeric and alphanumeric paging products with local, regional and nationwide coverage options. Citizens, which offers a variety of local and …

WASHINGTON, D.C.-Wireless Technology Research L.L.C. issued a progress report confirming that wireless phones interfere with cardiac pacemakers to varying degrees. But, the report also notes that no pacemaker malfunction due to wireless phone interference has been reported to date. In …

RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J.-MobileComm, a paging and wireless messaging services provider, and Premiere Technologies, an integrator of information and telecommunications services, announced plans to cross market each other’s services. MobileComm said it will begin offering its customers a communications card called …

Qualcomm Inc. announced the availability of a single-chip vocodor that utilizes PureVoice, the latest version of the 13 kilobit Qualcomm Code Excited Linear Predictive speech coding algorithm. PureVoice was developed for use in Qualcomm’s cellular and personal communications services products …

DALLAS-ProNet Inc. announced it has signed a letter of intent to purchase all of the outstanding capital stock of Georgialina Communications Co. and affiliates for about $11.6 million. The company also signed a letter of intent to purchase substantially all …

WASHINGTON-The spectrum reform draft bill unveiled by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) last week would privatize much of the nation’s airwaves, a fundamental deregulatory policy shift that combined with the new telecommunications law could lead to the overhaul …

Sprint Spectrum L.P. has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Seattle challenging a six-month moratorium on tower building put in place in February by the city council of Medina, Wash., calling it a violation of the new …

Telular Corp. said it is emerging from its restructuring “lean and focused,” in spite of the $12.4 million in one-time charges it cost the company to accomplish the changes. Telular reported a net loss of $17.4 million, or 69 cents …

The introduction of fully digital wireless networks means that marginal readings by portable test equipment are no longer acceptable. “It’s all ones and zeros now, so you have to be precisely tuned,” said Jan Whitacre, spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard Co. That …

WASHINGTON-The near collapse of free trade telecommunication talks in Geneva last month has raised concerns in Congress, and could provide the spark for legislation next year to further open the U.S. market to foreign investors. The House subcommittee on commerce, …

Nexus Telecommunication Systems Ltd. announced it has granted a license to operate its wireless messaging system over 2 MHz in the 900 UHF to Eden, a fully owned subsidiary of Nexus set up to operate the messaging system and provide …

To the Editor: I am appalled by the unprincipled attack on the WTR carried in last Monday’s issue of RCR. The unverified story was replete with untruths, half-truths, misinformation, innuendo and unattributed statements. I am compelled to clarify for your …