Editor’s Note: The RCR Wireless News Time Machine is a way to take advantage of our extensive history in covering the wireless space to fire up the DeLorean and take a trip back in time to re-visit some of the more interesting headlines from this week in history. Enjoy the ride!
Texas Instruments, Sun to give phones more function with Java
Texas Instruments Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. want to keep things comparatively simple within the handset as demands on its capabilities grow more complex. With that goal in mind, the two companies announced an agreement last week that will permit delivery of Sun’s Java capabilities on any of Texas Instruments’ processor platforms-including the TMS320 family of digital signal processors-for digital cellular phones, pagers, wireless local loop terminals and other end-user equipment. … Read More
Cellular carriers narrow gap between PCS and cellular prices
Overall wireless pricing has decreased between 4.4 percent and 20.3 percent in the United States since the end of the second quarter, according to a survey conducted by Robinson-Humphrey Co. L.L.C. Of the four regions studied by Robinson-Humphrey, the West logged price decreases of as much as 33.9 percent during the third quarter, the largest decrease of any of the regions. The heaviest discounts came from cellular providers, particularly AirTouch Cellular and AT&T Wireless Services Inc., said the company. … Read More
CDMA faithfuls talk future technologies
It was only fitting that the future of Code Division Multiple Access technology was discussed in South Korea at the 2nd CDMA International Conference. Since SK Telecom launched the country’s first CDMA system in January 1996, South Korea now has five CDMA operators and about 4 million CDMA subscribers-more than 80 percent of the worldwide CDMA customers. … Read More
Wall Street eager to invest in wireless if business plan is solid
”Show me the money!” Flush with capital pouring in and looking for places to invest, that is exactly what Wall Street hopes to do for the wireless industry. “There is a lot of money out there, so much money out there, more equity in stocks than in homes (according to some estimates),” said Sharon Armbrust, senior analyst for Paul Kagan Associates Inc., Carmel, Calif., at a recent Kagan conference on Wireless Telecom Values and Finance. … Read More
Pagers, phones remain holiday choices as trade war is averted
The United States and Japan earlier this month appeared to sidestep a trade war that portended potential devastation for American retailers of wireless products during the busy holiday season. U.S. and Japanese officials reached a breakthrough Oct. 17 that halted Clinton administration plans to block Japanese cargo ships from reaching American ports. Progress on the shipping dispute followed urgent entreaties from American businesses. The United States threatened the action in retaliation for Japan’s refusal to pay $4 million in fines levied by the Federal Maritime Commission for failing to reform restrictive port practices that have frustrated American shippers for years. … Read More
Carriers market themselves to customers as corporate sponsors
With so many wireless carriers competing for potential customers, marketing techniques have become an important tool to attract clients. One of the more recent marketing trends seems to be the phenomenon of corporate sponsorships-companies donating money and products to community organizations-all in an attempt to differentiate their message from the rest of the pack. … Read More
Talk about reviving PACT technology leads down deserted road
Although it has been months since AT&T Wireless Services Inc. dropped all plans for services using the personal Air Communications Technology advanced paging protocol, some talk remained about PACT Vendor Forum members seeking other customers for the technology they invested so much in. But it was just that … talk. As it turns out, AT&T was the only basket in which the vendor’s eggs were placed. The pACT Vendor Forum has been disbanded and all the money left in its accounts was distributed back to its members, said Ted Pielemeier, a former board member of the now defunct group. … Read More
Insiders say Nextel set to sweep auction
With an upfront payment of more than $12.7 million, enhanced specialized mobile radio provider Nextel Communications Inc. stands to walk away with the lion’s share of licenses when the auction of 800 MHz SMR economic area licenses, scheduled to begin tomorrow, concludes in what some industry insiders say will be a week. What this means for other auction participants is unknown at this time, but a few may have dropped out of the bidding once they discovered who their competitors were going to be and the prices they were willing to pay. Others say openly that the handwriting is on the wall. … Read More
Messaging companies try to market service to deaf community: advocate says paging services are crucial to deaf people
Business and consumer market customers traditionally have been the focus of the paging industry’s marketing and sales efforts. But there is a hidden, some say ignored, segment of the population that has a more unique need for paging technology … the deaf and hard of hearing. A deaf parent with a deaf child cannot just open the door and yell to the playing child when it’s time for dinner. A deaf teacher at school cannot simply be called over the school’s public address system to summon one of her students. Paging has the capability to address these issues in the deaf community. … Read More
Putting intelligence on network, inferno to make phones smart: Lucent, Neo Networks explore distributed intelligence design
Changing things inside a network is about to get easier by orders of magnitude, according to NEO Networks Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc. NEO Networks, Minnetonka, Minn., will integrate Lucent’s Inferno, a distributed inter-networking operating system, into its StreamProcessor, a network forwarding product line. StreamProcessor uses what NEO Networks terms “massively parallel” supercomputer technology for very high speed and high efficiency forwarding of data in a network environment. … Read More
