Editor’s Note: RCR Wireless News goes all in for “Throwback Thursdays,” tapping into our archives to resuscitate the top headlines from the past. Fire up the time machine, put on the sepia-tinted shades, set the date for #TBT and enjoy the memories!
NBA stops Motorola from broadcasting games over SportsTrax
The NBA won its lawsuit against Motorola Inc. last week, with a judge ruling the electronics company “engaged in unlawful conduct” with its pager-like device that provides accounts of games. Judge Loretta Preska, in her decision in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, said Motorola must stop using the handheld pager that simulates action during NBA games. Early last year, Motorola unveiled SportsTrax, a wireless pager that delivers batter-by-batter status of major league baseball games. Motorola began to transmit accounts of basketball games this season over SportsTrax. … Read More
Nextel’s Akerson focuses on transitioning customers to digital
At night, when most people are asleep, Dan Akerson thinks about Rubik’s Cubes. Relating the colors and squares on the device to possible marketing strategies, he toys with going beyond the colored surfaces and into the deeper relationships that connect the pieces. The new chairman and chief executive officer who joined the country’s largest enhanced specialized mobile radio services provider last March has been devoting much of his time to moving Nextel Communications Inc.’s analog customers onto the company’s next-generation digital network. The effort has been quiet, but intense, a switch from the splash the company-then known as Fleet Call-made several years ago when it first entered the marketplace. With more than 160,000 digital subscribers now online nationwide, Akerson and his team are moving ahead with market tests that will target non-traditional SMR users in six major venues. But Akerson wants to walk before he runs. … Read More
TWA crash investigator pleads for wiretap funds
With a captive national audience tuned in to the first major press briefing two days after the deadly explosion of the Trans World Airlines Flight 800, FBI New York Bureau Chief James Kallstrom made an impassioned plea for congressional funding of the digital telephony bill. It has not been determined whether sabotage or mechanical error is to blame for the New York-to-Paris jumbo jet’s fiery fall July 17 from the sky to the sea off Long Island, N.Y., killing all 230 aboard. But when a reporter asked Kallstrom what additional measures were needed to fight terrorism, Kallstrom singled out digital telephony funding. … Read More
Cellular participants possess key advantages over PCS players: PCS is opportunity to make more money
From Wall Street to Main Street, the outlook for the cellular industry remains positive, especially for major players abroad and minor players at home that exploit markets with lower competition and penetration levels. The new Telecommunications Act has unleashed forces that could transform the entire communications industry, including the cellular sector, into something completely different than it has been, in the view of Dan Pakenham, senior telecommunications analyst for Moody’s Investors Service Inc., New York. … Read More
Deregulation forces cellular industry to compete in LEC arena
Deregulatory gains by the cellular telephone industry during the past three years have given way to a series of setbacks that could come back to haunt policymakers in the brave new world of regulation that started in 1993 and culminated with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Prior to President Clinton signing the telecom reform bill on Feb. 8, the two cellular carriers in each market were bound by rules unique to the wireless industry. While that will continue, the cellular industry now also is part of something bigger. That something is at the core of the new telecommunications law: local competition. The slew of rulemaking proceedings flowing from telecommunications reform will define the relationship between cellular carriers and local landline telephone companies, and between cellular carriers and the rest of the telecommunications industry. … Read More
EU commissioner sees ‘breakthrough’ in liberalization efforts
The commissioner in charge of competition for the European Union told an audience recently that while there has been a “dramatic breakthrough” in the liberalization of telecommunications, many things have yet to be decided. “We can certainly see the growth potential and the possibilities of Europe’s telecommunications market, but we cannot, we must not, predict or pre-empt its exact shape,” said Commissioner Karel Van Miert. The EU set 1998 as the deadline for member countries to have opened telecom markets to competition. Van Miert said that the commission is working to streamline procedures and revise merger regulation so matters can be dealt with more quickly and “coherently” than under current procedures. … Read More
Analyst: MSS promises good return on investment
At a coverage cost of $7 per population equivalent-one-tenth the cost of cellular-satellite communications promise $300 million in cash flow for each 1 percent of market penetration. That is one aspect of a positive outlook on wireless satellite telecommunications offered by Robert B. Kaimowitz, satellite communications analyst for Unterberg Harris, New York. He spoke last week at a conference here on “Space and Satellite Finance,” sponsored by the Institute for International Research. “I am optimistic,” said Kaimowitz, who has followed the satellite industry for more than a decade. “I’ve staked my career on it.” … Read More
Competition, not capacity, is motive for move to digital cellular
Not wanting to be elbowed aside by rival new suitors, cellular carriers are beginning to serenade subscribers with their own chorus of “Digital! Digital! Digital!” But unlike emerging personal communications services networks that are digital by design, incumbent cellular carriers have some unexpected leeway in timing their digital service rollouts. “In 1987, when they started talking about digital there was a panic on the part of carriers over capacity problems,” according to Herschel Shosteck, president of Herschel Shosteck Associates Ltd. “But engineers have learned to optimize systems, and new technologies have evolved to increase capacity,” he said, lessening the need for a digital solution. … Read More
Low-priced extras bring carriers added revenue
Enhanced services deliver greater convenience, mobility and security to cellular customers, but how much value these “value-adds” provide carriers is uncertain. Depending on the sophistication and expandability of the platform, enhanced services can be expensive for carriers to implement in their networks. But customers who use the services use additional airtime, generating more revenue for carriers. Just what are enhanced services? “Anything and everything that adds value to a basic dial-up mobile call,” said Mirva Anttila, analyst for North Business Information, New York. … Read More
FCC progresses on reallocation plan
Even before the Federal Communications Commission voted last week to solicit comments regarding the possibility of taking back UHF broadcast channels 60 through 69, the National Association of Broadcasters let it be known that non-broadcast use of these channels probably would be unacceptable during the analog-to-digital television transition. The FCC made it clear that it thinks otherwise. If adopted, tenets of the further notice of proposed rulemaking could open the door to “allow us to recover in the near future the vast bulk of the 60 megahertz of spectrum at channels 60 through 69, which are lightly used by analog broadcasters,” wrote FCC Chairman Reed Hundt in a separate statement attached to the FNPRM. “We could auction that spectrum for flexible use, generating funds that could be used for many purposes, including rebuilding schools and funding PBS. We could also use a portion of that spectrum to solve the serious spectrum needs of the public safety community. We’ve had great luck traveling this road before.” … Read More
Check out RCR Wireless News’ Archives for more stories from the past.
