Dear Friends and wireless professionals,

I have some interesting news for you this week, but first my regular disclaimer:

This is my weekly newsletter about Wireless Data and Radio Paging. You are receiving this message because you have either communicated with me in the past about a wireless topic, or your address was included in another e-mail that I received. This is not a SPAM. If you have received this message in error, and you are not interested in these topics, please click here, then click on "send" and you will be promptly removed from the mailing list.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone else who might be interested. Any e-mail addresses sent to me, to add to my list, would be sincerely appreciated.

ARCH EMERGES FROM BANKRUPTCY
It was announced this week that Arch Wireless has emerged from bankruptcy. You can read about it RCR Wireless News. Good luck to everyone at Arch Wireless on your new start, and congratulations on your quick turnaround.

WIRELESS DATA
An industry colleague sent me an interesting article from MOBLIEINFO.com about the new Verizon Wireless flat rate plan for wireless data. They offer unlimited use for $99.99 per month. It operates over their CDMA 2000 1X Express Network at speeds of 40 to 60 Kbps, peaking at 144 Kbps. I read a magazine article several years ago that said the crust of the earth does not contain enough metal to make enough wire to meet the communications needs of the future -- the world's needs must be met with wireless technology. Interesting, no?

TWO-WAY PAGERS
I have two clarifications to last week's newsletter. The first one is, that a consumer device (subscriber pager) from Hoseo Telnet was shown -- they have it on their web site and a lot of us have actually seen and touched it as well. This is the product that they have agreed to let Nixxo market exclusively (as was mentioned). So this two-way pager won't be coming directly from Hoseo Telnet. The Nixxo version will be very similar, if not the same. Sorry if this was misleading to anyone.

The second issue that needs clarifying is the Advantra Enterprise™ "two-way" pager that was shown. This is indeed a ReFLEX²⁵ pager, and it does include user-initiated messaging (service request) as well as several "canned" (predefined) responses, but it is not technically a "full two-way" (2.0) device. Although the ReFLEX systems of the world, as currently implemented, do not support all of its features, it is still a great little pager. If the various versions of two-way paging are a little confusing to you -- you are not alone. Maybe the illustration below will help clear up what the different versions are.

We all know what one-way paging is -- the pager is just a selective-call radio receiver. If you add a tiny transmitter inside of the pager then you are moving into the realm of two-way paging, since the pager now has the ability to talk back. The early ones were called "one-and-a-half-way pagers" (1.5) since they could only send limited responses back to the infrastructure. Even though limited, the simple responses of "I am here" and "I got it" allowed the paging industry to offer automatic roaming and assured message delivery. This was a great step forward. You will never miss a message because the system keeps trying until your pager says "I got it" and automatic roaming to other cities (and even other countries) is possible because the pager always says "I am here" as soon as you get off of an airplane and turn it on. Other features were added later with various names and numbers, until we finally got to "full two-way" (2.0) pagers -- which are basically pagers that can send and receive alphanumeric text messages -- usually with a small keyboard. We will be seeing many more variations such as wireless-telemetry devices, wireless e-mailers, and wireless-enabled PDAs. (Personal Digital Assistants.) I really think that wireless telemetry with GPS localization will be very popular in the near future, but that's another topic for another newsletter. I hope this helps -- not everyone who reads this is an engineer.

TNPP PROTOCOL PAPER
A new paper is being written about the history of the TNPP protocol. It will cover who was involved in its development and why it was developed. It is interesting to note that the TNPP protocol for linking paging systems together made it possible for the mega-paging systems of today to exist. All the buyouts and the merging of smaller companies to form the large companies we have now, would not have been feasible if their various systems had continued to use incompatible networking protocols as implemented by SCE, BBL, Motorola, and others. So this in an important part of paging history. If you have anything to contribute to this article, please send it to me by e-mail. It will soon be published on my web site.

REPORT FROM THE PAGING WORKING GROUP
This week I received the following update from Gagan Puranik, Chairman of the PTC Protocol Working Group. As I have said before, these people are doing great work for the benefit of the whole paging industry. Thanks Gagan.

Brad:

Thank you for starting the paging information newsletter.  Keep up the good job!

Just wanted to let you know, ReFLEX 2.7.2 draft was released on May 23rd, 2002. Official release of the document is scheduled on June 28, 2002. This ReFLEX™ update was developed in cooperation with the Protocol Working Group (PWG) a subcommittee of the Paging Technical Committee (PTC) and Motorola and includes the 7 RFCs approved by the PWG. The Protocol Working Group is responsible for the following protocols:  ReFLEX™, FLEX™, FLEXsuite™, WCTP, RXP, TDP, TNPP, & TAP.  PWG has 77 members and growing.

Regards,
Gagan Puranik, Chairman
PTC Protocol Working Group

I am pleased to welcome Advanced Signal to my list of recommended products this week. They have some of the best test equipment in the industry. I have known these folks for several years and they make good products. I would like to introduce you to their SP Series of test and monitoring equipment.

In the most simple form, the SP Series is a paging format decoder. The SP Series can decode and analyze Golay, POCSAG, FLEX, ReFLEX, and InFLEXion. Paging system operators use the SP Series to assist in the setup, maintenance, and monitoring of paging networks. Field use is focused on error rate logging that includes signal strength, bit error rate, codeword error measurement, and simulcast delay spread measurements. Additionally, technicians have access to capcode message displays, batch construction data, and detailed channel error information. Channel monitoring includes batching efficiencies and channel utilization statistics. Paging equipment manufacturers use the SP Series to assist in product testing and verification.

• Internal Receivers for both traditional paging and narrowband PCS applications:
  • 917-950 MHz
  • 322-330 MHz
  • 274-286 MHz
  • 135-175 MHz
• Convenient, single-screen logging of signal strength (RSSI), Bit Error Rate (BER), Codeword Error Rate (CWER), and Simulcast Delay Spread (SDS) measurements for traditional paging and Narrowband PCS.
• Modified pagers may be used in conjunction with the SP Series internal receiver to provide the most comprehensive Error Rate Measurement possible.
• The modified pagers provide real-world BER, CWER, and SDS measurements while the internal receiver measures RSSI.
• Synchronous Receive Error Measurements.
• Signal Quality Calibration (SQC) Measurements for InFLEXion.
• Support of FLEX roaming.
• Display of Simplified Chinese and Korean characters.
• Superior Channel Management capabilities.
• Closed Loop System Test program can be used to completely load a new channel for validation prior to commercialization, or it can measure the time delay of test pages on existing channels.
• A direct 4-level interface is available to decode directly off of the output of a transmitter controller.

You can learn more about this very useful test equipment on their web site. To send the Advanced Signal sales department an e-mail just click here. Please mention my name.

PAGING SYSTEM FOR SALE IN MEXICO
Well, I finally got pricing on the paging system for sale in México. Several people were interested a few weeks ago. The owners would rather sell everything together, but they are willing to accept offers for individual items, some of which would obviously go together.

There is a 15% sales tax (IVR) payable in Mexico, plus shipping etc. Please let me know if you are interested. Enrique Llaca, former manager of Motorola's paging team in Mexico, will handle the sale.

ADIÓS AMIGOS
Copies of this issue, and my previous wireless newsletters are located at: http://braddye.com/newsletters.html. I am still looking for a real job. If you hear of anyone that might be in need of my talents, please direct them to my job search site. Jerry Vargas, one of the best paging engineers in the business, is also available.