| FRIDAY - MAY 20, 2005 - ISSUE NO. 164 | ||||
Dear friends of Wireless Messaging and Paging, It seems like every time I write something about USA Mobility someone gets mad at me. If I say some good things about them, I catch a lot of flak from the small Paging companies who have all kinds of reasons to believe that USA Mobility is the "Evil Empire." If I write something that is not exactly favorable, I hear about it from my friends at USA Mobility—some of whom I have known for many years and hold in high regard. It's just makes no sense to have a newsletter about Wireless Messaging and to NOT write about the one company that has about two-thirds (5.8M) of the approximately nine million subscriber units in service in the United States today. So let's be fair, there are some smart people working at USA Mobility and they have a tough job to do. Just this week they made public, a slide-show presentation given during their annual stockholder's meeting. Now this is a class piece of work! Before anyone tells me that they don't believe that the information in this presentation is accurate, let me remind you of Martha Stewart and Bernie Ebbers. So . . . I don't believe that any sane corporate officer today would be lying to their shareholders or to the SEC—do you? So after you get through reading the newsletter your homework assignment for this weekend is to download the 19-page PDF document from the following link and study it. It is very well done. You might learn something—unless, of course, you are one of my ex-bosses from WebLink Wireless and you already know everything there is to know about Paging. (You can laugh now—it's supposed to be funny.)
After you finish, you may even have a comment for next week's newsletter. Please let me know if you do. Here are a couple of interesting clips from the presentation to whet your appetite. The 44 million in the bar graph is a typo, it should be 45 million; it is stated correctly in the text of the presentation.
Last week I mentioned the May 11, 2005, USA Mobility conference call for investors. A transcript of that call is available in their Form 8-K Report. Now on to more news and views. | 
A new issue of The Wireless Messaging Newsletter gets posted on the web each week. A notification goes out by e-mail to subscribers on most Fridays around noon central US time. The notification message has a link to the actual newsletter on the Internet. That way it doesn't fill up your incoming e-mail account. There is no charge for subscription and there are no membership restrictions. Readers are a very select group of wireless industry professionals, and include the senior managers of many of the world's major Paging and Wireless Data companies. There is an even mix of operations managers, marketing people, and engineers—so I try to include items of interest to all three groups. It's all about staying up-to-date with business trends and technology. I regularly get reader's comments, so this newsletter has become a community forum for the Paging, and Wireless Data communities. You are welcome to contribute your ideas and opinions. Unless otherwise requested, all correspondence addressed to me is subject to publication in the newsletter and on my website. I am very careful to protect the anonymity of those who request it. NOTE: This newsletter is best viewed at screen resolutions of 800x600 (good) or 1024x768 (better). Any current revision of web browser should work fine. Please notify me of any problems with viewing. This site is compliant with XHTML 1.0 transitional coding for easy access from wireless devices. (XML 1.0/ISO 8859-1.) | |||
| SPECIAL REPORT |
Global paging with Iridium If you or a customer have a requirement for a global paging service, Iridium may be the answer. There have not been many devices build for this marketplace, but the Iridium 9501 Satellite Pager by Motorola, is one of these products. Originally built exclusively for Iridium by Motorola and no longer in production, it is still available on the reborn Iridium network through Iridium's partners. It's no small feat to operate a global voice/data satellite network with the sophistication of Iridium. There are few other providers of similar satellite services, but most are now geared more toward government, military, and enterprise customers, and do not have pager offerings: InMarSat and GlobalStar, for example. The Iridium 9501 operates like a conventional pager, but features a satellite receiver that utilizes Iridium's global network. The pager can receive conventional numeric pages via an international telephone number, and can also receive alphanumeric messages via a web site or e-mail address. Some customers may be interested in a satellite telephone handset that can also get e-mail and numeric messages, as opposed to strictly a pager. Keep in mind, though, that all satellite devices are subject to basic satellite requirements, most notably line-of-sight to the sky. They will have limited functionality in vehicles, structures, wooded areas, and so on. You will get confirmed delivery of messages once you're again in range, but these devices aren't designed to work optimally houses and buildings. The rise of global GSM services, which blankets most of the population centers of the world, has also presented an attractive alternative to satellite services. A bit of history on Iridium: Iridium was the satellite phone service launched by Motorola on Sept 23, 1998, when the last satellite of its global constellation was in place. The Iridium system has 66 satellites and 5 spares in low earth orbit (LEO), about 485 miles above the surface. Each Iridium satellite orbits the earth in about 100 minutes, and at any given time, one or more Iridium satellites are visible from almost any point on the globe. Handset prices of over $3000 and airtime fees of several dollars per minute, a lack of good sales and distribution channels, as well as attempting to market to ordinary people as opposed to specialty markets, seemed to doom the service from the beginning. Motorola decided to end the Iridium service on March 17, 2000, at 11:59 pm. After billions were spent on the 66 satellites, and the $1 million per month that it cost Motorola for Boeing to operate the satellites, Motorola initiated plans to deorbit and destroy the constellation. Various investor groups attempted to save Iridium, and in the face of concerns of debris from the deorbited satellites actually hitting someone on earth, which NASA pinned at 1 in 250, the Defense Department even provided $72 million to keep the satellites operational in exchange for usage rights. Finally, a group known as Iridium Satellite LLC successfully purchased the assets of the $7 billion Motorola Iridium program in November 2000 for a mere $25 million. The new Iridium, launched in March 2001, attempts to fix the shortcomings of the original by expanding beyond satellite voice telephone service, into data, video, realtime monitoring, and special applications in markets such as mining, oil/gas, maritime, emergency services, etc. Motorola still makes the satellite telephone handsets, which sell for around $1000. Airtime rates are around $1.50/min. The Save Iridium web site chronicles some of the timeline in efforts to keep Iridium alive.
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| READER'S COMMENTS |
From: craig@selective.co.nz Hi Brad I am looking for a Tescom TC2000 and several TC1101B pager test sets. Would you mind throwing a note in your "equipment needed" section of the newsletter to this effect. Thanks Craig Meldrum, Managing Director New Zealand From: rburchett@eeontheweb.com Brad: We were one of the few 'dealers' for Telelink Wireless Technologies (TWT), AKA Telelink DS5000 series paging terminals, home of Nils Erickson the 'father of Glenayre' paging that sold them their first terminal that built the empire. We also installed many Unipage terminals that are still up and running. We all know the way that grand old GL and Unipage went, well now Telelink has gone down that pathway as well. We have a few Telelink DS terminals out there to support still and we aren't alone! We are sure that there are many more TWT supporters like us that read your fine newsletter each week and mourn the loss of these once-great companies. Now we sweat where we will get help and tech support when one of these dragons loses some scales and our customers start to run for alternate wireless products to fill the gap. In our case, we have one private facility and one hospital left with TWT units and many with Unipage machines still in service and no desire (and in the case of hospitals; no money) to replace them with one of the remaining vendors products. I respectfully propose that YOU consider becoming the 'support group' for us that maintain the great dinosaurs of yore such as Unipage and Telelink that still clank and rumble thru the halls of paging. Since they utilize early "DOS" style of hardened (and fully debugged) operating systems (that are considered archaic by modern standards) they don't crash regularly, don't hiccup or require updates and don't respond well when hackers send current-production viruses out to kill them they tend to do simple things like make pagers go off regularly and don't break down often. Customers love them and we still fix them. My best example is that we laugh at the Z-80 processors that Unipage terminals use; our kids wouldn't be caught dead with a lousy 8-bit processor clocked at a pathetic 2 or 4 MHz for their games, but we can page a pager forever with it and it rarely breaks. Why is that? Consider setting up a "Jurassic Park" e-mail bulletin-board type of support group for those of us that maintain and program these machines and since it is not free to use your time and space I propose that we start it off at a meager $5 per user per month to join the group. This would be payable say annually or maybe semi-annually so it doesn't become a billing headache. Then you get a separate web page with a link for us to connect to (linked to the newsletter) where we could get into the password-protected site to field questions/ answers/ info/ data & program swap/ short classified ads, etc. and you would be paid for your web space, programming, time, forwarding, filtering, etc. etc. to make it worthwhile. The $5 would also filter out the ones that really have no interest or knowledge that would be of help/ or require help of this specific type as well. Not to make any enemies here...the object of the game is to simply provide help and assistance to each other for those of us that work on the ancient paging systems that won't die a natural death like the PC on your desk that is outdated in a month. You are the last remaining pillar of the paging industry and whether your readers love you or hate you we all must admit that you provide the service no one else does, so you are a natural to take this project on and help us keep the members of 'The Park' paging along. With your help, we could locate that much needed replacement card, buy a leftover terminal, find out how to program a feature, fix a problem, restore a dead system or just squeeze the last bit of speed out of an aging system to make that cheap facility manager smile at us at the end of the day. Think about it. We must all hang together . . . and you know the rest. Robert L. (Bob) Burchett
From: PTC-PWG@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Puranik, Gagan When: June 1, 2005 (9am ~ 2pm) AGENDA: Register Today for AAPC Wireless Forum at http://www.pagingcarriers.org/2005wc/agenda.htm! Regards, |
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| AAPC BULLETIN | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
www.gtesinc.com GTES is the only Glenayre authorized software support provider in the Paging industry. With over 200 years of combined experience in Glenayre hardware and software support, GTES offers the industry the most professional support and engineering development staff available. New Product Development New Hardware Platform
Continued Support Programs GTES Partner Program CALL US TODAY FOR YOUR SUPPORT NEEDS
|  Wireless Communication Solutions The Hark ISI-400LX is a hardware device that encapsulates serial data into TCP/IP for transmission over the Internet. It can also be configured to convert incoming TAP messages from the serial port and send them over the Internet to Paging providers in e-mail (SMTP) or Simple Network Paging Protocol (SNPP) format. The ISI-400LX with the optional external modem can connect to a secondary dial-up ISP when a failure on the ethernet port is detected.
This device is the perfect companion for the Hark Gateway products. An ISI can be located at a remote location for receiving TAP, TNPP, or Billing traffic using a local ISP eliminating long distance phone charges.
System Features & Benefits:
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Daviscomms—Product Examples For information about our Contract Manufacturing services or our Pager or Telemetry line, please call Bob Popow at 480-515-2344, bob@daviscommsusa.com or visit our website www.daviscommsusa.com
|  Prism Message Gateway Systems Your Choice of Options
Popular Choice for Domestic and International
Logical Choice
Go ahead . . . be choosy . . . choose Prism Systems International
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eRF Wireless
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| WIRELESS NEWS | |
Carriers Find Their Way to LBS Wireless carriers have started getting more serious about adding location-based services to their portfolios for both enterprises and consumers. By Brad Smith The industry has heard a lot about the commercial applications for location-based services (LBS) for years. Now, it looks as though the languid application finally may be emerging as a mass-market tool in the United States. For several years, Nextel Communications has been the only carrier with an LBS strategy, offering it principally to its enterprise customers for such things as transportation asset tracking. The carrier has started offering some consumer services, as well. Sprint recently launched a consumer LBS application intended to educate a wider market, and the carrier also has started offering location services to enterprises on a nationwide scale under the brand Sprint Business Mobility Framework. The latter includes partnerships with companies including Microsoft MapPoint, IBM and ESRI, a geographic information systems provider. Cingular Wireless, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA haven't yet announced plans for an aggressive LBS rollout, but are known to have the services under study. Verizon Wireless reportedly is close to launching LBS but didn't comment for this article. So, while it may be too early to call 2005 the year that LBS takes off widely, carriers seem to be eager to get into the broad market to capture sizeable revenues some analysts have predicted. ABI Research has forecast the market for location services could reach $3.6 billion by 2010. The demand for location services seems to be strong. The analyst group In-Stat, a sister company of Wireless Week, found in a survey of consumers last fall that 85.6 percent of wireless subscribers are interested in at least one LBS application. The applications drawing the most interest were driving directions, maps on phones, local traffic updates, mobile city guides and local weather information. Less-popular applications included child tracking, 411 directory assistance, friend finder and location-based games. To The Rescue Sprint recently launched a location-enabled 411 service, along with roadside assistance. The carrier already offered directory services and Road Rescue, so the new application adds location to those. Subscribers using 411 can now ask directory assistance operators to pinpoint their location and get turn-by-turn directions to places they want to go. The cost for both services will remain the same ($4 monthly for Road Rescue and $1.25 per 411 call) because Sprint wants to encourage subscribers to explore the use of location, according to Joe Averkamp, senior director of the carrier's emerging markets sector. Because most of Sprint's customers use handsets running assisted-GPS technology, Averkamp says these two initial services allow the carrier to introduce subscribers to the future of LBS. Sprint isn't ready to discuss any specific new services that might be added, but Averkamp says he envisions the carrier eventually offering a whole suite of services under its Vision data service. One example might be adding data capabilities to the directory service so that a map or text could be sent to the handset. "The time is right," Averkamp says when asked why LBS hasn't been offered previously. "We think this will be a significant year for location services. This will generate a lot of call volume. It's also going to condition people to think of their wireless carrier as offering mapping capabilities." Ken Hyers, an analyst with ABI, says it makes a lot of sense for Sprint to add location to existing services, and adding location to directory assistance is "an excellent use" of location. "The thing with most wireless services is that you have to educate people," Hyers says. "You start with a common point and then maybe add additional services later." He calls location-based 411 "benign and extremely useful." Nextel, which has been selling location services to enterprises for more than two years, has started offering LBS applications intended for individuals. Among these is its new Find Me application launched in March with MapQuest, which pinpoints a subscriber location and then locates nearby places like restaurants, hotels and airports, as well as maps and directions. The MapQuest application expands earlier Nextel LBS programs like its Trimble Outdoors service promoted to help hikers find their way, and a driving direction service, according to Rob Consolazio, Nextel's senior director of Wireless Data Services. With Trimble Outdoors, hikers can use GPS to find their way even when they are out of Nextel coverage, as well as take photos on their handset and have them time and location-stamped. Motorola's ViaMoto driving direction application, which is used by Avis, also uses Nextel's network. Nextel has started offering LBS using the Research In Motion BlackBerry 7520 handset, which is GPS-enabled. Consolazio says mobile sales force automation using location has become a popular application among enterprises, as well as field service and other work force management applications. Salespeople can fly into a city and find accounts near any location, plus get driving directions. Nextel started selling its first GPS phone, the Motorola i88s, in 2002 but also has sold LBS applications using embedded modems in the transportation industry. The GPS phones, however, are seen as a lower-cost alternative and come with the advantage of providing voice and Direct Connect, Consolazio says. Asset Management All the applications may involve tracking objects or people, but the real reason enterprises want to use LBS is to better manage their assets, Consolazio says. That includes getting the closest technology support person to a customer, but also enabling the worker to download information once he's at a location, including using barcode scanning to look up parts. Nextel has started selling a platform that allows businesses or governments to add location to their existing applications that run on the carrier's network. In the past, Nextel worked with a wide number of application developers and integrators, but the new program enables organizations that would rather do their own development. Nextel opened its network to developers two years ago and now is working directly with some enterprises. Sprint is doing much the same with its new Sprint Business Mobility Framework, which it expected to launch nationally May 16. The service is in partnership with Microsoft's MapPoint unit and uses the MapPoint Location Server (MLS). The service provides presence information as well as location for Sprint devices, according to Barry Tishgart, director of product development and management for Sprint Business Solutions. It also enables SMS and voice alerts, plus presence and location notifications that indicate when a device is turned off or on or leaves a certain area. The framework provides an open standards interface into the Sprint network to location-enable business applications, Tishgart explains. "Customers can use the gateway to locate their employees, devices, either at a specific point in time or using geo-fencing," he says. "They can also use it to track and manage mobile employees, vehicles and inventory." Sprint has about three-dozen application partners that enterprises can work with to add location to their existing or new applications, or they can integrate their own application using the framework through a VPN, Tishgart says. Microsoft also expects that some of the 6 million developers who use Microsoft Visual Studio will be interested in the market, according to Stephen Lawler, general manager of MapPoint. A number of companies already use the Business Mobility Framework, including 1-800-Got-Junk?, a nationwide junk removal service, and St. Louis-based Schnuck Markets, which uses it to manage 100 delivery trucks in six states. MapPoint, which handles about 20 million mapping functions daily, can easily be integrated into most line-of-business applications, Lawler says. The MLS gives enterprises control over authorization and privacy issues, allowing them to define how location is used. The framework can be used with any kind of device, including ReadyLink push-to-talk phones, smartphones and basic voice-centric handsets, as well as modules or modems, Tishgart says. Some MLS users have developed voice applications as well, according to Lawler. LBS will become even more attractive when Sprint launches its EV-DO network, which it is expected to do this summer. EV-DO will make it more attractive to use location with information sharing, Tishgart says. Tole Hart, a Gartner analyst, says LBS may sound like an attractive service to offer to customers, but carriers need to focus on how they will market and price the services. LBS can have an immediate benefit for enterprise solutions like field service and transportation, but the revenue-generating opportunity isn't so clear on the consumer side, he warns. In addition to enhancing existing services like 411, consumer applications could prove to be popular in niche areas, such as the ability to keep track of children so a parent would know when their child has left school, or knowing when a friend was nearby, notes ABI's Hyers. It is still too early to tell what location-based services may become the most popular, he says. But carriers at least seem ready to open those gates. Source: Wireless Week Sprint Launches Sprint Business Mobility FrameworkSM to Help Businesses Locate and Share Information with Mobile Workers Another business wireless solution from Sprint to boost productivity, lower operating costs and increase customer satisfaction OVERLAND PARK, Kan.—05/16/2005 Sprint (NYSE: FON) announced today the national market launch of Sprint Business Mobility Framework, a new solution to meet advanced mobility requirements of business customers by extending corporate applications to the hands of mobile workers and expanding the power of those applications with location-based services, messaging and geographic notifications. Sprint Business Mobility Framework, adds to the already robust Sprint mobility portfolio aimed at driving improvements in productivity, operating costs and customer satisfaction for business customers. Businesses can now enable new or enhance existing applications through Sprint Business Mobility Framework to locate and track mobile workers or assets nationwide. In addition, companies can direct workers across geographic lines, provide text or voice messages, and share critical wireless data information with workers The comprehensive portfolio of capabilities includes:
Examples of solutions enabled by Sprint Business Mobility Framework, using any or all of the location, messaging and notification services, include:
The launch of Sprint Business Mobility Framework continues a series of "wireless firsts" by Sprint for the business market. Recently, the company launched Sprint Managed MobilitySM Services and Sprint Extended WorkplaceSM, both of which built on Sprint's strategy to encourage business adoption of wireless and eliminated the boundaries between wireless and wireline services through more integrated offers. Additionally, Sprint is the first wireless provider to offer a nationwide Service Level Agreement on its wireless voices services (launched in August 2004) and wireless data services (launched March 2005). "Sprint Business Mobility Framework is an industry first as Sprint has opened its network to allow partners, application providers and customers the ability to utilize the intelligence in our network to create and enhance mobility solutions," said David Owens, vice president marketing—Strategic Markets, Sprint Business Solutions. "More than ever, businesses are seeking tools to extend existing and deploy new applications to their mobile workforces. By utilizing our framework, enterprises will realize benefits that are immediate and tangible. A simple example is providing location-based information to firms so they can eliminate downtime of their field employee by knowing exactly where they are and how to most effectively deploy them based on the resource location and workload." "Businesses continue to demand productive and secure wireless connectivity between mobile workers and the enterprise," said Eugene Signorini, Director, Wireless/Mobile Enterprise Solutions for Yankee Group. "Sprint Business Mobility Framework is another tool to help businesses realize new efficiencies gained by advanced mobile communications and the simplicity of deploying applications for a mobile workplace." How does Sprint Business Mobility Framework work? To learn more about Sprint Business Mobility Framework, visit www.sprint.com/business. Sprint's deployment of broadband EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) technology across its wireless network will allow for even more robust applications to be deployed and more substantial data to be shared via Sprint Business Mobility Framework. EV-DO will accelerate mobile device data speeds up to 10 times faster than on today's network, enabling LAN-like access to critical information. This means more powerful applications can be shared across wireless and wireline networks - a distinct Sprint advantage. About Sprint If you have questions regarding information in these press release contact the company listed below. I-Newswire.com is a press release service and not the author of this press release. The information that is on or available through this site is for informational purposes only and speaks only as of the particular date or dates of that information. As some companies / PR Agencies submit their press releases once per week/month or quarter, make sure check the official company website for accurate release dates as our site displays the I-Newswire.com distribution date only. We do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of information on or available through this site, and we are not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in that information or for actions taken in reliance on that information. i-Newswire, 2005-05-17 - Media Contact: Source: I-Newswire.com USA Mobility Names Scott B. Tollefsen as General Counsel ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/—USA Mobility, Inc. (Nasdaq: USMO), a leading provider of wireless messaging services, today announced that Scott B. Tollefsen will join the company as general counsel on May 31, 2005. Vincent D. Kelly, president and chief executive officer, stated: "We are very pleased to have Scott join the USA Mobility team. He has substantial experience managing the legal and regulatory affairs of leading operating companies in the communications industry. He will help us rationalize our technical infrastructure and network operations and expand our service offerings to customers in the health services, government, corporate, and emergency service first response sectors." Tollefsen has over 25 years of legal experience, chiefly related to developing and operating commercial satellite communications businesses. He was senior vice president and general counsel of both SES Americom, Inc. and Hughes Communications, Inc., where he directed all legal, regulatory, and contracts activity. He held the same title and responsibilities for the U.S.- based interactive publishing unit of Vivendi Universal S.A. He also has been a partner in private law practice. He earned his B.A. and J.D. degrees at the University of Virginia and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. About USA Mobility Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act: Statements contained herein or in prior press releases which are not historical fact, such as statements regarding USA Mobility's expectations for future operating and financial performance, are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause USA Mobility's actual results to be materially different from the future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expectations include, but are not limited to, declining demand for paging products and services, the ability to continue to reduce operating expenses, future capital needs, competitive pricing pressures, competition from both traditional paging services and other wireless communications services, government regulation, reliance upon third-party providers for certain equipment and services, the timely and efficient integration of the operations and facilities of Metrocall and Arch as well as other risks described from time to time in periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although USA Mobility believes the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. USA Mobility disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Contact: Source: USA Mobility Press Release Supreme Court Affirms Uzans Ruling 05.17.05 SCHAUMBURG, Ill.—Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT-message board) announced that the United States Supreme Court today affirmed a judgment for $2.13 billion against the Uzan family of Turkey for perpetrating a massive fraud against Motorola. The Supreme Court decision denying the Uzans’ petition for a writ of certiorari ends all the Uzan’s rights to further appeal of the July 31, 2003 judgment rendered by Judge Rakoff of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. As previously announced, the District Court found that the Uzans had perpetrated a "massive fraud" against Motorola in connection with loans made by Motorola to Telsim, the second largest telecommunications company in Turkey that was owned by the Uzans. The District Court found that the Uzans fraudulently induced Motorola to make the loans to Telsim, stole the collateral given to Motorola to secure the loan (stock in Telsim), filed false criminal charges against Motorola executives and stole at least $1 billion from Telsim for personal use. The Court of Appeals had also upheld the District Court’s ruling. "We are extremely gratified with the decision from the Supreme Court," said Peter Lawson, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of Motorola. "From the outset of this case, the Uzans have raised one specious argument after another to divert attention from their massive fraud. The highest court of the United States has followed the lower courts in rejecting the after-the-fact contrivances of the Uzans. We will continue in our efforts to recover Motorola’s stolen assets from the Uzans." Source: UNSTRUNG Wireless carriers partner on Amber Alert text messages By Tracy Ford WASHINGTON—Nine wireless carriers said they will send text messages to people who opt in to receive Amber Alerts over their cell phones in the culmination of a movement CTIA President Steve Largent began more than a year ago. Participating carriers are Alltel Corp., Cingular Wireless L.L.C., Dobson Communications, Nextel Communications Inc., Rural Cellular Corp., Sprint Corp., T-Mobile USA Inc., U.S. Cellular Corp. and Verizon Wireless. Terry Addington, chief executive officer of First Cellular of Southern Illinois and chairman of the board of CTIA, said smaller wireless operators like his company likely will participate in the initiative but don't have the resources to move as quickly as larger operators. Nevertheless, the participating carriers today cover 90 percent of the nation's 182 million wireless users. Statistics show that the first three hours after a child is abducted are the most critical to recovering the child alive, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which partnered with industry on the initiative. As such, the public often plays a crucial part in safely recovering an abducted child after an Amber Alert, said John Walsh, host of "America's Most Wanted" and a co-founder of NCMEC. "This has been a terrible year for children," Walsh said, commenting on a rash of heinous crimes against kids. Adding a wireless segment to Amber Alerts not only can help capture criminals abducting children more quickly, but could prevent abductions since would-be perpetrators might be aware cell-phone owners could have immediate access to Amber Alerts. People who want to opt in to the wireless text messages must register at wirelessamberalerts.org or their carrier's Web site to be able to receive the alerts and can choose up to five geographic areas for which they would like to receive alerts. Phones also must be able to carry text messages. Carriers are not charging for the text messages, but the capability did not come free. An estimated $9 million of resources was spent to set the system up, said Syniverse CEO Ed Evans. Syniverse worked with HP, Oracle, SunGuard Availability Services, Veritas Software, Verizon Information Technology L.L.C., and Integrated Research to set up the capability. At today's press conference announcing the initiative, speakers downplayed the cost and focused instead on how powerful a tool the text message blasts could be. "We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves," Largent said. Indeed, the first recovery after an Amber Alert was issued had a wireless component: An infant in Dallas was saved after being abducted by the babysitter because a motorist heard the alert on his radio and used his cell phone to alert law enforcement, said Ernie Allen, president and CEO of NCMEC. In Pennsylvania, where Nextel launched an Amber Alert pilot program more than a year ago, two children have been recovered with aid from wireless phones, said Wayne Sheppard, the Pennsylvania Amber Alert coordinator. In one instance, the caller received a text message and called police, and another person heard the alert on the radio and used a cell phone to call authorities. Source: RCR Wireless News So, Who Treats Folks The Best? May 17, 2005 Research and consulting firm The Customer Respect Group today released results of a 2Q05 study and survey it says rates how North America's largest telecom and networking firms treat online customers. Using a rating system called a “Customer Respect Index (CRI)” assigned company, the group said Verizon Wireless did best in the telecommunications category and best overall, while Charter Communications fared worst. Ericsson topped the networking/communications equipment list, while Qualcomm came in last. And CenturyTel was the most improved. The Customer Respect Group claims it conducts the only study “to bring objective measure to the analysis of corporate performance from an online customer's perspective.” Its CRI rating is described as a qualitative/quantitative in-depth analysis and independent measure of the customer online experience when interacting with companies via the Internet. “Scores of 8.0 and above are considered excellent and show an admirable level of customer respect,” the group said. It interviews a representative sample of the adult Internet population in relation to corporate Web sites in order to compare their simplicity, responsiveness and other characteristics. The Group, however, says telecom and networking had mixed results this year compared with 2004 averages. "We very much like the direction in which the telecom and networking industries are moving with their Web sites," says Terry Golesworthy, president. "That said, we still see room for improvement in a number of areas.” He also indicates the study details improvement opportunities for each company. There are 33 companies on the telecom list and 17 companies on the networking/equipment list. Telecommunications Companies Customer Respect Index
Network & Other Communications Equipment-Customer Respect Index
Source: TELECOMWEB |
I have built two web pages about Mountain Communications in Mountain Home, Arkansas—a regional Paging company that the owner wants to sell. The first page has several photos and some links to background information on the company. Please click here for that page. If you like what you see and want to read all the financial details, please send me an e-mail and I will send you the unpublished address of the second page. This is an outstanding opportunity for someone to acquire a Paging company in a beautiful resort area of the Arkansas mountains where there are several large lakes and rivers. They tell me the fishing and boating are great in that area. By the way, this business also includes some wireless broadband, a trunking radio system, and a two-way radio dealership. Update: we are willing to negotiate. Please call Brad Dye at: 618-842-3892. |
Equipment Needed—Want to Buy the following
Please contact Brad Dye if you have any of this equipment to sell. Equipment located outside of the USA is OK. |
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THIRD TERM SUPPORTER |  Building on its long success story in 1-way Paging, Advantra International has become the expert in designing and manufacturing the most advanced and lowest cost ReFLEX™ radio modems for 2-way data-communication. The company also focuses on offering total telemetry solutions. Advantra’s current product mix of own products includes the ReFLEX™ radio modules Barran, Karli and Wirlki and the new, highly successful and very low cost location device, the Kepler. Advantra thanks its solid reputation to its world-renowned development team, state-of-the-art manufacturing, excellent customer service and its proven track-record. Location Devices & ReFLEX Modems
Sales and Marketing Contacts
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Intelligent Paging & Mobile Data Products
Selective is a developer and manufacturer of highly innovative paging receiver/decoders and mobile data equipment including the PDT2000 Paging Data Terminal, THE MOST INTELLIGENT PAGING RECEIVER IN THE MARKET. The PDT2000 is a large display pager designed for desktop or in-vehicle mounting and is widely used by emergency services and in onsite paging systems for forklift dispatch, Information services etc. All of the following capabilities are standard features of the PDT2000 and of our other paging data products:
Our mobile data equipment includes a range of intelligent Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) which may be interfaced to a variety of wireless networks including ReFlex, GPRS & CDMA cellular. Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and GPS solutions, Dispatch & Messaging software. We offer mobile communications dealers and systems integrators a “fast to market” job dispatch and job management capability with the inbuilt job processing system which may be interfaced to a variety of CAD & JMS platforms. Specialised local area paging systems, paging interception and message reprocessing software, field force automation and mobile dispatch solutions. We also do customized product development and export worldwide.
I am an authorized Manufacturer Representative for Selective Communications. Please contact me directly for any additional information. | TGA Technologies 
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CUSTOM APPLICATIONS
Please call me so we can discuss your need or your idea. Or contact me by e-mail for additional information. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Remember that old word “Residuals”? The EE Group is actively seeking Dealers with sales/ service/installation capabilities to promote the latest wireless AVL, SCADA and data products from Telegauge Systems, Inc. This innovative program requires NO inventory and NO billing by your facility; you just sell it and sign up the end user to collect the commissions. Now the real reason to choose the EE Group and Telegauge over the host of others; we pay you permanent residual income every month on your airtime sales forever. Airtime commissions range up to 12% per month based on prior sales and you buy all equipment direct from the factory at 2-tiered wholesale prices as well for great margins. Telegauge builds fully 2-way overt and covert (hidden) GPS based Automatic Vehicle Location, SCADA, remote management, telemetry and data systems routed via cellular and satellite that are delivered to the end user via the Internet or direct to the desktop. Applications are both ‘canned’ and custom depending upon the customers needs. We even have full dispatch systems including credit card swipe and billing if needed. Finally, the prices on the product are guaranteed to be the LOWEST in the industry at under $600 retail for the equipment and from $6 to $30 on the monthly airtime with most customers in the $15 range. Note too that the price is the same for cellular OR satellite world wide coverage and no one else has this exclusive capability. Telegauge provides the product, software, airtime, billing and final information from a single source and you can be a BIG part of it. You stock NOTHING, just collect the checks. We are paid by the manufacturer to support YOU and unlike other factories; we never bid against you, restrict you or take your deal. We help you with demo equipment, brochures, information, sales assistance, web advertising and user name/passwords for the website so that you don’t even need to buy anything to start up fast. Contact us for a no-obligation CD of all the presentation and training material, price spreadsheets and information at: EEGroup@EEonTheWeb.com or for fast action call for a link to the Dealers Only page: 310-534-4456 and mention that you found out about it via Brad Dye’s Newsletter. You have nothing to lose and some great residual income to gain. Call or e-mail NOW. |
Customers in Latin America may contact Brad Dye for price and delivery information. Español esta bien. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Wireless Overview System Operation Payment Guardian requires absolutely no customer interaction and integrated seamlessly into the vehicles electrical system and is not visible to the customer, decreasing the possibility of tampering. Unlike other similar products on the market, Payment Guardian™ requires no keypads or input devices, eliminating the hassle of having to generate codes and giving those codes to the customer each and every payment cycle. With Payment Guardian?, lenders no longer have to rely on customers to enter codes into a keypad correctly. With Payment Guardian, only non paying customers require use of the system. Once the system has been activated in the customer’s vehicle—each time the ignition is turned to the OFF position, Payment Guardian reminds the customer that payment has not yet been received or insurance is not current and provides them with specific instructions to contact the leinholder immediately. If the reminder is ignored, you can simply activate Payment Guardian’s Starter Interrupt feature allowing no one to start the vehicle until the system is reset. Payment Guardian’s system control center has been designed to meet the different need of individual lenders and dealers that want a total customized solution to manage their systems, providing you with 3 different ways to use the systems features. This enables you to instantly activate system features, schedule activations to occur at a preset time or completely automate the systems features, allow you to just manage your systems with just a click of the mouse. System Features Audible Voice Reminder Starter Interrupt Emergency Override Vehicle Finder Door Unlock
| High-speed simulcast Paging with protocols such as POCSAG and FLEX™ requires microsecond accuracy to synchronize the transmission of digital Paging signals.  Zetron's Simulcast System uses GPS timing information to ensure that the broadcasted transmissions between the nodes of the Simulcast System and associated transmitters are synchronized to very tight tolerances. This system is ideal for public or private Paging system operators that use multiple transmitters and wish to create new Paging systems or to build out existing systems into new regions. For more information about Zetron's High Speed Simulcast Paging System, the Model 600 and Model 620, go to: www.zetron.com/paging.
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Advertise Here Details about the various advertising plans can be read here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
InfoRad® Wireless Office (Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP) is designed for the professional who needs full-featured wireless messaging capabilities. Features include enhanced user interface, message log with search function, scheduled Paging, group and individual message addresses, TAPI Smart™, multiple protocol SMS communication compatibility. AlphaCare™ support services available. With a 32-bit architecture, InfoRad Wireless Office is designed for compatibility with Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. For more information on InfoRad Wireless Messaging software, and a free demo, please click on the logo.
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| MORE TECHNOLOGY NEWS |
Wireless Leaders & Laggards: Health Care
Doctors and PDAs proved a good match, helping give the industry an early lead with wireless.
News Story by Heather Havenstein
MAY 16, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The health care industry—traditionally known as a laggard in the IT arena—is now emerging as a leader in adopting mobile and wireless technology. In an October 2004 study of wireless adoption in various vertical industries, market research firm IDC found that more than 80% of 34 health care organizations polled said they have deployed wireless LANs or plan to deploy one in the next 12 months. And according to the 2005 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Leadership Survey, which was published in February, 79% of 253 health care executives responding to an online questionnaire said they will use wireless information systems this year while 54% said they will use handheld devices.
"Doctors were the first large worker base that started using PDAs on the job," says Ellen Daley, a principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. "Here are a bunch of people who have an appetite for carrying PDAs, and here is a cheap way for wirelessly enabling a hospital. Hospitals decided to put the two together to see how they can improve patient care."
This marriage of clinicians armed with mobile devices and hospitals moving to deploy WLANs as a cheaper and more effective way to provide connectivity in aging buildings is resulting in the growth of health-care-specific wireless applications.
In the IDC study, more than 60% of the respondents in the health care industry reported using industry-specific wireless applications. That dwarfs the percentage of respondents in other industries, such as banking and manufacturing, who reported using tailored wireless applications.
Within health care, some of the most popular uses of wireless technology include accessing and updating electronic medical records (EMR) at patients' bedsides, matching bar-coded patient wristbands and medication packages to physician orders, and using wireless badges for voice communication.
Reducing Medication Errors
Pairing mobile devices with doctors and nurses who are almost always on the move could reduce errors by allowing data to be accessed and entered into systems at the point of care, according to industry observers.
However, wireless technology often brings new challenges. Among other things, health care organizations must secure patient data, guarantee the usability of devices and find a way to deploy wireless access points without disrupting care.
Children's Memorial Hospital of Chicago has tapped wireless technology as part of its efforts to eliminate medication errors. In December, the hospital completed the rollout of a broadband distribution system from InnerWireless Inc. that acts as a utility to support WLANs, personal communications services, cell phones, handhelds and two-way radios.
Nurses now scan bar codes on patient wristbands and on medications with a scanner attached to a thin client. The device sits on a cart linked by a wireless network to an application that contains physician medication orders, says William Brook, the hospital's director of IT.
"This way, the nurse knows she has the right drug for the right kid at the right time of day," Brook says. "It's a quality assurance issue for us."
Although Brook says nurses are already reporting increased accuracy in medication administration, the system has presented some problems. During the pilot of the bar-coding project, the hospital used laptops on rolling carts but found that they were vulnerable to viruses and unauthorized access by medical students, Brook says. So the hospital turned to remote access technology from Citrix Systems Inc. to deliver applications on thin clients.
In addition to the challenges around the use of laptops, Brook found installing the wireless access points to be more difficult in the hospital than it would be in an office building. Workers often had to install the access points at night when there was less activity and use sterile curtains to ensure that no dust or other material would get into patient rooms, he explains.
However, the wireless infrastructure has also allowed the hospital to eliminate dead spots in its paging system, and it will be used as the hospital deploys an EMR system to support the use of handheld devices to enter data, Brook notes.
Keeping Patient Data Secure
Sutter Health in Sacramento has installed WLANs in about 75% of the 27 hospitals it operates in Northern California. Like Children's Memorial Hospital, Sutter is focused on pairing bar-coding technology with thin clients at the bedside to reduce medication errors.
In addition, Sutter has included wireless access via handheld devices in its plans to begin rolling out an integrated EMR system to all its hospitals by the end of 2006, says John Hummel, Sutter's CIO.
By using Citrix remote-access technology with thin clients, Sutter can control what type of information doctors can access and download to mobile devices and thus meet patient data security and privacy guidelines, Hummel says.
"In most cases, the only thing [doctors] are downloading is just a view of a screen," he says. "We limit what they can download so it is not patient information or sensitive data. As soon as they log off, that form evaporates. Nothing is stored locally."
But going wireless has given some doctors the expectation that they can use the hospital's WLAN like a public Wi-Fi hot spot found in a coffee shop or an airport, Hummel adds.
"We have a secured Wi-Fi site, so you can't just walk in and drop in on one of our nodes," he says. Hospital officials are now looking for a way to ease the frustration of users who want to use their own wireless cards in their laptops and other devices instead of being required to use cards provided by the hospital, according to Hummel.
Although these leading users are moving ahead with wireless, barriers still prevent many others in the industry from following, according to analysts. Wireless-enabled handhelds usually work well for online prescriptions or other single-purpose applications, says John Quinn, principal at Capgemini Health, who serves as chief technology officer for the IT services firm's provider practice. But for the clinical documentation generally needed for EMR systems, handhelds have "too little real estate for the amount of information to be managed," he says.
Interest in using tablet PCs for wireless access to clinical systems is increasing, but designing the architecture so the wireless application can handle the data influx without suffering performance problems and ensure that no patient data is stored on devices has proved difficult for many vendors, he adds.
"You wind up with some very, very big databases that have to be local to the device, and that becomes a challenge for the architect," Quinn says. "What am I loading onto it, and how do I keep it synchronized yet keep performance up so people will use it?"
In addition, even the slightest performance degradation with a wireless device is likely to prompt physicians to balk at using the wireless application, he says.
"The primary reasons why these projects fail is lack of physician buy-in," Quinn says. "It could be because they find some mistakes in how the system is set up... and lose faith in it and feel like they are better off sticking with paper and pen."
Still, despite the challenges, wireless is taking hold in the health care market.
For example, Sutter's Hummel says that as his organization moves forward to rebuild all existing hospital buildings to meet earthquake construction codes, "we have not been able to figure out how to justify wired other than for specialized [medical] equipment."
Source: COMPUTERWORLD
You can’t stop IM so learn to love it
by Jim Carr
[Thu, May 12, 2005] Instant messaging is the future, says Jim Carr, and there is a world of possibility waiting out there. But there is risk as well as benefit, and it must be faced.
Stockbrokers do it with investors, salespeople with their bosses. Travel agents do it with vagabonds, newspaper reporters with their editors.
If you think your organization's employees are not doing it–using instant messaging to communicate with colleagues, customers, their spouses and children, their friends–then you are leaving your network open to a wide range of potential vulnerabilities.
Simply put, instant messaging (IM), once the domain of teens chatting online with their friends, has become one of the most widely deployed communications tools in corporations today and, though there's no question that IM has yet to reach the popularity of e-mail, it is significantly less secure than e-mail.
Though about half of all corporate employees are using IM in one form or another at work, only a quarter of organizations have deployed a formal IM solution, according to the Radicati Group, an IT market research firm that focuses on enterprise messaging.
This means most instant messaging within corporations is still happening over free, public IM networks–problematic, of course, because the public IM systems can open up dangerous security holes in a corporate network.
Public IM traffic is sent unencrypted, so it can be hacked, identities can be spoofed, and conversations can be intercepted by packet-sniffing, leaving networks vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks. Symantec, for example, reports a 400 percent increase in IM and peer-to-peer (P2P) networking viruses, worms and trojans over the last 12 months.
Where does that leave enterprises with large bases of IM users? In the lurch, according to analysts.
The risks are very real, they say. Some of the potential problems enterprise IM users bring up include virus and worm attacks, such as the Bropia, Serflog and Kelvir viruses seen this past winter, trojan programs and other similar corrupt files that are undetected by traditional anti-virus scanners, and spim–the acronym for spam over instant messaging.
Add to that the uncontrolled use of screen names, which can allow rogue users to impersonate others, client vulnerabilities such as buffer overflow vulnerabilities, and lack of IT policies and capabilities for stopping the exchange of confidential information.
That IM has become popular among enterprise workers is not a major news scoop–it is in use in 85 percent of American enterprises, according to the Radicati Group. Radicati projects there will be 78 million enterprise IM users by the end of 2008.
That number will include the obvious users–customer support reps providing technical help, brokers passing stock prices to investors, even travel agents answering questions about flight times and availability.
But IM's value to enterprises runs to much more than that. For instance, Barr Management uses WiredRed's e/pop enterprise IM product to broadcast alerts on network outages, new company procedures–in essence, information that must be distributed quickly to hundreds of employees.
It is particularly useful in sales organizations such as brokerages and energy firms, where reacting quickly to rapid price fluctuations can mean a profit or loss for the companies involved.
But these environments also require a secure system, and e/pop's private, secure architecture was a big selling point to Jon Klein, a vice president and general manager at the Chicago, IL, check cashing firm with 48 locations, when he bought the software a couple of years ago.
Unlike the popular consumer IM products–AOL's AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and Microsoft's MSN–which process messages through a publicly accessible IM server, enterprise IM packages rely on internal servers placed behind the corporate firewall, in effect shielding users from many of the threats found on the public IM networks.
"I like the fact it's internal and users can't go anywhere else," says Klein.
"The last thing I want is a Yahoo! or AOL system, where my people could contact anyone. Because it's internal, there's a limited number of people who can send messages, and I'm pretty much assured someone isn't going to inadvertently send out or download some type of virus."
Klein is right to worry about virus attacks via IM. Of the top 50 virus and worm attacks in the past year, 19 have used IM or P2P technologies–the 400 percent increase Symantec was talking about earlier.
"If you're using a public IM network, your security threats are similar to those with e-mail," says Graham Titterington, a principal analyst with research firm Ovum. Two of the big threats users face while using these networks, he points out, are downloading and executing virus-infected attachments, and clicking on links within instant messages that take them to "dirty" websites that execute malicious code.
Variants of the Bropia and Kelvir IM viruses, for instance, both install software that entices users of the MSN Messenger IM system to click on a link. That takes them to a malicious site where the code–a version of the Spybot worm–is downloaded to their system, opening it up for attack or hijacking by spammers.
Bropia exploits IM's so-called "presence," which indicates when a person is online. It inserts a copy of itself inside internet packets to alert other computers when IM users go online, automatically infecting everyone within the infected computer's buddy, or contacts list.
Serflog displays obscenities targeting the author of the e-mail worm Assiral, which attempted to curtail the spread of Bropia. In addition to those, malicious code that could be used to create an IM virus to attack MSN Messenger was published in February on the web.
The code attacks a hole in Messenger's "libpng" feature that controls the display of smiley faces, buddy icons and other graphics. Shortly thereafter AOL's AIM was attacked by a virus called Worm_Aimdes.A.
The antivirus software vendors, such as Symantec, McAfee, and F-Secure, all say their products will stop IM-borne viruses as well as those from e-mail.
Chris Wysopal, director of development for Symantec's security response unit, for example, says the company's enterprise antivirus product can make sure malicious code is not executed on the client side when users access the public IM networks.
Viruses, worms, and trojans aren't the only threats enterprises using IM face. Spim is increasingly showing up on the public IM networks, and enterprises face the task of limiting the spread of confidential information via unprotected IM clients.
A bigger problem is the unauthorized distribution of confidential data via non-secure IM networks, says Jon Sakoda, chief technology officer at IMLogic.
"Companies are waking up that [IM] is a two-way pipe to the outside world, and they need to see what's going out."
This is where products such as Akonix's L7, IMLogic's IM Manager, CipherTrust's IronMail, FaceTime's Enterprise Edition, IM-Age Software's IM-Policy Manager, Sybari's Antigen for Instant Messaging, and SurfControl's Instant Messaging Filter enter the picture. These products–dedicated appliances such as IronMail and software-only offerings such as L7–help IT staff secure their IM systems in a variety of ways.
So-called IM management gateways, such as Akonix's L7 Enterprise, are able to mediate employee access to public as well as enterprise IM systems.
They enforce policies on appropriate IM use, protect an enterprise network and its users from IM-based viruses and attacks, and monitor and log IM conversations for regulatory compliance, a key issue for health care and financial services companies.
Moreover, IM management solutions give IT the tools to scan IM content and match keywords to prevent unauthorized transmission of proprietary information and filter out spim. They can also be used to create and enforce a standardized profile for public or enterprise IM use by blocking access to unauthorized IM networks. In addition, several of the vendors integrate antivirus into their gateways.
Where IM-carried viruses are markedly different from e-mail-borne threats, however, is the speed at which they can propagate. IM is a trusted medium, and people aren't so cautious about using it as they are about e-mail, explains Marcel Nienhuis, a senior analyst at Radicati.
As a result they tend to click first and think later, opening an IM-delivered file or clicking on a link in an IM message quickly. This allows the virus to hijack their IM and propagate very quickly, says Nienhuis.
"An instant message pops up immediately on the recipient's desktop, unlike e-mail," he says. Radicati predicts 1.5 billion spim messages will be sent this year, three times the growth rate of spam.
"It's not a huge problem now," says Nienhuis. "[But] I think spammers are just getting a handle on how to deal with IM."
Jim Carr is an Aptos, CA-based freelance business and technology writer. He can be reached at jecarr13@charter.net
Source: SC Magazine
| FEATURED ADVERTISERS SUPPORTING THE NEWSLETTER | ||||
| Paging Seminar Specially designed course for sales, marketing, and administration personnel. Engineers will only be admitted with a note signed by their mothers, promising that they will just listen and not disrupt the class. (This is supposed to be funny!) This is a one-day training course on Paging that can be conducted at your place of business. Please take a look at the course outline to see if you think this might be beneficial in your employees: Paging Seminar outline. I would be happy to customize the content to meet your specific requirements. Although it touches on several "technical" topics, it is definitely not a technical course. I used to teach the sales and marketing people at Motorola Paging and they appreciated an atmosphere where they could ask technical questions without being made to feel like a dummy and without getting a long convoluted overly-technical answer that left them more confused than before. A good learning environment is one that is non-threatening. Let me know if you would like to receive a quotation, or if you would like to have any additional information. |
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| 6 | 140-1857 | QVSB | $400 | 2 | 166-0524 | Fan Module | $300 | |
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SATELLITE CONTROL FOR PAGING SYSTEMS $500.00 FLAT RATE TAPS—Texas Association of Paging Services is looking for partners on 152.480 MHz. Our association currently uses Echostar, formerly Spacecom, for distribution of our data and a large percentage of our members use the satellite to key their TXs. We have a CommOneSystems Gateway at the uplink in Chicago with a back-up running 24/7. Our paging coverage area on 152.480 MHz currently encompasses Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Kansas. The TAPS paging coverage is available to members of our Network on 152.480 MHz for $.005 a transmitter (per capcode per month), broken down by state or regions of states and members receive a credit towards their bill for each transmitter which they provide to our coverage. Members are able to use the satellite for their own use If you are on 152.480 MHz or just need a satellite for keying your own TXs on your frequency we have the solution for you. TAPS will provide the gateways in Chicago, with Internet backbone and bandwidth on our satellite channel for $ 500.00 (for your system) a month. Contact Ted Gaetjen @ 1-800-460-7243 or tedasap@asapchoice.com | Want to help the newsletter? Become a SPONSOR Promote your company's image with one of the posters or better yet, one of the commercial advertising packages
* cost per week—six-month minimum—or 26 issues For more details, and pricing on the various advertising options please click here |
| EMPLOYMENT SECTION | |
The well-known sales manager at CalAmp (formerly Vytek/Sonik) is looking for a new position. You may download his resumé here. And you can send him an e-mail here. | With 30 years experience, a seasoned wireless industry executive that has the unique blend of strategic planning skills, balanced with operational management experience. You may download his resumé here. And you can send him an e-mail here. |
EXPERIENCED PAGING TECHNICIAN Knowledgeable w/ Glenayre 3000L and Motorola paging infrastructure. Full-time salary including health benefits. RCC in Allentown, PA. Send resume & salary requirements via e-mail to: nickb@cawinet.com |  Now Hiring Motorola 2-way Radio Outside Sales Person Charleston, SC 843-266-6241 |
| Wi-Fi, WiMax, and VoIP News |
Proxim warns of bankruptcy prospects
It reported a loss of $7.8M in Q1
News Story by Peter Judge
MAY 13, 2005 (TECHWORLD.COM)—Wireless LAN vendor Proxim Corp. warned this week that it may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection unless it gets an infusion of cash or finds a buyer during the current quarter.
Formerly a major player in enterprise wireless LANs, the company has been slow to adapt to WLAN technology changes, ran into trouble managing mergers and acquisitions, and was stung by royalty payments it must make following a patent dispute with Symbol Technologies Inc. (see story). In the first quarter of 2005, Proxim reported a loss of $7.8 million, or 24 cents per share, on revenue of $25.4 million for the quarter that ended April 1.
It reported even larger losses in the previous quarter.
"The company has an immediate need for additional financing," Proxim said in a starkly worded statement this week about its quarterly earnings. "If the company were not able to enter into an agreement with a third-party purchaser or ... obtain sufficient financing in the second quarter of 2005, it would be required to seek protection under applicable bankruptcy laws."
Proxim makes traditional "fat" WLAN access points, of which it has an installed base in the enterprise second only to Cisco Systems Inc. However, over the past two years, fat APs have lost ground to centralized WLAN switch vendors like Symbol and Airespace (which was recently acquired by Cisco), both of which overtook Proxim in enterprise revenue last year.
"Their share has dwindled," said Richard Webb, a wireless analyst at Infonetics Research. "It's been a long time since they've been up there in the top three."
The company's Orinoco range of products has a strong WLAN heritage, evolving from the groundbreaking WaveLAN WLAN equipment created by NCR Corp. in the 1990s. The technology passed through a variety of companies, including AT&T Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., Agere Systems Inc. and finally, in 2002, Proxim. The acquisition of Agere by Proxim did not go well, according to Webb. "There was this huge mishmash of products. It was hard to know what they were all about," he said.
The company had difficulty getting into centralized WLANs with a software approach, he said, and then lost the Symbol patent dispute, which cost the company $23 million—roughly equivalent to one quarter's revenue. Proxim handed over several of its key patents to Symbol and continues to pay royalties. "The lawsuit caused them financial hurt and was a great setback to the company," said Webb.
Proxim's wide-area work, including a deal with Intel Corp. on WiMax, remains a positive for the company. But its work with Avaya Inc. and Motorola Inc. on the integration of Wi-Fi and cellular technologies has been slow to take off.
"Two years on, we haven't seen the fruits of that partnership come off," said Webb. "Others are now well aware of the wireless VoIP opportunity and positioned with a story in that space."
Source: ComputerWorld
 | NEWS | ||
| Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20554 | News Media Information 202 / 418-0500 Internet: http://www.fcc.gov TTY: 1-888-835-5322 | ||
This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action. Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action. See MCI v. FCC. 515 F 2d 385 (D.C. Circ 1974). | |||
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 19, 2005 | NEWS MEDIA CONTACT: Mark Wigfield, 202-418-0253 E-mail: mark.wigfield@fcc.gov | ||
Commission Requires Interconnected VoIP Providers to Provide Enhanced 911 Service Order Ensures VoIP Customers Have Access to Emergency Services Washington, D.C. – The Federal Communications Commission today took steps to protect consumers by requiring that certain providers of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phone service supply enhanced 911 (E911) emergency calling capabilities to their customers as a mandatory feature of the service. The IP-enabled services marketplace is the latest new frontier of our nation’s communications landscape, and the Commission is committed to allowing IP-enabled services to evolve without undue regulation. But E911 service is critical to our nation’s ability to respond to a host of crises. The Commission hopes to minimize the likelihood of situations like recent incidents in which users of interconnected VoIP dialed 911 but were not able to reach emergency operators. Today’s Order represents a balanced approach that takes into consideration the expectations of consumers, the need to strengthen Americans’ ability to access public safety in times of crisis, and the needs of entities offering these innovative services. The Order places obligations on interconnected VoIP service providers that are similar to traditional telephone providers in that they enable customers to receive calls from and terminate calls to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). It does not place obligations on other IP-based service providers, such as those that provide instant messaging or Internet gaming services, because although these services may contain a voice component, customers of these services cannot receive calls from and place calls to the PSTN. The Order adopted today reaches the following conclusions:
Interconnected VoIP providers must comply with these requirements, and submit to the Commission a letter detailing such compliance, no later than 120 days after the effective date of the Order. Finally, the Commission stated its intention to adopt, in a future order, an advanced E911 solution that includes a method for determining the customer’s location without the customer having to self report this information. Action by the Commission May 19, 2005, by First Report and Order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 05-116). Chairman Martin, Commissioners Abernathy, Copps, and Adelstein, Chairman Martin, Commissioners Abernathy, Copps, and Adelstein issuing separate statements. WC Docket Nos. 04-36, 05-196 Wireline Competition Bureau Staff Contact: Christi Shewman, (202) 418-1686. -FCC- News about the Federal Communications Commission can also be found | |||
IDC: Microsoft Readies VoIP Push
May 18, 2005
Microsoft is stepping up its voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) efforts and is poised for major initiatives in both the enterprise and carrier markets after years of quietly building a VoIP strategy, according to new research from Framingham, Mass.-based IDC. The IDG research and consulting subsidiary says the centerpiece of Microsoft’s increased activity is SIP-based collaborative applications being developed for the Microsoft Office Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005 product line.
"VoIP has become a lightning rod for a new competitive dynamic between IT and telecom vendors," says Tom Valovic, IDC's program director for VoIP infrastructure. "A battle for the enterprise desktop is looming between major IT and telecom vendors, and at the center of it are innovative types of user-defined communications and the marriage of telecom-based convergence and IT-based desktop collaboration."
In the past, according to IDC, Microsoft has kept a low profile around its development and marketing strategy for VoIP, but that posture is changing as the software company develops partnerships with such major IP PBX vendors as Siemens and Alcatel to help jumpstart the move into enterprise IP telephony. These partnerships represent an important step toward strengthening Microsoft's position in the VoIP space, IDC says, although many IP PBX market vendors also worry about Microsoft as a competitor, especially in high-end collaborative applications like instant messaging and Web conferencing, which increasingly embrace VoIP features and enhance VoIP's stature.
The report, Microsoft (and Bill Gates) Put LCS and VoIP Center Stage, also says Microsoft’s initiatives include the carrier front, where it is building partnerships with service providers BT and MCI. The key product vehicle in this part of the strategy is Microsoft's Connected Services Framework (CSF) integrated solution for delivery of converged services across multiple networks and a range of device types. Several carriers, including British Telecom, Bell Canada and Celcom Malaysia, are deploying CSF to facilitate the delivery of services to their customers.
Source: TELECOMWEB
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