Page 1 2 Page 1 2| FRIDAY - AUGUST 25, 2006 - ISSUE NO. 226 |
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| Wireless Messaging Newsletter | ||
| WIRELESS  MESSAGING | |
| EUROPEAN MOBILE MESSAGING ASSOCIATION |
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| EUROPEAN MOBILE MESSAGING ASSOCIATION |
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Wherify’s Wherifone hits Toys ‘R’ Us shelves after extended delay
By Phil Carson
Aug 22, 2006
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.—Wherify Wireless Inc. will retail its Wherifone GPS Locator phones through Toys ‘R’ Us outlets nationwide starting Oct. 1, after a long delay during which the firm twice re-engineered the product.
Wherify will sell the phone under a mobile virtual network operator business model with service from PetroCom L.L.C., which has nationwide roaming agreements with a network of carriers. PetroCom is headquartered in New Orleans and provides offshore cellular and satellite phone services to the petrochemical industry.
According to John Cunningham, a spokesman for Wherify, the MVNO is still seeking a tier-one carrier relationship, but chose the MVNO model and a deal with PetroCom as a way to get its product to market quickly. Wherify reaches the market after numerous child-location and family connectivity offerings from competing MVNOs and carriers have already launched.
The Wherifone GPS Locator Phone is designed for pre-teens (ages 8 to 11, the company suggests) and seniors and retails for $100. The device’s basic service plan begins at $20 per month. According to Cunningham, the phone and service is designed as an adjunct to a parent’s existing cellular service.
The Wherify phone allows the user to call five different phone numbers by touching one of five buttons. It can be configured to send messages to any other phone at pre-determined times, such as after school, giving the phone’s location via the Internet in a variety of ways including aerial photographs, street maps or approximate street addresses. One can initiate the location service from any phone or by calling the Wherify service center.
Service options include a Rate Protection Plan, which kicks in the most cost-effective service plan when a subscriber exceeds their basic monthly service agreement. The original service plan kicks in again at the beginning of the next monthly billing cycle.
Cunningham said that Wherify originally designed the Wherifone as a CDMA product, then switched to GSM, which he said offered a larger market. The company also upgraded the GPS chip prior to the phone’s launch.
Wherify recently announced a deal with Delphi for distribution rights to the Wherifone in Brazil.
Source: RCR Wireless News
WiMax's Small Steps to Security
08.17.06
Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S - message board)'s decision last week to spend $3 billion on a new high-speed wireless network gear catapulted WiMax right into the public eye. But what Sprint didn't talk about — and is less well understood — is what security measures will protect users who move over to the broadband wireless network.
Analysts, industry experts, and operators are expecting to see some of the same kinds of attacks undertaken against the older 802.11 WiFi standard used against its younger sibling. "I expect we'll see similar problems with [WiMax] as we've seen with other devices, namely weak management protocols and vulnerable applications — embedded Web servers, unencrypted access via telnet and SNMP V1 and V2," says ex-Tipping Point security consultant Shawn Merdinger.
Security will become a bigger issue with WiMax and other high-speed wireless services, if enterprise experience with WLAN technologies is any indication. Access and authentication remain key wireless concerns for enterprise buyers and users.
There is, however, an increasing awareness that wireless's weakest link may not be in the security methods used to protect it, but rather in the insecure coding at the software driver level, which can be exploited by clever hackers.
"I don't think WiMax is any less secure than WiFi or cellular, both of which I think are secure," says Ken Dulaney, VP of mobile computing at Gartner Inc. "You will probably see some attacks, but I warn everyone who claims it's a WiMax failure to see whether the problem results from other areas," whether faulty drivers or something else, Dulaney says. WiMax and WiFi are both borne of the same orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) technique, he adds.
John Larson, research scientist at Sprint Labs, says gaining access to a device via faults in its drivers is one type of attack that concerns Sprint. Similar hacks at the recent Black Hat security show demonstrated how easily malicious types could gain access to an unsuspecting user's laptop using such drivers. "That's exactly what I'm thinking about," says Larson. "One of the things we really need to do is make sure we work with our vendors on that."
Waiting on Profiles
In fact, the requirements for a complete wireless security system are not even covered by the basic specification. The 802.16 standard — and hence WiMax — only defines the air interface and the PHY (physical) and MAC (media access control) layers. This still leaves work to be done on security and network-to-network communications.
Little, if any, of this ambiguity is slowing down equipment makers. "Standards still seem to be a moving target in this area, but plenty of vendors are rolling out gear already," says security consultant Merdinger. "It should be interesting to see how well this early gear operates down the road."
The IEEE standard says that data being broadcast over the airwaves must be encrypted. The fixed wireless standard 802.16d uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).
Meanwhile vendors are still discussing the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) methods that could be used with mobile WiMax. "It's not yet been agreed on," says Dave McGinness from the CTO organization at Sprint Nextel.
When they first find and connect to a new WiMax network, devices will send out a "manufacturer's certificate" to assure the network that the device is what it appears to be. From what Unstrung has seen and heard, vendors and operators will likely have to work together to implement more complicated certification systems for applications like e-commerce.
"We feel like we have a really good toolkit, but it's the implementation of that toolkit that counts," says McGinness.
Indeed, this has been a constant issue with WiMax, simply because the standard offers a smorgasbord of options within the specification that could be implemented. This has already led to the suggestion of interoperability problems between the fixed and mobile specifications.
Since official Mobile WiMax products are not even on the market yet it's hard to gauge exactly the level of concern about WiMax security. The Sprint WiMax network will start to be switched at the end of 2007 but the big push will come in 2008.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung
Source: Unstrung
New director changing the way FEMA works
Paulison emphasizes flexibility
By MIKE KELLER
mkeller@sunherald.com
FEMA has learned from its response to Katrina and is changing the way it will conduct future operations, FEMA Director R. David Paulison told the Sun Herald on Wednesday.
Paulison, who was on the Coast to speak with local mayors and visit an elementary school, said he would work to improve agency communications, logistics during an emergency, debris handling and the way that residents prepare for a disaster.
He is applying the "very pragmatic" philosophy he used as chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department and director of Dade County, Fla.'s, emergency management office to rehabilitate FEMA's tattered name.
"The most important thing that I saw didn't work well was communications," Paulison said. "We had a major breakdown in communications between the local and state governments. We had a breakdown between the state and federal government and, quite frankly, we had a breakdown in communications within the federal government."
The agency will begin deploying reconnaissance teams to disaster areas- beforehand, if possible- that will keep officials updated via satellite videophones and create a system that would be able to handle the multitude of information coming in after a major incident.
"If CNN and FOX can do it, why can't we?" he said
The military will also be issued pre-determined mission assignments so local units can begin helping as soon as a disaster occurs.
FEMA has bought 20,000 GPS tracking devices for trucks that Paulison said should eliminate the headaches of not knowing where supplies are delivered.
"Our job is to deliver supplies to the state and their job is to distribute it out," Paulison said. "We had trucks in the wrong place, showing up late, showing up early. It created a big problem for the state."
FEMA has also muscled up stores of MREs, the military meal-in-a-bag used to feed people, increasing the 160 tractor-trailers warehoused before Katrina to 770.
The agency from now on will handle debris contracts differently. It will pay local governments the same reimbursement amount whether officials choose to use the Army Corps of Engineers or private businesses. FEMA used to offer 100 percent reimbursement for Corps of Engineers work and a lesser amount for private haulers.
Paulison is encouraging local governments to have local contractors in place before a disaster strikes.
"We are trying to really revamp the hurricane debris removal process," he said.
He said the average citizen, though, should be prepared with at least food and water for natural disasters that may occur in their areas.
"We have become complacent and dependent as Americans," he said. "One gallon of water will get you through a day. I spent Memorial Day getting ready for hurricane season in Florida."
Paulison has served as the director of FEMA since September 2005, when Michael Brown resigned over widespread criticism of the agency's Katrina response. He is a career firefighter.
"Hurricane Katrina was a watershed event for emergency management in this country. Not just for Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama but for the entire country," Paulison said. "We are moving all of FEMA into the 21st century in both equipment and business processes. We want to be more flexible and less bureaucratic."
Source: SunHerald.com (South Mississippi)
9-1-1 In The Wireless World
Emergency Services Moving onto the Internet
By Bill Siuru, PhD, PE
There is a serious automobile accident. One of the first on the scene calls 9-1-1 on his cell phone. The dispatcher already knows about the crash from one vehicle's Automated Collision Notification System where deployment of the airbag triggered a call to 9-1-1. The call also provided the exact location of the accident. The dispatcher asks the caller to take some photos of the scene and transmit them. She relays the photos to the EMTs so they will be better prepared when they reach the scene. She views the images to determine how many tow trucks should be sent and if a HAZMAT remediation team is needed.
This capability, and much more, could result from the Department of Transportation?s Next Generation 9-1-1, or NG 9-1-1, initiative to establish the foundation for public emergency communications services in a wireless and mobile world. It is defining the technology being developed by a consortium that includes the National Emergency Number Association, Columbia University, and Texas A&M University.
Communications have changed significantly since the first 9-1-1 call was made in 1968 in Haleyville, AL. Back then calls were made by phones attached to the telephone network via a cord. Now the landline phone is being replaced by cellular phones and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol.) Wireless service is becoming ever more mobile through technologies like WiFi, satellite Internet and Blackberries. The current 9-1-1 system, designed around telephone technology, cannot usually handle text, data, images and video transmitted wirelessly. Emergency 9-1-1 service has not kept pace with rapidly advancing wireless and Internet based communications. The current 9-1-1 is analog technology, operating in a digital world.
Since the 1990s, the 9-1-1 system has been undergoing upgrading to handle calls from cell phones through the Wireless E9-1-1 Initiative. This required upgrades to determine position either by cell phones with embedded GPS chips or through the identification of cell towers involved in the call. As of late 2005, more than half of U.S. counties still cannot discern the location of a wireless 9-1-1 call.
VoIP is even more challenging. Here calls can originate, and subsequently be routed, through servers that can be located virtually anywhere in the world. Today, with VoIP 9-1-1 calls made via a computer, the caller must usually supply the location. This can be a real problem during an emergency when the caller may be panicking, seriously injured or lost.
Since NG 9-1-1 is based on VoIP technology, it will benefit from the current communications and networking technologies of the Internet. Being Internet-based, it will be easier to incorporate technological breakthroughs that could be added in plug and play fashion.
NG 9-1-1 will be integrated seamlessly into the current 9-1-1 system, with no degradation in services. These may still remain in operation in some locations for decades. Local government agencies will still serve as answering points and the core, operating environment is not expected to change fundamentally. However, there will be new capabilities and equipment and many changes will be needed in technical staff skills.
NG 9-1-1 communication will be two way. For example, a dispatcher could send a video demo of the Heimlich maneuver to a cell phone if someone is choking. Or a SWAT team could receive a building's floor plan before they reach the scene. It could be used in ?Reverse 9-1-1? applications where citizens could be warned that a child predator was in the neighborhood, including photos, or warned of an impending forest fire including escape routes.
As today, personal communication devices and commercial networks will remain outside NG 9-1-1 network. However, new devices for callers with disabilities will supplant existing systems. For the hard of hearing, NG 9-1-1 could use Text-over-IP or Video Relay Services (VRS), where a hearing "call taker" interprets sign language and relays the information via voice. If the caller doesn't speak English, an Internet language translation website could be called up.
In national disaster or other major incident, PSAPs as well as responders are often overwhelmed. Using the Internet, NG 9-1-1 will permit call takers in distant locations to answer the call, determine basic caller information, enter it into databases accessible to local responders, and provide information from responders to be given to callers.
Responders can retrieve information from these databases to make triage decisions, and deploy their resources most effectively.
How will the new NG 9-1-1 be paid for? Traditional sources for 9-1-1 funding, surcharges, fees and taxes on telephone services, will decline as landlines are replaced by wireless and VoIP services. Thus, new funding sources will have to be found. Fortunately, costs for NG 9-1-1 equipment and operations should drop due to the lower costs for IP-based equipment and infrastructure.
The increased ability to transmit data over the Internet, including medical data and photos of emotionally distraught victims, raises privacy issues. Visual images and text messages would become public record that could later be obtained by news media and others. Information could be routed through servers all over the country, even the world. NG 9-1-1's proponents say that the benefits of locating victims in distress and saving lives outweighs threats to privacy. Lawmakers and the courts will probably have to decide what will be allowed. Transferring to the Internet will mean NG 9-1-1 will increase vulnerability to hackers and denial of service problems. However, the Internet already offers a wider range of tools, software and procedures to address and mitigate attacks.
Some of the first NG 9-1-1 technologies are now being tested in Virginia and Texas. This includes routing VoIP, mobile video, and text messages to 911 responders. A full-scale test using real emergency calls is planned for 2008.
The one thing that will not change with NG 9-1-1 is the mission - receive emergency calls from the public; ascertain nature, status and location of the emergency; and relay the call to the appropriate public safety agencies to response to the emergency.
Koreasat-5 Soars Into Orbit
Updated Aug.22,2006 21:10 KST
The launch of Korea’s first military-private communications satellite Koreasat-5, also known as Mugunghwa-5, went off without a hitch on Tuesday. With that, Korea joins the global top 10 communication satellite operators. The satellite is the armed forces’ first and is expected to bring huge changes to their command and communications structure.
Jointly developed by the Agency for Defense Development and KT, the nation’s largest fixed-line operator, Koreasat-5 lifted off from open seas near Hawaii, at 12:27 p.m. Korean time and made first contact with a control center in Fucino, Italy at 1:42 p.m. The nation’s fourth commercial communications satellite will reach its geo-stationary orbit of 36,000 km nine days after launch if three planned orbit corrections go ahead as scheduled, and unfold its antenna and solar panel there.
Koreasat-5, Korea’s first joint communications satellite venture between the military and private firms, is launched from international waters south of Hawaii on Tuesday afternoon. —Yonhap
Koreasat-5 is key to the armed forces’ command system. Among its 36 transponders, 12 will serve only military purposes. They will undergo a wide range of tests and will be used for a strategic-tactical communications network to operate a combined command structure starting from the end of next year. The Ministry of Defense explains that Koreasat-5 will help command and control the nation’s armed forces in real time, free from the restrictions of Korea’s mountainous geography and enemy attacks on communication facilities. It will boost command and control capability to a radius of 6,000 km around the Korean Peninsula, making it possible to transmit orders and battlefield information to warships and combat fighters whose communications access has traditionally been the most vulnerable. The military transponders have technology that makes them resistant to jamming attacks and security features to prevent eavesdropping.
For the private sector, the satellite will expand communications satellite services into major markets in Asia including China, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. Seo Gwang-ju, the executive vice president of KT’s Network SBU, said Koreaset-5 “will help us directly transmit Korean Wave contents such as popular Korean soaps to other countries and offer private communication lines or Internet access to Korean companies operating in overseas areas covered by the satellite.” KT added it plans to develop public satellite services such as emergency communications in case of disasters.
Source: ChoSun
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• FIREHOUSES • SCHOOLS • PUBLIC FACILITIES • GOVERNMENT FACILITIES • EMERGENCY ROOMS • WHAT DO FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES, WISPS, HAVE IN COMMON? THEY ALL USE NIGHTHAWK. Nighthawk Systems Inc. manufactures low cost and reliable remote control products for fire house alerting, volunteer alerting, activation of warning signs and sirens, and a number of applications for public safety. The Company manufactures the EA1 and the FAS-8 which have been designed specifically for these applications. Both products are paging based and will work with any public or private paging network. They are available in all VHF, UHF, and 900 MHz paging frequencies. The products can serve as the primary notification system or an excellent, low-cost backup to existing systems.
The EA1 is the solution for remotely activating public warning signage. Examples include tornado sirens, flash flood warnings, fire danger, Amber Alert, icy roads, etc. The EA1 can also send text messages to scrolling signs. This can occur in conjunction with the activation of audible alarms and visual strobes. This is ideal for public notification in buildings, schools, hotels, factories, etc. The group call feature allows for any number of signs or flashing lights to be activated at the same time over a wide geographic area. In addition, the EA1 Emergency Alert is the perfect solution for low cost yet highly effective alerting of volunteer fire fighters in their home. When activated the EA1 will emit an audible alarm and activate the power outlet on the units faceplate. A common setup is to simply place the EA1 on a table and plug a lamp into the faceplate. When paged from dispatch or any touch tone phone the EA1 will awaken the fire fighter to a lit room. As an option the EA1 can be ordered with a serial cable, allowing for attachment of a serial printer. When paged the alphanumeric message will be printed out at the same time the alarm sounds and the outlet is activated. The EA1 is an ideal complement to alphanumeric belt pagers common to volunteers.
The FAS-8 is designed for activating one or more relays in a firehouse and if desired, printing the alphanumeric message to a serial printer. For this application the FAS-8 is set to activate upon receiving the proper paging cap code sent from 911 dispatch. Up to eight different devices can be activated all with individual time functions. The most common devices to turn on include the PA amplifier, audible wake up alarm, and house lights. The most common device turned off is the stove. The FAS-8 can accept up to 8 different cap codes and have separate relay and time functions per cap code. This allows for different alerting to be accomplished at the same physical location depending upon which cap code is sent. This can be very helpful when fire crews and medical crews are housed in the same building.
Put the innovative technology of Nighthawk to work for you. For more information on any of our products or services, please contact us. Nighthawk Systems, Inc. Phone: 877-764-4484 |
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Please click here to e-mail Ayrewave. | 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 |
| WIRELESS MESSAGING NEWS |
NTP co-founder faces lawsuits over RIM winnings
Aug 23 2006 - 03:09 PM ET
NTP's successful patent infringement lawsuit against Research In Motion (maker of BlackBerry) was given a lot of attention. Not much has been heard since the $612 million settlement was made, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the largest benefactor of the settlement is facing his own legal battle. [Wall Street Journal article reproduced below]
Donald Stout co-founded NTP [Wikipedia] with Tom Campana in 1992. Stout received $177 million of RIM's settlement. Campana died from lung cancer before the settlement was made, but his widow received $153 million. According to the article, NTP's patents that made its infringement case against RIM actually came out of a bankruptcy ruling from a company called Telefind. Stout served as Telefind's patent attorney and thus had an intimate knowledge of the IP.
Telefind's founder, Andy Andros, worked with Campana and the pair put their IP into the hands of Telefind. But when the company fell into hard times and declared bankruptcy, Andros allegedly schemed with Campana to testify that the potentially valuable patents belonged to Campana and were not Telefind property that could be seized by a creditor.
However only during the latest legal battle with RIM, a decade later, documents to the contrary came to light. Andros is now deceased but his family argues that Stout and Campana effectively stole control of the patents, now worth a staggering $600 million. The family is now involved in a lawsuit to get a cut of the winnings.
An expert witness testified that the work in question far surpassed anything usable on the Telefind network, suggesting that Mr. Campana must have worked on the technology by himself. That witness, a patent attorney and hunting friend of Mr. Stout named Bill Wright, became one of the largest investors in NTP, taking home $20 million from the RIM settlement.
Source: MobileTracker
Mixed Messages
In BlackBerry Case, Big Winner Faces His Own Accusers
Stout Received $177 Million But Some Ask Why Firm He Leads Got Key Patents
A Scorned Creditor's Fury
By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
August 23, 2006
In March, a patent holding company led by lawyer Donald Stout won a $612 million settlement from the maker of the BlackBerry email device in a patent-infringement case. Mr. Stout celebrated with a three-week hunting trip to New Zealand, where his good fortune continued. With a bow and arrow, he killed a rare red stag.
Now Mr. Stout is himself in the sights of claimants who accuse him of getting more than his fair share of the money. At the center of the dispute is a long-defunct company called Telefind Corp. involved 16 years ago with creating the email patents at issue in the BlackBerry case.
One person suing Mr. Stout alleges the lawyer, who was Telefind's patent attorney, committed fraud to keep the patents from the hands of Telefind's creditors. Children of Telefind's late chief executive say their father helped invent the technology. They claim they were unfairly cut out of the winnings.
Mr. Stout dismisses the allegations, noting that a judge agreed with his version of events in 1993.
Mr. Stout's company, NTP Inc., sued BlackBerry's maker, Research in Motion Ltd., or RIM, of Waterloo, Ontario, in 2001. Under the threat of a court-ordered BlackBerry shutdown in the U.S., which would have wreaked havoc on the lives of the device's three million American users, RIM finally agreed to the settlement. Mr. Stout received $177 million. The widow of Tom Campana, listed as the inventor on the patents that RIM was accused of infringing, received $153 million. The rest went to law associates, business partners and friends of Mr. Stout.
Those left out of the settlement include the four daughters of Telefind's chief executive and co-founder, Andy Andros, who died in 2001 during heart surgery at age 76. Telefind investors and former employees also received nothing.
"There's something not quite right when the attorney ends up in control of all this," says Penny Andros, the second-oldest of the daughters. "Telefind was Andy's brainchild, so how does he get nothing?"
Ferris Haddad, who briefly controlled the patents after Telefind's 1991 bankruptcy, filed suit against NTP in a Detroit federal court late in 2004. Mr. Haddad alleges that the formation of NTP in 1992 was part of an elaborate plan by Telefind executives to keep its patents out of the hands of creditors. The supposed plan included having Mr. Andros falsely testify that the work behind the technology was done entirely by Mr. Campana and had nothing to do with Telefind, the suit says. Mr. Campana, who was Telefind's chief engineer, died in 2004 of lung cancer at 57.
Messrs. Andros and Campana orally agreed they would later share in any returns from the patents, according to Mr. Andros's daughters and Ann Murray, who worked with Mr. Andros throughout his career and later became his live-in girlfriend. The plan unraveled when both men died, says Ms. Murray, who runs a chain of check-cashing stores in Houston.
Mr. Stout says the work behind the patents was done by Mr. Campana, who had his own engineering firm at the time, for a project with AT&T Corp. Mr. Stout says sworn testimony shows the wireless email work behind the patents was more advanced than what the Telefind network could handle.
"The world is full of stories of people popping up after a bunch of money is made," he says. "I think you have to ask why these people are only remembering these things now."
Mr. Stout, 60, graduated from Penn State University with a degree in electrical engineering in 1968. He worked as an examiner in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for four years while studying for his law degree at night, and later went into private practice. He says he was playing pickup basketball at the YMCA in Washington in 1987 when one of the players told him a promising start-up named Telefind needed a patent lawyer.
Telefind had just moved into new offices with marble floors in Coral Gables, Fla., with about 40 employees. The paging company was on its way to offering service in more than 100 U.S. cities and expanding into Europe.
Mr. Andros hoped to recapture his earlier success with Hy-Gain Electronics Corp., a maker of communications gear he had founded with his younger brother, Ted. Hy-Gain brought in nearly $100 million in annual revenue in the mid-1970s, but it suddenly went out of business in 1978 when new federal regulations and an infusion of cheap Japanese imports destroyed the market for U.S.-made citizens-band radios.
Mr. Andros became friends with Mr. Campana in the mid-1980s and the two decided to start their own paging company, Telefind. At first Mr. Campana worked with Telefind on a contract basis from his own company outside Chicago. Later Mr. Campana devoted himself full-time to Telefind and became its vice president of engineering, though he kept his own business in operation. He and Mr. Andros agreed that any patents produced would belong to Telefind, according to company documents included in the lawsuit by Mr. Haddad, the creditor.
Telefind's breakthrough was a pager that could work easily on hundreds, even thousands of frequencies. Other pagers used single frequencies and worked only within limited areas. Telefind's could theoretically be used anywhere. The company made agreements with local paging services, installing Telefind equipment built by Mr. Campana and his team on existing towers. Mr. Stout says he and some of his law partners invested about $500,000 of their own money in the company.
The high point for Telefind came in the summer and fall of 1990, when other companies began taking an interest in it. France Télécom SA offered to buy half the company for $35 million, according to several former Telefind executives. The company also began meeting with AT&T, which was trying to get into computers at the time. AT&T was looking for partners to develop applications for its new laptop, called the Safari, and thought wireless email would appeal to its on-the-go business customers.
According to court documents and testimony, AT&T asked Mr. Campana and his team outside Chicago to look for ways of connecting Telefind's pager to AT&T's laptop. The team got help from Telefind software engineers at the company's Florida headquarters, according to sworn testimony in the RIM case and interviews with former Telefind executives.
The idea was to convert an AT&T email into a pager message, run that over Telefind's paging network to a Telefind pager and connect that to an AT&T laptop to transmit the message.
The rudiments of this design wowed a group of AT&T customers in a private showing at a Las Vegas computer convention, called the Comdex show, in November 1990, according to a letter written on Telefind stationary later that month by Mr. Campana to one of Telefind's largest investors, Jack Richards.
"It was met with such incredible disbelief that many would actually come into the adjoining room and have me explain the network, the transmitting system and how the E-mail message was sent," wrote Mr. Campana to Mr. Richards. Instead of limiting the demonstration to 25 customers as planned, AT&T showed it to about 270 customers, including Sears and Xerox, Mr. Campana wrote.
Telefind hoped the successful collaboration would lead to an acquisition by AT&T, which it viewed as a more attractive buyer than France Télécom, according to letters between Telefind executives. At the least, Mr. Andros, who attended the Comdex show with Mr. Campana, expected AT&T to incorporate Telefind's pager and network in its new laptop, a deal that could "add hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues for Telefind," Mr. Andros wrote in an internal report at the time.
In April 1991, AT&T and Telefind in a joint press release trumpeted the new laptop and its innovative messaging technology, dubbed a "Wireless Mailbox."
But AT&T began worrying about failures in the Telefind network equipment, including a week-long outage in the New Jersey service, according to a letter from an AT&T executive. Telefind's dependence on the networks of dozens of local providers made it hard to ensure reliability. Funding began running out.
The Telefind creditor, Mr. Haddad, who had leased computer equipment to the company, was displeased with the delays. Mr. Haddad challenged Mr. Andros's leadership and the two clashed bitterly, former employees say. In October 1991, after Mr. Haddad seized his equipment, Telefind declared bankruptcy. In the subsequent bankruptcy proceedings, Mr. Haddad received the company's patents, which had been pledged to him as collateral.
The Telefind executives weren't about to give up what they realized could become valuable patents. According to Andros family members and Ms. Murray, Mr. Andros's longtime associate, their goal was to distance Mr. Andros from the wireless email technology. Messrs. Campana and Stout could then argue that the technology belonged to Mr. Campana personally and wasn't Telefind company property that could be seized by a creditor, they say.
In a 1993 trial, Mr. Andros and his chief financial officer told the judge the patents had nothing to do with Telefind. Mr. Andros wrote a formal letter in June 1992 to Mr. Campana commending him on his invention and asking about licensing rights, a piece of evidence used in the trial to show that Mr. Andros hadn't developed the technology.
Mr. Andros's name is not on any of the patents in question, though his name appears as co-inventor with Mr. Campana on 23 other patents that came out of Telefind.
An expert witness testified that the work in question far surpassed anything usable on the Telefind network, suggesting that Mr. Campana must have worked on the technology by himself. That witness, a patent attorney and hunting friend of Mr. Stout named Bill Wright, became one of the largest investors in NTP, taking home $20 million from the RIM settlement.
At the 1993 trial, the judge heard little evidence to challenge the claims that Telefind wasn't involved with the technology behind the patents. Many of the relevant documents weren't presented during the trial. They emerged only years later in the RIM litigation.
In May 1993, the judge awarded the patents to NTP, a patent holding company Mr. Campana had formed the year before with Mr. Stout.
At various times Mr. Stout was Telefind's patent attorney, a lawyer for a group of Telefind investors in Europe and Mr. Campana's partner at NTP. "It was such an enormous conflict of interest," says Ted Andros, brother of the late chief executive, who also worked as a Telefind executive. "Stout represented everybody and then wound up with all the goodies."
Mr. Stout says he never simultaneously represented parties with conflicting interests. He says the judge's ruling remains the correct one.
Short of cash, Andy Andros moved with Ms. Murray back to Houston, where he tried to launch other telecom start-ups over the following years with mixed success. Mr. Haddad ran into financial difficulties after Telefind collapsed. He served a short term in prison in the mid-1990s after pleading guilty to bank fraud.
Mr. Andros's daughters and others who worked with him during the late 1990s until his death in 2001 say Mr. Andros spoke often about the patents and how they would result in a big payday. During this period, NTP began looking for possible infringers, focusing on RIM, which it sued in 2001. Mr. Andros remained in close contact with Mr. Campana, who invited him and Ms. Murray to his wedding in the late 1990s, they say.
Richard Diamond, a real-estate investor in Mill Valley, Calif., who worked with Mr. Andros on a start-up for six years until his death, says he once asked Mr. Andros if he had the agreement to share in any patent returns in writing. "He told me, 'I have a deal with these guys, and it's my business, so why should I worry?' " Mr. Diamond says.
In recent years, the RIM-NTP case started making headlines. Based on information that emerged in the case, Mr. Haddad, now a vitamin and health-products salesman, filed suit against NTP in late 2004. A judge dismissed the case. He questioned, among other things, why Mr. Haddad didn't present his evidence in 1993. Mr. Haddad's suit is now under appeal.
Earlier this year, one of the Andros daughters received a phone call from someone looking for information about Telefind. That led the daughters to discover that the RIM case had to do with their father. "We wept like a baby that day when we realized these patents were what our father had told us about," says Penny Andros, a drama teacher in Houston.
In February, Ms. Andros called Mr. Stout about the case. He rebuffed her, she says, and then had his lawyer send her testimony from her father in 1993 that the patents did not belong to Telefind.
"If Mr. Andros conspired to illegally remove property from the Telefind estate, this might arguably reflect a federal crime," wrote Mr. Stout's lawyer to Ms. Andros on April 19. "Presumably you do not wish to accuse your father of such actions."
Source: The Wall Street Journal
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
From: Stephen M. Oshinsky
Subject: Upcoming Face-to-face
Date: August 21, 2006 9:24:04 AM CDT
To: Paging Technical Committee
Another reminder about the upcoming PTC Face-to-face meeting to be held at the Rosen Centre Hotel on September 26th from 1 – 5 PM at the EWA/AAPC Show in Orlando, FL. We are still in need of a corporate sponsor ($1500) to be the host for our meeting. Please let me know if you or your company would like to host this meeting. Also if you have not done so, please register for the EWA show before August 27, 2006 for savings on the registration fee. The registration rate goes up from $250 to $345 after that date. Go to http://www.enterprisewireless.org/events/events.htm to sign up.
I am still looking for agenda items so if you have a presentation that would be of interest to the technical members or would like to have a discussion on a technical subject, please send me an email right away.
As many of you know, the Chair for the Protocol Working Group Subcommittee is open and we will be voting on a replacement Chair to lead this very important subcommittee. After 6 years of leadership, Gagan Puranik has decided to pursue a career outside of paging. We wish him the best of luck! In the meantime, Pat Adams will be acting Chair of the PWG until the entire PTC can vote on a replacement for Gagan at the face-to-face.
In order to make sure we have the right size room, please let me know if you plan to attend the meeting.
Thanks
Stephen M. Oshinsky
Technical Advisory
601-460-3449
From: waynem@handypage.net
Subject: Reply to 8-18-06 newsletter
Date: August 18, 2006 3:35:07 PM CDT
To: brad@braddye.com
Reply-To: waynem@handypage.net
Please say it isn't so ?????
The State of Louisiana is willing to spend $ 20 million to put up a PAGING system, just to alert the Citizens of the State for Emergencies.
Are we NOT getting our point across to the Government somehow ???
There IS already a communications system in place to do this, they are the already licensed and running Paging systems in the US.
Why have not the Local Paging companies in Louisiana already contacted this person and advised Him of their existence ??
If you are a Paging System owner, please ...please let every person you can think of know that YOU can provide Emergency Alerts !!!
If you have NOT spoken up yet, and offered to provide Emergency Alerting on your system for FREE to the General Public, then you are short sighted on your business plans and just wanting to see how much more business you can watch leave for the Cellular companies. They are more than willing to take it from you.
The time to call your Government is NOW !!! And let them know you have the capabilities that they are looking for.
Wayne Markis
Interstate Wireless, Inc.
Handy Page
Tempe, Az.
waynem@handypage.net
| UNTIL NEXT WEEK |
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