| FRIDAY - APRIL 20, 2007 - ISSUE NO. 258 |
Dear Friends of Wireless Messaging, There is one news item this week that I really didn't want to publish. It is about the demise of paging in Japan—once the largest paging market in the world. I am compelled, however, to report all the news about paging and wireless messaging—good or bad. We must remain alert and continue to promote things like telemetry over paging so that we can maintain a solid core of dependable business subscribers. Once a person gets the concept of controlling things remotely—over a paging channel—the ideas for new applications really start to flow. I have long believed these telemetry applications to be the “KILLER APPLICATIONS” for our industry. The key to moving telemetry products is live demonstrations from knowledgeable sales people. You have got to show your potential customers how it works—right in their offices! There has been some positive response to my plea for more advertisers in the newsletter. Some former advertisers are going to return and some new ones are planning to start. If you want to get your message out, this is the place to do it. I have a page set up that explains the various advertising packages that are available. CLICK HERE I am still looking for comments on how to improve the newsletter—format and content. Now on to the news. . . |
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 web site. 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.) | |||||||||||
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Cover Story: End of an era 04/17/2007 BY YUSUKE KANNO, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN The end was somewhat inevitable. Modern technology for mobile phones has made the pager obsolete. As the new fiscal year started on April 1, pager services made a quiet exit from almost all regions in Japan after years of adding a bit of romantic spice into the lives of thousands of young people. Pagers are electronic devices used to contact people. Early devices simply beeped and provided the phone number of the caller. Later versions offered messages, first with numbers and later with katakana and kanji characters. But unlike mobile phones that connect users anytime and anywhere, users of pagers had to wait for a reply. Some sentimentalists say anticipation of receiving a response from a loved one was what made the pager so special. Actress Ryoko Hirosue, 26, personifies the rise and fall of the pager. In 1996, Hirosue, then a leggy 16-year-old, became the poster girl for a pager advertisement put out by NTT DoCoMo Inc. The ad stated, "Ryoko Hirosue begins using Pokeberu (pager service)." In 1996, the number of NTT DoCoMo pager service subscribers totaled 6.49 million, making up the bulk of the more than 10 million pager subscribers nationwide. Hirosue was a first-grade student at high school at the time. She recalls that about 90 percent of her classmates had pocket pagers, and she started using one herself. "During recess, we would make long queues in front of the public pay phones at school. Everyone was pushing those phone buttons at lightning speed. It was amazing," Hirosue says. But also in 1996, the number of subscribers for mobile phone services exceeded the number of pager subscribers for the first time. Still, pagers were evolving. They first had to rely on a smart play of words to send messages. For example, the numerals "14106" could be pronounced (with a stretch of the imagination) as "aishiteru" in Japanese. Thus, a user could send an "I love you" message. They later became capable of receiving kanji and katakana messages. Still, the clumsy pager was no match for the versatile text messages of mobile phones. Lyricist and producer Yasushi Akimoto, 50, came up with a drama series "Pokeberu ga Naranakute" (Waiting for my pager to ring) for Nippon Television Network Corp. (NTV) in 1993. He also wrote the lyrics for the theme song released under the same title. Akimoto pictured a heroine longing for her lover to buzz her when he was writing the song. "The 'waiting' factor plays a big role in staging a love song," Akimoto said. "Now that we are in the age of the mobile phone, we get to enjoy considerable perks and conveniences--and the time spent on waiting has become an indulgence. The modes of love and romance are definitely changing." However, when Akimoto talks to young "idols" in the entertainment business, he often feels that as far as feelings of love go, there hasn't been that big of a change since the time he was in high school. "The tools of the trade might have shifted from letters to land lines, pagers and now mobile phones. But the tender hearts people carry around basically remain the same," said Akimoto, who still churns out love songs based on that conviction. Kenichi Fujimoto, associate professor of informatics at Mukogawa Women's University, published a book titled "Pokeberu Shojo Kakumei" (Revolution of the pager girls) 10 years ago. Fujimoto said one advantage of the pager was that it gave power to the youths who had to rely on phones at their homes or their schools to freely exchange information or messages. "(The pager) freed the youths and women who had been shackled under the modern family system," he said. "The technology also revived the amusing word play that is reminiscent of the old Japanese tradition of coming up with poems while taking leisurely walks." And the dark side? The pager eased the way for girls to take part in enjokosai-style prostitution. Even Fujimoto, well-versed in the information culture, was surprised at how quickly the pager petered out. NTT DoCoMo terminated its Quickcast pager service on March 31 to raise operational efficiency. The number of subscribers had dropped to about 2 percent of the peak. Modern pagers have been appreciated by hospitals, emergency workers and others in specialized fields because the devices do not cause electromagnetic interference with the workers' equipment. But PHS phones that cause minimum interference have started to take over those roles as well. YOZAN Inc. in the Tokyo metropolitan area and Okinawa TeleMessage in Okinawa Prefecture will continue to offer their pager services. (IHT/Asahi: April 17, 2007) |
Source: The Asahí Shímbun (The English Edition of a Japanese Newspaper)
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For information about these products, Contract Manufacturing services or our Pager or Telemetry line, please call Bob Popow at 480-515-2344, or Susan Lunday at 870-424-0872 or visit our website www.daviscommsusa.com. E-mail addresses are posted there! |
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Across the Low Country, Schools Plan For Worst Wednesday, April 18, 2007 A gunman opens fire on a college campus the size of a small city. Law enforcement must find a way to stop the gunman, rescue the wounded and protect the lives of thousands of students, faculty members and visitors. But how? Officials at colleges in the greater Charleston area say plans are in place to deal with violent incidents such as the mass shooting Monday at Virginia Tech. State colleges such as the College of Charleston, the Medical University of South Carolina and The Citadel have their own public safety departments with armed law enforcement officers. At Charleston Southern University, a private school, unarmed security guards maintain order. All work closely with their local municipal police agencies, which can send in additional officers to help secure campuses in an emergency. Colleges also have plans in place to alert students to dangers through e-mails, phone calls, paging systems and other means. The Citadel, home to 2,000 cadets, recently updated its campus-wide crisis plan and appointed a team that would go into action if a shooting rampage or similar emergency occurred, spokeswoman Patricia McArver said. The school's 13-member public safety department is staffed 24 hours a day, and cadets guard entrances to living quarters, she said. The College of Charleston and MUSC campuses are more open, with less-defined boundaries and buildings spread through several city blocks. MUSC has 2,429 students, nearly 10,000 employees and 89 buildings, including a 600-bed hospital. The College of Charleston has more than 12,000 students, faculty and staff spread among 113 buildings. Securing these urban campuses likely would present challenges. But their locations also present rapid access to police backup and trauma care. The College of Charleston has a Critical Incident Response Team available to respond to emergencies around the clock. MUSC also trains its officers to handle crisis situations. In an emergency, Charleston Southern University's unarmed guards work to secure the campus and protect the school's 3,100 students until North Charleston police can arrive, said Don Little, director of campus security. |
Source: The Post and Courier Charleston.net
 Intelligent Solutions for Paging & Wireless Data Wipath develops and manufactures a wide range if highly unique and innovative hardware and software solutions in paging and mobile data. Talk to us about your special project. If we haven’t already done it we probably can.
I am an authorized Manufacturer Representative for WiPath Communications. Please contact me directly for any additional information. |
SEE WEB FOR COMPLETE LIST:
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Operations Director Appointed to CommtechWireless Board April 20, 2007 For Immediate Release The Board of Directors for CommtechWireless, global leader in the supply of automated service messaging and mobility workflow systems, recently announced the appointment of Mr. John Cozart to Director of Operations. Mr. Cozart joined the CommtechWireless office in Jacksonville, Florida in 2003 and, as Vice President of Operations, was quickly made responsible for all aspects of the day-to-day operations of CommtechWireless not covered by Sales & Marketing. His wide-ranging responsibilities include overseeing stock control, human resource management, project management and quality control of Commtech products. Commtech USA has benefited immensely from the leadership and experience of Mr. Cozart and his outstanding efficiency has been emulated by the Australian office to great success. Mr. Cozart recently outlined his expectations for both his new role and the company in general and spoke of the importance of quality support throughout the group. “I expect to leverage our global presence to provided seamless support and quality delivery of our solutions to our growing customer base anywhere in the world. We will harness the global synergies within Operations to gain efficiencies, productivity and raise the bar with technical advantages through our development within the Healthcare, Hospitality and Gaming industries. We will set an unsurpassed global standard of excellence.” Of the newest appointment to the board, Commtech USA President Mr. Zane Lewis says,
Mr. Cozart’s new position begins immediately. In other appointments, Mr. Chris McLoughlin was promoted to Director of Global Sales and will oversee sales and marketing for Commtech on a global scale. About CommtechWireless |
Source: CommtechWireless
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Messaging & Cellular
www.ProductSupportServices.com Call Or E-mail For More Information |
BlackBerry suffers widespread outage By John Blau, IDG News Service The BlackBerry wireless e-mail service from Research In Motion appears to have suffered a widespread outage starting Tuesday evening in the U.S. Customers on the BlackBerry Forums discussion board complained of having no service starting at about 5:15 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday. Callers to the BlackBerry U.S. technical support line were still greeted with the following message early Wednesday morning: “We are currently experiencing a service interruption that is causing delays in sending or receiving messages. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide updates as soon as they become available.” New York television news channel NewsChannel4 reported Tuesday night that the problem affected “all users in the Western hemisphere.” However, comments from operators in Asia and Europe, as well as postings to the BlackBerry Forums, suggested that the problem may be limited to North America. “Officials with RIM said they are trying to reset the system and told NewsChannel4 that they are concerned that the backlog of data, which will rush through when it comes back on line, could cause a bigger problem,” the news channel reported on its Web site. RIM officials advised people who use Blackberry as a major way of communications to make back-up plans, the channel reported. A RIM official contacted in France was unaware of the problems, and said she had received messages sent to her BlackBerry as normal. Other RIM officials did not return calls seeking comment. The outage may have been cause by one of RIM’s Network Operating Centers (NOC) going down, according to Emma Mohr-McClune, principal analyst with Current Analysis “This has happened before,” she said. RIM operates two NOCs, both located in Canada, according to Mohr-McClune. The company has considered locating additional NOCs outside of Canada, she said. Companies that provide BlackBerry service connect their mail servers to a BlackBerry Enterprise Solution (BES) server located on their premises, which in turn is linked to one of RIM’s NOCs, according to Mohr-McClune. “All data slides to Canada and back,” she said. RIM may have been fortunate that the outage began at about 5 p.m. Pacific Time, because it would have been after the busiest part of the U.S. work day. Engineers were likely scrambling through the night to bring the service back online before the start of the U.S. workday on Wednesday. Other parts of the world appeared to have been unaffected. A representative for Taiwan Mobile, RIM’s BlackBerry partner for the island, said the problem is limited to North America, and that users would not be affected unless they are sending or receiving e-mail through a BlackBerry server there. “RIM has not communicated with Taiwan Mobile about when this problem might be fixed,” said the representative, April Hong. NTT DoCoMo in Tokyo said its BlackBerry users in Japan were also unaffected. And In Europe, a spokesman for T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH was unaware of any problems, and Blackberry users in Germany and France reported no interruption of service. The problems come at a time of continued rapid growth for the company, based in Waterloo, Ontario. It added 1.02 million subscribers in the quarter ended March 3, for a total of approximately 8 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide. Revenue for the quarter was $930.4 million, up 66 percent from a year earlier. Net income for the quarter before adjustments was $187,928, the company said. (Peter Sayer, James Niccolai, Dan Nystedt and Martyn Williams contributed to this report.) |
Source: Macworld
GTES has recently made the strategic decision to expanding its development activities to include wireless location technologies; a market that researchers forecast could reach $3.6 billion by 2010. In support of this new strategic direction, GTES has developed SHERLOC™ a complete one-stop wireless location service, providing the flexibility of being protocol neutral and network agnostic. Targeted at business customers who need to track their high-value shipments or better manage their service or delivery fleets, SHERLOC™ is a hosted application that combines configuration flexibility with ease of use. GTES is offering SHERLOC™ services both directly and through authorized resellers. If your company has an interest in finding out how location services can enhance your revenue stream, and has the contacts and expertise to make you successful in the location marketplace, please contact us for further information at www.sherlocgps.com and select “Reseller Opportunities,” or call us at 770-754-1666 for more information. 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. Continued Support Programs CALL US TODAY FOR YOUR SUPPORT NEEDS
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| Registration Number | Status | File Number | Owner Name | Latitude Longitude | Structure City/State | Overall Height Above Ground (AGL) | |
| 1 | 1050903 | Constructed | A0382848 | CSSI* | 32-16-09.0N 098-18-52.0W | Lingleville, TX map | 93.0 |
| 2 | 1050905 | Constructed | A0446642 | CSSI* | 32-49-04.8N 098-06-13.3W | Mineral Wells, TX map | 24.8 |
| 3 | 1056264 | Constructed | A0446643 | CSSI* | 32-58-33.0N 097-56-33.0W | Whitt, TX map | 92.4 |
| 4 | 1057649 | Constructed | A0382852 | CSSI* | 32-20-33.0N 097-44-57.0W | Glen Rose, TX map | 60.9 |
| 5 | 1057656 | Constructed | A0446641 | CSSI* | 32-18-08.0N 098-29-36.0W | Desmona, TX map | 83.2 |
| 6 | 1057659 | Constructed | A0382844 | CSSI* | 32-21-23.0N 099-26-01.0W | Baird, TX map | 89.3 |
| 7 | 1232880 | Constructed | A0317614 | CSSI* | 32-51-05.0N 098-06-31.8W | Mineral Wells, TX map | 134.0 |
| 8 | 1042515 | Constructed | A0050114 | CSSI* | 32-44-21.0N 097-48-00.0W | Weatherford, TX map map—close up | 112.8 |
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InfoRad is happy to announce the release of version 10.2 of our wireless messaging software line. We've made a few tweaks under the hood, to keep it current with the ever-changing world of computers and wireless, and we've added several exciting new enhancements: Secure Messaging to your Blackberry or PCS phone is here! InfoRad is heavily used in the Law Enforcement, Public Safety, and HealthCare industries because our software sends the message reliably and fast. As security is a concern we've added SSL (encryption) support for dispatching via email. Those of you who need to send messages via SMTP to your PCS phones or Blackberries can now encrypt them before they leave your workstation/network. Refined User Interface! Our customer base is always telling us our suite of software messaging products are the easiest to use on the market. Well they've just gotten easier. Version 10.2 adds a new search box to the interface to assist those who have larger databases. Simply start typing a receiver or group name into the search box and the list will automatically move to that name, or the nearest match. Once you select a name, or names, the search box will display the number of devices you've selected.
We're offering a limited time1 special purchase offer from our web-store. Simply click on the product you wish to buy and use coupon code XV102 at checkout to receive a 20% discount off the regular download price. This discount applies to all software products purchased as a download with a major credit card. If you're still using a version 9.xx or older product you're missing out on some industrial strength features like "Route-on-Failure" and "User Defined Message Templates." Visit our website to catch up on all the latest changes or download a FREE 30 day demo to test drive the software on your personal computer. Note - Members of our AlphaCare support/maintenance plan will receive the latest release free of charge. While you're visiting our website be sure to have a look at our line of hardware products too. We're got wireless remote control devices, 5 watt paging transmitters and 4 ft wireless "paging activated" LED signs available to assist you with your wireless needs. Call us at 800-228-8998 with any questions, we look forward to working with you.
[1] - Offer valid though May 15th, 2007. |
Source: InfoRad
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Stopwatch 
The poster not only promoted the Pokeberu, it also launched the young actress's career. Fans couldn't keep their hands off the Hirosue poster. At one railway station in Nagoya, more than 100 of the DoCoMo posters were stolen within a week.
Three years later, in 1999, Hirosue was chosen to spearhead NTT DoCoMo's campaign for the company's i-mode mobile data service. Hirosue also became a mobile phone user.
"Mobile phones were once considered tools used by stuffy middle-aged corporate types. Yet once mobile phones adopted the text function from the pagers, they became accepted as tools for the younger set," Fujimoto said. "It was the pager that first opened the doors to a new style of communicating by text. And that was readily inherited by the mobile phones."
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