blue line

CMA newsletter logo

blue line

FRIDAY — FEBRUARY 3, 2012 — ISSUE NO. 493

blue line

Paging and Wireless Messaging Home Page image Newsletter Archive image Carrier Directory image Recommended Products and Services
imageimageimageimage
Reference Papers Consulting Glossary of Terms Send an e-mail to Brad Dye

blue line

Dear Friends of Wireless Messaging,

Greetings from Southern Illinois where Old Man Winter hasn't been around to visit us very much this year.

blue line

LightSquared Shenanigans

I have been covering the news about LightSquared trying to get the FCC's approval to use frequencies adjacent to the GPS downlink band for a new "wireless broadband connectivity" service. They want to offer network capacity on a wholesale-only basis to a variety of business partners.

Wikipedia describes LightSquared:

LightSquared is a company that plans to develop a wholesale 4G LTE wireless broadband communications network integrated with satellite coverage across the United States.

blue line

Wonderful GPS

gps

I love the GPS services! I have several GPS receivers and I use them continuously for time and frequency calibration. There are many millions of GPS receivers in use. To name a few of the applications:

  • A Teaneck, N.J., shoemaker has joined a California technology company to create a shoe that uses GPS technology that records where a wearer walks — and can send alerts to caregivers if someone suffering from dementia wanders away and gets lost
  • Navigation aids in cars and trucks
  • Land Surveying
  • Farming
  • Military — guided missiles, drones, etc.
  • Cellphone emergency location
  • Many scientific applications for time and frequency calibration
  • Aviation — aids to navigation and landing— the backbone of the global air traffic system
  • Police — tracking criminals (now requires a court order)
  • Recreational use — camping, hiking and fishing
  • GPS is now built into some cameras to record exactly where each photo was taken
  • Shopping — find the best prices near you
  • Find the nearest:
    • Hospital
    • Gas Station
    • Motel
    • Restaurant
  • Track the movement of hazardous materials
  • Weather apps, which uses GPS to send updates based on the cellphone's location
  • Find a lost or stolen cellphone
  • Find lost children
  • A controversial app that uses GPS technology to deter drivers from entering neighborhoods that are deemed unsafe

I won't bore you with all the technical details, but basically a GPS receiver has to be very broad when it listens for the extremely weak signals coming down from the GPS satellite constellation. It uses those signals to mathematically calculate its exact location. In doing that calculation, it must also figure out the exact time — down to nanoseconds. The accuracy of GPS time signals ( ±10 ns) is second only to the atomic clocks upon which they are based.

gps constellation

One of the first and most basic things that I learned when I started studying radio theory over fifty years ago, was that there is a tradeoff between sensitivity and selectivity. That is, as you add more filters to improve a radio's selectivity, you reduce the radio's sensitivity.

Of course, sensitivity is a measurement of a radio's ability to pick up weak signals, and selectivity is its ability to reject unwanted signals.

So GPS receivers are generally very sensitive but not very selective. This is what the big argument is about.

FCC IB Docket No. 11-109

When I read this from the FCC:

In the instant Petition, LightSquared in essence seeks a declaratory ruling that, provided ATC operations are conducted in accordance within the Commission’s technical parameters, commercially available GPS devices are not protected against harmful interference caused by those ATC operations. [source]

(ATC: A terrestrial technology known as Ancillary Terrestrial Component. Using terrestrial infrastructure to augment mobile satellite services.)

I understood LightSquared to be saying — in plain English — “tough luck to all the millions of people using GPS receivers out there” and I got a little hot under the collar. So I submitted the following comments to the FCC.

blue line

Brad on the Soapbox

02/01/2012

The claim that commercially available GPS devices are not protected against harmful interference caused by LightSquared's proposed operation on adjacent frequencies (in my opinion) shows an ignorance of the way that radio communications devices work.

It is also analogous to the driver of a car or truck saying that just because their vehicle is legally licensed and because they pay road taxes, they have the right to run over any pedestrians crossing the roadway.

I have been involved with wireless communications for over fifty-five years and this seems to me, the height of arrogance.

The thought of allowing LightSquared to interfere with the many GPS receivers, already providing valuable services to the public, to me is absurd.

Respectfully submitted,

Brad Dye
Editor, Wireless Messaging Newsletter
Wireless Communications Consultant
www.braddye.com

My comment filing is here.

See all the submitted comments on this issue here. The majority of them, so far, agree with me.

blue line

Senator Accuses LightSquared of Bribery Insists They Promised a Call Center if Deal Approved

by Karl Bode
DSLReports.com

Things haven't been looking so hot for LightSquared, which has [been] trying to overcome numerous reports showing that their planned LTE network will significantly interfere with GPS signals. LightSquared's technical problems are bad enough, but their political problems keep getting worse. LightSquared's latest problems come courtesy of Senator Chuck Grassley, who has been accusing the company of trying to bribe him. Grassley (whose top campaign contributors aren't in telecom) insists that LightSquared promised Iowa a call center if the deal was approved. LightSquared says the person Grassley is referring to was a private citizen not working for the company (though he does apparently know LightSquared billionaire backer Phillip Falcone) and that Grassley's claims are unsubstantiated.

[source]

blue line

Now on to more news and views.

CMA logo
Wireless Messaging News
  • Emergency Radio Communications
  • Wireless Messaging
  • Critical Messaging
  • Telemetry
  • Paging
  • VoIP
  • Wi-Fi
  • WiMAX
  • Location-Based Services
WIRELESS
wireless logo medium
MESSAGING

blue line

CMA Wireless Messaging News
This is the CMA's weekly newsletter about Wireless Messaging. You are receiving this because I believe you have requested it. This is not a SPAM. If you have received this message in error, or you are no longer interested in these topics, please click here , then click on "send" and you will be promptly removed from the mailing list.

blue line

iland internet sulutions This newsletter is brought to you by the generous support of our advertisers and the courtesy of iland Internet Solutions Corporation . For more information about the web-hosting services available from iland Internet Solutions Corporation, please click on their logo to the left.

blue line

About Us

A new issue of The Wireless Messaging Newsletter is 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 web. 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 Messaging 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 readers' comments, so this newsletter has become a community forum for the Paging, and Wireless Messaging 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.

blue line

Editorial Policy

Editorial Opinion pieces present only the opinions of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Critical Messaging Association, or its sponsors.

blue line

donate

left arrow

Please help support the CMA Wireless Messaging News by clicking on the PayPal Donate button above.

blue line

Subscriptions

signup

CLICK THE LOGO ABOVE FOR A FREE SUBSCRIPTION

blue line

Voluntary Reader Support

Newspapers generally cost 75¢ a copy and they hardly ever mention paging. If you receive some benefit from this publication maybe you would like to help support it financially? A donation of $25.00 would represent approximately 50¢ a copy for one year. If you are willing and able, please click on the PayPal Donate button above.

blue line

lopok

Newsletter Advertising

advertise

If you would like to have information about advertising in this newsletter, please click here. If you are reading this, your potential customers are probably reading it as well.

blue line

 

 

 

pagerman

blue line

WRC-12: The First Week

By IARU Secretary Rod Stafford, W6ROD

wrc12

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-12) began January 23 in Geneva, Switzerland. This is the “big show” for spectrum allocation matters and a very important meeting if you are an Amateur Radio operator anywhere in the world. Every four or five years, a WRC takes place; the last one was in 2007. Approximately 3000 people are attending WRC-12. These are government officials, telecommunication industry people and others — like the IARU — who have an interest in the use of the radio spectrum. The agenda items discussed during WRC-12 were established at the previous WRC in 2007. In the past 4.5 years, there have been many committee meetings within the ITU to try to arrive at solutions that will satisfy each of the agenda items. In the case of some of the agenda items, several possible methods to satisfy the agenda item have been identified. It is up to the WRC to select the most appropriate method to satisfy the agenda item, that is, to arrive at a worldwide solution to the issue presented in the agenda item. Read more here.

Source: The ARRL Letter
Editor:   S. Khrystyne Keane, K1SFA

blue line

CRITICAL MESSAGING ASSOCIATION

blue line

cma logo Critical Messaging Association

blue line

COME JOIN US AT THE GLOBAL CRITICAL MESSAGING CONVENTION

March 27-29, 2012 star Austin, Texas star Hyatt Regency Austin

Register today at: www.criticalmessagingassociation.com

Early Registration Deadline: February 27, 2012

cma convention

star Registration includes admittance to all sessions, the Riverboat Reception on Wednesday evening (March 28th), as well as lunch and breaks on Thursday.

star Hotel Reservations: The Hyatt Regency Austin provides the perfect location for guests to walk to Austin's attractions or to relax along the shore of Lady Bird Lake. To make reservations use the online reservation form or call 888-421-1442 or (non-toll-free) 402-592-6464, and reference the Global Critical Messaging Convention to receive the significantly discounted rate of $167/night (inclusive of Internet). DEADLINE: February 27, 2012.

star Vendor Opportunities: Exhibit at the Critical Messaging Convention. Exhibit details are available at criticalmessagingassociation.org or contact Linda left arrow here by e-mail, or by telephone at 866-301-2272.

Tentative Schedule of Events

Tuesday, March 27

 

9:00 am – 2:00 pm

CMA Board of Directors Meeting

10:00 am – 12:00 pm

EMMA Board Meeting

2:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Technical Committee Meeting

Wednesday, March 28

 

8:30 am – 5:00 pm

Registration Open

9:00 am – 9:30 am

CMA Membership Meeting

9:30 am – 12:00 pm

CMA & EMMA Carrier/Operator meeting

1:00 pm – 1:15 pm

Welcome
Roy Pottle, CMA President
Derek Banner, EMMA President

1:15 pm – 2:45 pm

Opening Session
Facilitator: Michael Futeran, MethodLink

To facilitate networking and business opportunities this moderator-led forum encourages you to introduce yourself, your business, and growth areas for expansion.

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Campus Emergency Notifications and Pager Protocol
David O. Cronk, Director, Emergency Preparedness
University of Texas at Austin

This presentation will provide an overview of the University of Texas campus alerting protocol. Discussion will include the university’s distribution and use of pagers and pager protocol for campus notification, the successes and weaknesses of the campus alerting system in an actual emergency, and the significance of pagers in emergency communications in today’s world of “smart phones.”

4:10 pm – 5:10 pm

Using Paging Networks for Critical Messaging and Alerting: SkyAlert Earthquake Alerting System
Santiago Cantú, SkyTel Mexico
Skytel Mexico, in conjunction with the government and other emergency agencies has developed an Earthquake Alerting system. The system, based on critical messaging services, has enabled SkyTel Mexico to continue to diversify its portfolio of products and services while taking advantage of its infrastructure for services that cannot be matched by other wireless technologies.

6:30 pm

Riverboat Reception sponsored by:

cas american messaging

Thursday, March 29

 

8:30 am – 3:00 pm

Registration Open

8:30 am – 9:00 am

Continental Breakfast

9:00 am – 10:00 am

Leveraging Your Healthcare Accounts

10:15 am – 11:00 am

Getting the Message Out
Karla McGowan, Marketing Communications & PR Expert
From press releases to social media, this session will take you through the basics of how to promote your business. Regardless of size, every business has news to share and a story to tell — and getting your message out makes good business sense.

11:10 am – 11:40 am Upgrading Paging Technology to Meet Critical Messaging Demands
Illan Friedland, Beeper Communications Israel
This presentation will explore ways to upgrade our technologies to meet future critical messaging demands including GPS location-based paging and the need for encryption. Included as well is a review of the Earthquake Early Warning Alert System & Paging system recently installed in Israel.

11:40 am – 12:10 pm

Planning for Another Decade with Paging
Jan Kopegard, Ascom Sweden
Ascom has a tradition of selling on-site paging systems for more than five decades. Even though paging has been predicted to die for a long time, Ascom's plans for the paging portfolio are projected for more than a decade to come. The presentation will also discuss why paging is still a competitive alternative for customers today and tomorrow.

12:10 pm – 1:15 pm

Lunch sponsored by ProPage, Page Plus, Midwest Paging, Indiana Paging
Network, SelectPath — Contact Wireless

1:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Grow Your Business with Utilities – They Need More than Just a Message!
Dick Preston, MW Consulting Corporation
Similar to the medical industry, utilities also need a highly reliable/mission-critical, low-cost communication platform. This session will explore the opportunities, issues, and business propositions in providing value-added services to utilities. Learn how budget restraints and limitations on internal technical resources create an array of messaging opportunities for this sector.

2:15 pm – 3:15 pm

Bringing Cloud Computing Down To Earth
Jarret Raim, Rackspace
Alan Hills, MethodLink
Scott Forsythe, SelectPath-Contact Wireless

Tom Harger, SelectPath-Contact Wireless
Tom Jackson, Midwest Paging
Small and large companies can and are benefiting from moving their business to the cloud. This session will provide an overview of what “the cloud” is as well as the pros and cons of both public and private cloud computing.

3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Round Table Discussions
Social Media 101, facilitated by Karla McGowan
Expanding Business Models, facilitated by Will Bakula, Weather Affirmation

4:30 pm

Conference Conclusion

blue line

Premier Vendor prism ipx
Prism-IPX Systems LLC

Silver Vendor

methodlink
Method Link, LLC

Silver Vendor

unication
Unication USA

Bronze Vendors

blue line

CMA Executive Director
441 N. Crestwood Drive
Wilmington, NC 28405
Tel: 866-301-2272
E-mail: info@criticalmessagingassociation.org
Web: www.criticalmessagingassociation.org
CMA Regulatory Affairs Office
Suite 250
2154 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20007-2280
Tel: 202-223-3772
Fax: 202-315-3587

blue line

blue line

ADVERTISERS SUPPORTING THE NEWSLETTER

blue line

Advertiser Index

CMA — Critical Messaging Association
Daviscomms USA
Hahntech-USA
Hark Technologies
Ira Wiesenfeld & Associates
Ivycorp
Leavitt Communications
Preferred Wireless
Prism Paging
Ron Mercer — Paging & Wireless Network Planners LLC
PSSI — Product Support Services
TPL Systèmes
Critical Alert Systems d/b/a Northeast, UCOM & Teletouch Paging
VCP International
WiPath Communications

blue line

Stepping down was a hard decision, but the ‘right’ one: Lazaridis

By Rose Simone, Record staff Fri Jan 27 2012

lazaridis
Mathew McCarthy/Record

WATERLOO — It was a day that had been coming for years and Mike Lazaridis knew it had to happen.

But as he gave up his co-chief executive officer position at Research In Motion, the company he founded in 1984, it packed an emotional punch.

“It was very hard,” Lazaridis said in an interview with The Record this week. The company announced late Sunday night that Lazaridis and co-chief executive Jim Balsillie had stepped down and passed the torch to chief operating officer Thorsten Heins.

Although they have positions on the board and Lazaridis will chair the board’s new innovation committee, it means they are no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the company they built.

In the logical part of his brain, Lazaridis said he knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that handing over the reins to Heins, who is now president and chief executive officer, was the right thing to do at the right time. “I absolutely know he will take this company to new heights.”

But it wasn't easy.

“Stepping aside, as a founder, after 27 years, I would be lying if I said that wasn't emotional for me, and for my whole family,” he added.

Asked if he has any regrets, Lazaridis cited only one. “Working so hard, with a 24-by-7 workload for so long, my biggest regret was not having enough time for my family. I need to correct that over the next few years. My kids have not gone to university yet, and so hopefully, I will correct that before they leave,” said the 50-year-old.

The change in leadership came after more than a year of enormous pressure.

RIM is still profitable, and has 75 million users worldwide, but as the iconic BlackBerry lost market share to the more popular iPhone and Android, RIM’s stock price plunged and investors called for blood.

They wanted heads to roll. Some even called for the company to be split up and sold for parts.

In the midst of the storm, Lazaridis is registering his vote with his pocketbook. He is buying an additional $50 million in company shares, on top of the shares he already holds. “I am a major shareholder,” he said.

“This company has a strong balance sheet of $1.5 billion. It has strong sales of over $5 billion a quarter. This is a strong organization with a strong global brand, an iconic product and a strong future,” Lazaridis said.

Whatever the future brings, the legacy will remain.

It started with Lazaridis and his Windsor high school buddy Doug Fregin in a tiny 500-square-foot office on the top floor of a strip mall on Erb Street in Waterloo in 1984. It became a global company that now has more than 17,000 employees, about 8,000 of them here in Waterloo Region.

Beyond creating a global company, Lazaridis and Balsillie, who joined RIM in 1992, have poured hundreds of millions of their own money into creating institutes such as the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

These institutes are now known all over the world, and together with the BlackBerry, have put Waterloo on the map.

But when he was 23 years old and starting Research In Motion, Lazaridis had no idea how big the company would become.

“I think my wife (Ophelia), who had been a friend and then later we started dating, somehow saw more in it than I did,” Lazaridis said. “I just thought it was fun.”

At their high school in Windsor, Lazaridis and Fregin were teenage boys who liked tinkering with wires and tubes in the shop. “We would be taking tuners out of televisions and converting them into ham radio equipment,” Lazaridis recalls. “So we were getting a sense of transmitting information and then we were building computer processor units ourselves.”

In fact, just as Lazaridis and Fregin were getting really excited about computers, a teacher remarked: “You know, whoever puts computing and wireless together will really create something special.”

That was truly visionary, Lazaridis says now. “He saw this, when, 35 years ago?”

Besides his teachers at W.F. Herman Secondary School in Windsor, Lazaridis credits the University of Waterloo, which he says provides a strong mathematics and engineering foundation while introducing students to the world of digital signal processing, computing, networking and wireless data.

But it would be a long time before wireless e-mail could happen. Today, Research In Motion is known for the BlackBerry, but RIM was established long before it made its first BlackBerry.

For many years, the company engineered other devices and services, starting with the Budgie, a video display terminal used for store advertising. Then, it achieved fame for something completely different. It won an Oscar and an Emmy Award in technical categories for its DigiSync Film KeyKode Reader, an electronic film counter that made finding specific footage much easier, and was used in editing numerous popular television shows and movies.

Through it all, the fascination with the wireless transmission of data stayed with Lazaridis. In the early 1990s, RIM worked with Swedish high-tech giant Ericsson on the Mobitex wireless system of transmitting data and e-mail between computers.

“We knew this was the future. We could see it. All we had to do was just keep investing in that future long enough to intercept it,” Lazaridis says.

They put everything else aside and created the very first interactive pager device in 1996. The first BlackBerry e-mail device as we know it hit the market around 1999.

After that, RIM’s rise was meteoric. During the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, when cellphone networks were down, the BlackBerry worked, and newscasters far and wide praised it. Oprah Winfrey announced it as one of her favorite gadgets of 2003.

In 2008, RIM was briefly Canada’s most valuable company of any kind, with a stock of value of $70 billion. It was worth even more than the banks.

Then there were the troubles, including the five-year patent battle with NTP Inc. that cost $612.5 million US to settle in 2006 and the Ontario Securities Commission fines over backdating of stock options in 2009.

Yet the biggest blow to RIM was the sheer force of competition, particularly in the years that followed the launch of Apple’s popular iPhone in 2007.

Despite that, Lazaridis remains confident.

“We have always had competition,” he said.

Lazaridis said he believes in the company’s products, and looks forward to the next generation of products. “Would I be buying $50 million worth of shares if I didn’t?” he asked.

In recent years, the company has made important acquisitions, including QNX Software and Astonishing Tribe (TAT) last year and Torch Mobile and Certicom in 2009, all in order to be able to launch the next generation of the BlackBerry platform and products.

“The fact is, we have met every challenge we faced to keep this company going. It has excelled,” Lazaridis said. “We have built an incredibly strong, talented and experienced workforce. We have built a strong and experienced leadership team. So we know they can do it. We know they are ready. Going forward, it is up to them, but everything they need is there.”

The love of technology and engineering was what got him into the business. But he said he also enjoyed the customer visits and getting feedback from customer advisory council members as products were developed. “We would propose ideas to them and they would give us feedback about what works and what would work better. I cherished those meetings.

Even though he is no longer running the company, he can still say, “I love the company. I love these employees. They are my extended family.”

He also feels strongly about the future of the community and the country where he has been a force behind the future of scientific progress. He’s donated more than $150 million to the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics and more than $100 million to the Institute for Quantum Computing.

“People ask me, ‘Why did you want to build a physics institute in Waterloo?’ The obvious answer is: I live here. I decided to raise my family here. I feel safe here,” Lazaridis said. Besides, the University of Waterloo has the world’s largest mathematics and computer science faculty, so this was the obvious place to put it, he added.

Theoretical physics is special to him. “Understanding physics well is what has allowed me to steer the company over the years into the right technologies and the right markets,” he says. “It is not the only thing that drives you forward, but it forms a foundation.”

Moreover, it was actually the limitations of the technology today that inspired him to invest in physics. “I realized that our current understanding of reality was limited, and as long as it remains limited, we are limiting our options in the future,” he said.

Although last weekend’s announcement that Lazaridis and Balsillie would be stepping down was a shock to many, Lazaridis said there has actually been a four-year process of having Heins taking more and more responsibility in the company.

Heins, a 54-year-old native of Germany, was recruited to RIM in 2007 after 23 years at German electronics giant Siemens. Over the last four years, he took on more and more responsibility to prove he was the right person for the job, Lazaridis said. Before moving to the CEO’s post on the weekend, Heins was the chief operating officer responsible for product and sales.

“Bringing someone in from the outside would have been a guess,” Lazaridis said. “That would have been like going back four years and saying, ‘Well, we think he is a star but now he has to prove himself.’ He has proven himself.”

Lazaridis said the succession planning was started with the knowledge that he and Balsillie would eventually move on. Building an executive team and recruiting good people is hard. They need to know that there is a career plan for them, he said. “If we had created a glass ceiling, it would not have been anywhere near as attractive.”

With the company launching new products and a new platform later this year, this was the right time to do it, he said. “This was the perfect opportunity, and we knew that Thorsten and the executive team were ready.”

Although it was sad to let it go, Lazaridis said that in every major company there comes a time when this has to happen. “Founder-based companies, if they are successful, they get to this point.”

He will take on a new role as vice-chair of RIM’s board and chair of the board’s new innovation committee, but he said he wants to be very clear: “Thorsten is in charge here — there is no doubt about that.”

Lazaridis still hopes to be a mentor to young entrepreneurs who aspire to follow in his footsteps and build the next big Canadian technology company.

“Don’t hesitate,” he says to the next generation of entrepreneurs. “If you fail, try again. You can change course, you can change paths, and you can change strategies, but never give up.”

He also encourages Canadians, as a whole, to believe in this country. “I think the biggest mistake we make as Canadians is underestimating our abilities and underestimating the great institutions that we have built.”

“It is a cliché but it is true that the No. 1 renewable resource we have in our country is our people and their education, and their intellectual abilities and their training. I think that as long as we focus on that, they will do the rest.”

Source: The Record

blue line

vcp

advertise here

If you are reading this, your potential customers are probably reading it as well.

blue line

Broadband

Intel’s next big wireless play: It’s not smartphones

By Kevin Fitchard Jan. 23, 2012, 2:00pm PT 8 Comments

intel xeon Intel’s wireless ambitions go beyond smartphones and tablets. It’s set its sights on the guts of the mobile network as well. By embracing a new network design concept called Cloud-RAN, Intel believes it can reshape wireless networks from highly-specialized architectures into more generic computing platforms that run over its off-the-shelf silicon. And in the world’s largest operator, China Mobile, Intel sees the opportunity to make that vision happen.

China Mobile has a massive network of 700,000 GSM and 220,000 3G base stations built into towers throughout China’s vast landscape. The base station is easily the most expensive element of the wireless network, and as China Mobile looks to the next wave of wireless technology, LTE, it doesn't want to repeat that enormous infrastructure investment by installing pricey hardware at the bottom of every tower. Instead, it’s looking for Intel’s help to move all of that network intelligence into the cloud, leaving only the radios and antennas at the cell site.

The Cloud-Radio Access Network (Cloud-RAN) isn’t the public cloud of Amazon Web Services. Rather it’s a private cloud run by each operator in local data centers, but the principle is the same. China Mobile could centralize an enormous number of now-distributed computing resources. That would not only save capital and operating costs, but it would also allow it to webscale the network’s biggest number-crunching requirement – converting the analog fuzz scooped out of the airwaves into digital ones and zeros the network can understand.

Using supercomputing principles to handle baseband processing means no longer having to build networks to meet peak demands at every tower. Cell sites usually see huge upticks in use at a few predictable times each day: during work hours in a business district, for instance, and mornings and evenings out in the suburbs. Outside of those peak times, that capacity just goes to waste. But with Cloud-RAN, operators can allocate capacity where and when needed, following the flow of network congestion from the suburbs to the central city and back again. By putting their base stations in the cloud, operators could drastically cut the processing power necessary to run the network as a whole – by some estimates as much as 40 percent.

Meet the Cloud-RAN players

Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks have developed Cloud-RAN platforms of their own, giving them fancy names like lightRadio and Liquid Radio respectively. Meanwhile, chip-makers Texas Instruments and Freescale have both begun retooling their baseband designs for future cloud implementations. But Intel aims to take the concept one step further. Instead of merely relocating base stations to the cloud, Intel proposes using its multi-purpose Xeon processors to perform the same signal processing tasks that are now the purview of highly-specialized equipment.

In short, Intel wants to replace the big-iron wireless networks of today with what are essentially server farms that can be built and deployed for a fraction of the cost.

antenna siteAt a telecom industry conference last year, the GM of Intel’s Communications Infrastructure Division, Rose Schooler said that the telecom industry has been hobbled by its fixation on proprietary network interfaces, opaque platforms and a morass of complex signaling protocols – that’s code for telecom vendors not wanting to open up any more than wireless standards require. By adopting the more open standards of the computing industry, the wireless industry could innovate at the faster pace of computing, Schooler said.

Not surprisingly, the traditional telecom vendors think Schooler and Intel suffer from a case of wishful thinking. Freescale and TI have also tapped into computing architectures for their next generation of chip designs. Freescale uses IBM’s PowerPC, while TI has begun integrating ARM cores into its latest basebands. But TI hasn't done away with the key proprietary component of its baseband designs: the digital signal processor (DSP). No matter what Intel claims, wireless networks are highly specialized creatures and therefore require highly specialized silicon, said Tom Flanagan, director of technical strategy for TI’s wireless base station infrastructure team.

“Its kind of naïve to think that you can replace this highly optimized technology with something general purpose and not lose anything,” Flanagan said in a recent interview. “We build that expertise into the hardware because hardware is exactly where it needs to be.”

For Intel to replicate base station with generic Xeon processors would require it to build many of its functions into software, and doing baseband processing through software is a highly inefficient way to run a network, Flanagan said.

What are Intel’s chances?

diceTo build a wireless network business, Intel doesn't just need to battle the established telecom vendors, it has to make the case for Cloud-RAN to the wireless carriers. Last year at CTIA, Verizon CTO Tony Melone was dismissive of the new cloud architectures emerging at the show, saying that they were neat design concepts, but hardly ready for prime time. Verizon Wireless is the world’s most aggressive carrier when it comes to LTE and implementing new network technologies, so Melone’s lack of endorsement is telling.

Another obstacle is the enormous backhaul capacity that a Cloud-RAN architecture would require. Sending raw unprocessed radio frequency data over the network to a cloud data center would require much more bandwidth than a copper or microwave backhaul link could provide. That means fiber is the only way to support Cloud-RAN, and no operator has fiber links to all of its cell towers.

But if Intel lands a contract with China Mobile it may not have to worry about other customers. An LTE deployment from China Mobile could eventually scale to more than a million cells, translating into a heck of a lot of high-end chip sales. Intel, however, faces competition from the incumbents on that front as well. Intel has been working with on China Mobile’s Cloud-RAN project since its inception, but recently the carrier began testing Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio technology as well.

Given the decline of its core PC business, Intel needs to find new markets for its X86 processors and figures that the wireless industry is ripe for the picking. But its attempts to break into other aspects of that industry have flopped. Intel has tried for years to challenge ARM’s dominance in the mobile computing market with its Atom processors, but the X86 architecture’s notorious power problems have kept handset makers disinterested. Only earlier this month did Atom start showing life. Most recently Intel has been trying to position its processors as a means of making dumb femtocells and picocells smart.

I’ll give Intel one thing. It’s tenacious. With every wireless initiative fail – note WiMAX – it immediately launches another. And where it can't develop a wireless technology on its own, it buys a company that can. Cloud-RAN could be a key turning point for Intel or another flop, but we’ll probably have to wait several years to find out. While China Mobile is trailing LTE now, its commercial rollout could be as far away as 2014.

Source: GIGAOM (Thanks to Shane Scofield)

blue line

Product Support Services, Inc.

blue line

Based in Coppell, Texas, a suburb of Dallas/Fort Worth, and located just five minutes north of the DFW Airport, PSSI receives, repairs and ships approximately 4,000 discrete units each day.

  • PSSI is ISO certified and has comprehensively integrated robust lean manufacturing processes and systems that enable us to deliver timely and benchmark quality results.
  • PSSI is certified for Levels III and IV repair by a wide variety of OEMs including, for example, Motorola, Nokia, Sony/Ericsson, Samsung, Stanley and LG.
  • PSSI ’s service center is a state-of-the-art facility, complete with multiple wireless test environments and board-level repair capabilities.
  • PSSI ’s state-of-the-art and proprietary Work-In-Process (WIP) systems, and its Material Planning and Warehouse Management systems, enable PSSI to track discrete units by employee, work center, lot, model, work order, location and process through the entire reverse logistics process. Access to this information can be provided to our customers so that they can track the real-time movement of their products.

Pager and Electronics Repair

Product Support Services, Inc.

pssi

pssi

Contact:
Product Support Services, Inc.
511 South Royal Lane
Coppell, Texas 75019
Phone:
877-777-8798 (Toll Free)
972-462-3970
info@productsupportservices.com
left arrow
www.productsupportservices.com left arrow

blue line

CAR RADIO HISTORY

SUNDOWN

One evening in 1929 two young men named William Lear and Elmer Wavering drove their girlfriends to a lookout point high above the Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois, to watch the sunset. It was a romantic night to be sure, but one of the women observed that it would be even nicer if they could listen to music in the car.

Lear and Wavering liked the idea. Both men had tinkered with radios – Lear had served as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy during World War I – and it wasn't long before they were taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to work in a car. But it wasn't as easy as it sounds: automobiles have ignition switches, generators, spark plugs, and other electrical equipment that generate noisy static interference, making it nearly impossible to listen to the radio when the engine was running.

SIGNING ON

One by one, Lear and Wavering identified and eliminated each source of electrical interference. When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in Chicago. There they met Paul Galvin, owner of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. He made a product called a “battery eliminator” a device that allowed battery-powered radios to run on household AC current. But as more homes were wired for electricity, more radio manufacturers made AC-powered radios. Galvin needed a new product to manufacture. When he met Lear and Wavering at the radio convention, he found it. He believed that mass-produced, affordable car radios had the potential to become a huge business.

Lear and Wavering set up shop in Galvin’s factory, and when they perfected their first radio, they installed it in his Studebaker. Then Galvin went to a local banker to apply for a loan. Thinking it might sweeten the deal, he had his men install a radio in the banker’s Packard. Good idea, but it didn’t work – half an hour after the installation, the banker’s Packard caught on fire. (They didn’t get the loan.)

Galvin didn’t give up. He drove his Studebaker nearly 800 miles to Atlantic City to show off the radio at the 1930 Radio Manufacturers Association convention. Too broke to afford a booth, he parked the car outside the convention hall and cranked up the radio so that passing conventioneers could hear it. That idea worked – he got enough orders to put the radio into production.

WHAT’S IN A NAME

That first production model was called the 5T71. Galvin decided he needed to come up with something a little catchier. In those days many companies in the phonograph and radio businesses used the suffix “ola” for their names – Radiola, Columbiola, and Victrola were three of the biggest. Galvin decided to do the same thing, and since his radio was intended for use in a motor vehicle, he decided to call it the Motorola.

But even with the name change, the radio still had problems:

  • When Motorola went on sale in 1930, it cost about $110 uninstalled, at a time when you could buy a brand-new car for $650, and the country was sliding into the Great Depression. (By that measure, a radio for a new car would cost about $3,000 today.)
  • In 1930 it took two men several days to put in a car radio – the dashboard had to be taken apart so that the receiver and a single speaker could be installed, and the ceiling had to be cut open to install the antenna. These early radios ran on their own batteries, not on the car battery, so holes had to be cut into the floorboard to accommodate them. The installation manual had eight complete diagrams and 28 pages of instructions.

HIT THE ROAD

Selling complicated car radios that cost 20 percent of the price of a brand-new car wouldn't have been easy in the best of times, let alone during the Great Depression – Galvin lost money in 1930 and struggled for a couple of years after that. But things picked up in 1933 when Ford began offering Motorolas pre-installed at the factory. In 1934 they got another boost when Galvin struck a deal with B.F. Goodrich tire company to sell and install them in its chain of tire stores. By then the price of the radio, installation included, had dropped to $55. The Motorola car radio was off and running. (The name of the company would be officially changed from Galvin Manufacturing to “Motorola” in 1947.)

In the meantime, Galvin continued to develop new uses for car radios. In 1936, the same year that it introduced push-button tuning, it also introduced the Motorola Police Cruiser, a standard car radio that was factory preset to a single frequency to pick up police broadcasts. In 1940 he developed with the first handheld two-way radio – the Handie-Talkie – for the U. S. Army.

A lot of the communications technologies that we take for granted today were born in Motorola labs in the years that followed World War II. In 1947 they came out with the first television to sell under $200. In 1956 the company introduced the world’s first pager; in 1969 it supplied the radio and television equipment that was used to televise Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon. In 1973 it invented the world’s first handheld cellular phone. Today Motorola is one of the second-largest cell phone manufacturer in the world. And it all started with the car radio.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO. . .

The two men who installed the first radio in Paul Galvin’s car, Elmer Wavering and William Lear, ended up taking very different paths in life. Wavering stayed with Motorola. In the 1950’s he helped change the automobile experience again when he developed the first automotive alternator, replacing inefficient and unreliable generators. The invention lead to such luxuries as power windows, power seats, and, eventually, air-conditioning.

Lear also continued inventing. He holds more than 150 patents. Remember eight-track tape players? Lear invented that. But what he’s really famous for are his contributions to the field of aviation. He invented radio direction finders for planes, aided in the invention of the autopilot, designed the first fully automatic aircraft landing system, and in 1963 introduced his most famous invention of all, the Lear Jet, the world’s first mass-produced, affordable business jet. (Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school after the eighth grade.)

blue line

Here is a photo of a Learavian radio, by none other then William Lear.

first car radio

Source: Jim's Antique Radio Museum
(Sent in by Frank Hackett, a good friend and early manager of Motorola's Pager sales team.)

blue line

LEAVITT Communications

blue line

its stil here

 

It's still here — the tried and true Motorola Alphamate 250. Now owned, supported, and available from Leavitt Communications. Call us for new or reconditioned units, parts, manuals, and repairs.

We also offer refurbished Alphamate 250’s, Alphamate IIs, the original Alphamate and new and refurbished pagers, pager repairs, pager parts and accessories. We are FULL SERVICE in Paging!

E-mail Phil Leavitt ( pcleavitt@leavittcom.com ) for pricing and delivery information or for a list of other available paging and two-way related equipment.

blue line

Phil Leavitt
847-955-0511
pcleavitt@leavittcom.com

leavitt logo

7508 N. Red Ledge Dr.
Paradise Valley, AZ 85253

www.leavittcom.com

blue line

Test of Portland's emergency alert program shows 'high degree of failure'

Published: Thursday, January 26, 2012, 10:27 PM
Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2012, 11:16 PM

A computerized system to alert Portland residents of emergencies by phone, text or e-mail failed a citywide test Thursday, contacting less than 1 percent of the 317,000 people on its lists.

Only 2,100 people received alerts by 2 p.m. — three hours after the test began, said Randy Neves, spokesman for the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management. All 2,100 people are city employees whose contact information was stored on a city database and whose last names began with A, B or C. The system did not load the remaining names, he said, and did not contact anyone outside of the city employee database, he said.

"Clearly, this failure is a disappointment," said Carmen Merlo, director of the bureau. The city will re-evaluate its contract with vendor Louisiana-based First Call if the vendor cannot resolve the problems, she said. "We expected some room for improvement with this ambitious test. We did not expect this high degree of failure."

First Call noted that Portland's system was "built from scratch" to meet the city's requirements. "With any new software, load testing under live conditions is necessary to reveal issues that internal or small-scale testing will miss and the problems encountered (Thursday) are currently being addressed," said President Matthew Teague.

Those receiving the alert would have heard a message from Mayor Sam Adams telling them about the test, which was to go out to all landlines and all voluntarily submitted cell phone or e-mail addresses.

Listen:

Or download MP3 here.

The system has worked on smaller scales, Neves said. First Call has sent out three notifications to neighborhoods since the city hired it 1 1/2 years ago, Neves said. One was to neighbors around the Alpenrose Dairy last June to alert them to an ammonia leak. The other two, he said, related to emergency police operations in two neighborhoods.

The contract with First Call requires the city to pay $120,000 in the first year and $80,000 in subsequent years.

While emergency officials hoped a citywide deployment would work, Neves said they were not counting on it. They decided to test it because the vendor claimed it could handle such a large alert. But in the event of a citywide emergency, officials would use the emergency broadcast system for getting information out to mass numbers of people, Neves said.

The city and the mayor have urged residents to provide their phone or e-mail information to authorities for these emergency notifications through the PublicAlerts.org page.

Source: OregonLive.com (Thanks to John Raptor of Cook Paging)

blue line

blue line

TPL Systèmes

blue line

tpl

blue line

TPL Systèmes

blue line

blue line

Preferred Wireless

blue line

preferred logo

Terminals & Controllers:
1 Motorola ASC1500
2 GL3100 RF Director 
9 Glenayre GLS2164 Satellite Receivers
1 GL3000L Complete w/Spares
1 GL3000ES Terminal
2 Zetron 2200 Terminals
  Unipage — Many Unipage Cards & Chassis
Link Transmitters:
2 Glenayre QT4201 & 6201, 25 & 100W Midband Link TX
2 Glenayre QT6201 Link Repeater and Link Station in Hot Standby
1 Glenayre QT6994, 150W, 900 MHz Link TX
3 Motorola 10W, 900 MHz Link TX (C35JZB6106)
2 Motorola 30W, Midband Link TX (C42JZB6106AC)
2 Eagle Midband Link Transmitters, 125W
5 Glenayre GL C2100 Link Repeaters
VHF Paging Transmitters
6 Glenayre GLT8411, 250W, VHF TX
4 Motorola VHF 350W Nucleus NAC Transmitters
13 Motorola VHF 350W Nucleus Cnet Transmitters
UHF Paging Transmitters:
20 Glenayre UHF GLT5340, 125W, DSP Exciter
6 Motorola PURC-5000 110 & 225W, TRC & ACB
2 QT-7795, 250W, UHF TX
900 MHz Paging Transmitters:
3 Glenayre GLT 8600, 500W
2 Glenayre GLT8200, 25W (NEW)
15 Glenayre GLT-8500 250W
35 Glenayre 900 MHz DSP Exciters
25 Glenayre GLT-8500 Final PAs
35 Glenayre GLT-8500 Power Supplies

spacer SEE WEB FOR COMPLETE LIST:
spacer www.preferredwireless.com/equipment left arrow HERE

Too Much To List • Call or E-Mail

  Rick McMichael
  Preferred Wireless, Inc.
  10658 St. Charles Rock Rd.
  St. Louis, MO 63074
  888-429-4171 or 314-429-3000
  rickm@preferredwireless.com
  www.preferredwireless.com/equipment

blue line

Preferred Wireless

blue line

blue line

IVYCORP

blue line

ivy corp

blue line

IVYCORP

blue line

Consulting Alliance

Brad Dye, Ron Mercer, Allan Angus, and Vic Jackson are friends and colleagues who work both together and independently, on wireline and wireless communications projects. Click here for a summary of their qualifications and experience. They collaborate on consulting assignments, and share the work according to their individual expertise and their schedules.

 

blue line

Rescuers describe pulling a Hopkins girl to safety after SUV plunges into the Rabbit River

Published: Monday, January 30, 2012, 9:24 PM Updated: Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 10:42 AM
By Garret Ellison

suv in water
Hopkins Township volunteer fire fighters and passersby rescued a 17-year-old Martin High School senior on Monday after her car plunged into the Rabbit River off 130th Avenue.

Courtesy Photo | Jim Bard

HOPKINS TOWNSHIP — Jim Bard was driving east on 130th Avenue a couple miles northeast of the village of Hopkins when he saw a vehicle approaching him in the distance wobble, flip and disappear from his view.

The strange sight was about a half-mile ahead and Bard, a 40-year-old dairy feed analyst for Agra-King working in the area on Monday, thumped his phone to 911 as he approached.

What he found was a GMC Jimmy, upside-down and half-submerged with a 17-year-old Hopkins girl trapped inside, struggling as the Rabbit River current filled the vehicle’s cab. She had apparently lost control on an icy patch of road west of 18th Street, careened through a guardrail and plunged into the river.

At that point, Bard pressed the ‘call’ button on his cell phone. It was about 3:30 p.m.

“I knew that no matter what I did, she’s in freezing cold water and we needed to get her out right away,” said Bard, a charter boat captain in the summer who knows the dangers of hypothermia.

He stayed on the line with the dispatcher, waiting for first responders and hollering encouragement to the girl as she unbuckled and swam into the backseat where there was a small pocket of air.

Ed Wamhoff, 27, was sitting at home holding his baby son when his pager went off. Wamhoff, a dairy farmer and volunteer firefighter with Hopkins Township, realized the accident was only a mile away as he raced out the door.

Oddly enough, Wamhoff and other Hopkins firefighters had just finished a water rescuer training drill the night before. The yellow cold water suits were still drying in the fire station when the call came in from dispatchers about the girl in the river.

Wamhoff and Bard hurried down the snowy embankment to the river’s edge and waded over slippery rocks into the water, which was about chest-deep as they approached and flanked the submerged SUV. They discovered the driver side was jammed in.

17-year-old Allie Teed of Hopkins was able to unbuckle herself and gasp air from a small pocket in the rear of her GMC Jimmy after the vehicle plunged into the river.

Inside, Allie Teed, a senior at Martin High School, was shivering in the rear of the vehicle with about six inches of breathing room.

“She was screaming when we got there, but she calmed down when I got the door open,” said Wamhoff. Teed listened to their direction and didn’t argue, which helped greatly, he said.

“I think she was in disbelief that this was happening,” said Bard. “We didn’t have to explain things more than once.”

The two men convinced Teed to swim back through the seats and out the front passenger side door, which they were able to hold open against the current.

She spent about 10 minutes in the water and was shivering badly as they helped her up the riverside, just as an ambulance from Wayland was arriving.

"I don't remember flipping through the air,” said Teed, who gave several TV interviews on Monday afternoon. “I just remember hitting the guard rail and having water rushing in my car.”

She wasn't hypothermic yet, but close, said Wamhoff.

Teed was treated by paramedics on the scene and went home with her parents. She’s cold but otherwise alright, said Hopkins Township Fire Chief Tim McKinnon.

He suspects the tree cover bordering the rural road kept an icy patch from thawing after the Sunday snowstorm. Bard said the road was a slippery, slushy mix.

“It was quite a day,” said Bard. “Not one you want to repeat.”

“I’m just glad I saw it happen. Imagine how many people could have passed by without noticing.”

Source: The Grand Rapids Press

blue line

blue line

Mobilfone of Kansas City

mobilfone

Newsletter Supporters

mobilfone

blue line

Daviscomms USA

blue line

 

daviscomms

PAGERS & Telemetry Devices
FLEX & POCSAG

(12.5 kHz or 25 kHz - POCSAG)

br502 numeric
Br502 Numeric

br802 front
Br802
Alphanumeric

tmrp-1
Telemetry

** Tracking Devices-See Website **

Contract Manufacturing Services
Board Level to complete “Turn-Key”

Bob Popow
Scottsdale, AZ
www.daviscommsusa.com
480-515-2344

white line

Daviscomms (S) Pte Ltd-Bronze Member-CMA

blue line

Daviscomms USA

blue line

gcs logo

Newsletter Supporter

blue line

CANYON RIDGE Communications

canyon ridge

Premium Newsletter Supporter

blue line

ProPage Inc.

propage

Newsletter Supporter

blue line

PAGE ONE OF WYOMING

page one wyoming

Newsletter Supporter

blue line

Cook Paging

cook paging

Newsletter Supporter

blue line

MethodLink

methodlink

Newsletter Supporter

blue line

communication specialists

Newsletter Supporter

blue line

advertise here

blue line

UCOM Paging

blue line

satellite dish ucom logo

Satellite Uplink
As Low As
$500 /month

  • Data input speeds up to 38.4 Kbps
  • Dial-in modem access for Admin
  • Extremely reliable & secure
  • Hot standby up link components

Knowledgeable Tech Support 24/7

Contact Alan Carle Now!
1-888-854-2697 x272
acarle@ucom.com www.ucom.com

blue line

UCOM Paging

blue line

Ira Wiesenfeld, P.E.

blue line

Complete Technical Services For The Communications and Electronics Industries

Design • Installation • Maintenance • Training • Engineering • Licensing • Technical Assistance

blue line

Ira Wiesenfeld, P.E.
Consulting Engineer
Registered Professional Engineer

Tel/Fax: 972-960-9336
Cell: 214-707-7711
Web: IWA-RADIO.com
7711 Scotia Dr.
Dallas, TX 75248-3112
E-mail: iwiesenfel@aol.com

blue line

Ira Wiesenfeld, P.E.

blue line

Hahntech-USA

blue line

www.hahntechUSA.com

 

2-Way 4-Button Pager

  • ReFLEX™ v 2.7.5
  • DSP Technology
  • Industrial Grade

e940
E940 PAGER & CHARGER

more

E-mail: sales@hahntechUSA.com
Telephone: 011-82-31-735-7592

 

blue line

Hahntech-USA

blue line

Paging & Wireless Network Planners

blue line

PAGING & WIRELESS
NETWORK PLANNERS LLC

WIRELESS SPECIALISTS

www.pagingplanners.com
rmercer@pagingplanners.com

R.H. (Ron) Mercer
Consultant
217 First Street South
East Northport, NY 11731
ron mercer

Cellphone: 631-786-9359

blue line

Paging & Wireless Network Planners

blue line

 

blue line

A Radio Traffic Cop

Here is M.S. Strock, of the U.S. Bureau of Standards, checking broadcasting wave lengths with an apparatus of extreme accuracy. This Uncle Sam makes broadcasters keep to their own wave lengths.

Popular Science Monthly, July 1925

 

nbs 1925

Source: Shorpy.com

blue line

PRISM PAGING

blue line

prism
white line

PRISM IP MESSAGE GATEWAY

white line
THE ULTIMATE IN COMMERCIAL AND PRIVATE RADIO PAGING SYSTEMS
prism
  • VoIP telephone access — eliminate interconnect expense
  • Call from anywhere — Prism SIP Gateway allows calls from PSTN and PBX
  • All the Features for Paging, Voicemail, Text-to-Pager, Wireless and DECT phones
  • Prism Inet, the new IP interface for TAP, TNPP, SNPP, SMTP — Industry standard message input
  • Direct Connect to NurseCall, Assisted Living, Aged Care, Remote Monitoring, Access Control Systems
prism
prism

blue line

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

By DAVID ROSE
Daily Mail
Last updated at 5:38 AM on 29th January 2012

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

thames
A painting, dated 1684, by Abraham Hondius depicts one of many frost fairs on the River Thames during the mini ice age

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.

However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

world temp

Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’

These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.

CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

solar cycles

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.

Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.

‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.

He believes that as the Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.

‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.

sunspots

She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .

Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.

The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century.

‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’

Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.

‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’

Source: Daily Mail (UK)

blue line

image

blue line

WiPath Communications

blue line

wipath header

Intelligent Solutions for Paging & Wireless Data

WiPath manufactures a wide range of highly unique and innovative hardware and software solutions in paging and mobile data for:

  • Emergency Mass Alert & Messaging Emergency Services Communications Utilities Job Management Telemetry and Remote Switching Fire House Automation
  • Load Shedding and Electrical Services Control

blue line PDT3000 Paging Data Terminal pdt 2000 image

  • FLEX & POCSAG Built-in POCSAG encoder Huge capcode capacity Parallel, 2 serial ports, 4 relays
  • Message & system monitoring

blue line Paging Controlled Moving Message LED Displays

welcom wipath

  • Variety of sizes Indoor/outdoor
  • Integrated paging receiver

blue line PDR3000/PSR3000 Paging Data Receivers paging data receiver

  • Highly programmable, off-air decoders Message Logging & remote control Multiple I/O combinations and capabilities
  • Network monitoring and alarm reporting

blue line Specialized Paging Solutions paging data receiver

  • Emergency Mass Alerting Remote telemetry switching & control Fire station automation PC interfacing and message management Paging software and customized solutions Message interception, filtering, redirection, printing & logging Cross band repeating, paging coverage infill, store and forward
  • Alarm interfaces, satellite linking, IP transmitters, on-site systems

blue line

Mobile Data Terminals & Two Way Wireless  Solutions

mobile data terminal

radio interface

  • Fleet tracking, messaging, job processing, and field service management Automatic vehicle location (AVL), GPS
  • CDMA, GPRS, ReFLEX, conventional, and trunked radio interfaces

blue line

Contact
Postal
Address:
WiPath Communications LLC
4845 Dumbbarton Court
Cumming, GA 30040
Street
Address:
4845 Dumbbarton Court
Cumming, GA 30040
Web site: www.wipath.com left arrow CLICK
E-mail: info@wipath.com left arrow CLICK
Phone: 770-844-6218
Fax: 770-844-6574
WiPath Communications

blue line

blue line

Hark Technologies

blue line

hark logo

Wireless Communication Solutions

blue line

USB Paging Encoder

paging encoder

  • Single channel up to eight zones
  • Connects to Linux computer via USB
  • Programmable timeouts and batch sizes
  • Supports 2-tone, 5/6-tone, POCSAG 512/1200/2400, GOLAY
  • Supports Tone Only, Voice, Numeric, and Alphanumeric
  • PURC or direct connect
  • Pictured version mounts in 5.25" drive bay
  • Other mounting options available
  • Available as a daughter board for our embedded Internet Paging Terminal (IPT)

blue line

Paging Data Receiver (PDR)

pdr

  • Frequency agile - only one receiver to stock
  • USB or RS-232 interface
  • Two contact closures
  • End-user programmable w/o requiring special hardware
  • 16 capcodes
  • POCSAG
  • Eight contact closure version also available
  • Product customization available

blue line

Other products

  • Please see our web site for other products including Internet Messaging Gateways, Unified Messaging Servers, test equipment, and Paging Terminals.
Contact
Hark Technologies
717 Old Trolley Rd Ste 6 #163
Summerville, SC 29485
Tel: 843-821-6888
Fax: 843-821-6894
E-mail: sales@harktech.com left arrow CLICK
Web: http://www.harktech.com left arrow CLICK

blue line

HARK—EXHIBITS AT THE
NASHVILLE CONFERENCE

hark

David George and Bill Noyes
of Hark Technologies.

blue line

Hark Technologies

blue line

blue line

CRITICAL RESPONSE SYSTEMS

blue line

top background

Over 70% of first responders are volunteers.
Without an alert, interoperability means nothing.

Get the Alert.

M1501 Acknowledgent Pager

With the M1501 Acknowledgement Pager and a SPARKGAP wireless data system, you know when your volunteers have been alerted, when they’ve read the message, and how they’re going to respond – all in the first minutes of an event. Only the M1501 delivers what agencies need – reliable, rugged, secure alerting with acknowledgement.

Learn More

FEATURES
  • 5-Second Message Delivery
  • Acknowledged Personal Messaging
  • Acknowledged Group Messaging
  • 16 Group Addresses
  • 128-Bit Encryption
  • Network-Synchronized Time Display
  • Simple User Interface
  • Programming/Charging Base
  • Secondary Features Supporting Public Safety and Healthcare

blue line

CRITICAL RESPONSE SYSTEMS

blue line

Selected portions of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update, a newsletter from the Law Offices of Blooston, Mordkofsky, Dickens, Duffy & Prendergast, LLP are reproduced in this section with the firm's permission.

blue line

LightSquared Asks FCC To Allow Interference To GPS

Clients using or relying on GPS technology should oppose this proposal.

The FCC’s International Bureau (IB) has requested comment on LightSquared’s Petition for Declaratory Ruling, requesting that the Commission “resolve the regulatory status” of commercial Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, to the extent their operations may be impaired by the ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) of LightSquared’s licensed operations in the 1524-1559 MHz Mobile-Satellite Service (MSS) band. LightSquared requests specific declarations designed to establish that commercial GPS devices are not entitled to interference protection from LightSquared’s operations, so long as LightSquared operates within the technical parameters prescribed by rule and Commission Order. The relief sought by LightSquared would appear to allow interference from LightSquared’s proposed system to the myriad of GPS-driven technologies that we have come to depend on, such as Garmin, OnStar, and mapping/direction technologies in smart phones, as well as E911 and other important government operations. Our clients that rely on GPS-based technology should contact us as soon as possible about participating in opposing comments.

Last year, the IB granted LightSquared a conditional waiver of the ATC “integrated service” rule, thereby establishing certain conditions that LightSquared must meet before it can provide the terrestrial portion of service contemplated by its proposed integrated satellite and terrestrial 4G wire-less network. The IB noted that the Conditional Waiver Order prescribed an Interference-Resolution Process by which LightSquared would work with the GPS community to resolve concerns raised about potential interference to GPS receivers and devices that might result from LightSquared’s planned terrestrial operations. As a condition of commencing such commercial operations, the Conditional Waiver Order required that this process first be “completed,” a term defined as the point at which the FCC, after consultation with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), concludes that the harmful interference concerns have been resolved and sends a letter to LightSquared stating that the process is complete, the IB said.

To date, the Interference-Resolution Process has not been completed. Although LightSquared submitted, as a required step in the Process, the IB said, the final report of the technical working group that it co-chaired with the U.S. GPS Industry Council (USGIC), the Commission issued a Public Notice calling for public comment on the report and has since asked for additional technical submissions and testing. In reply comments filed in connection with the Public Notice, LightSquared raised a full range of issues regarding the scope of interference protection to which GPS receivers are entitled, according to the IB.

Separately, the IB said, in the Report and Order in ET Docket No. 10-142, which focused on the addition of terrestrial service allocations to the 2 GHz Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) band, the Commission briefly discussed the Conditional Waiver Order and the Interference-Resolution Process. The U.S. GPS Industry Council (USGIC) filed a petition for reconsideration in that docket, requesting a statement from the Commission that the GPS community is not required to share responsibility for resolving interference issues with MSS ATC providers like LightSquared. The IB said that the USGIC Recon Petition, which is pend-ing, contends that MSS licensees providing ATC service are required to protect GPS receivers from interference caused by such terrestrial operations, and that the Com-mission has placed the obligation to resolve harmful interference on those MSS licensees. LightSquared opposed the USGIC Recon Petition, raising many of the same arguments contained in its Petition for Declaratory Ruling.

On December 23, 2011, the IB noted that the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act was enacted into law as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act. Section 628 of the General Government Appropriations Act prohibits the Commission from using any funds made available by that Act to remove the conditions imposed on commercial terrestrial operations in the Order and Authorization adopted by the Commission in its January 2011 Conditional Waiver Order or otherwise permit such operations, until the Commission has resolved concerns of potential widespread harmful interference to commercially available Global Positioning System devices.

In its Petition for Declaratory Ruling, LightSquared in essence asks the FCC that, provided ATC operations are conducted in accordance within the Commission’s technical parameters, commercially available GPS devices are not protected against harmful interference caused by those ATC operations. Section 628 of the General Government Appropriations Act bears on this issue as it relates to LightSquared, inasmuch as it precludes the Commission from permitting LightSquared to engage in such ATC operations under the Conditional Waiver Order until it has resolved concerns about interference to GPS. Further, because the IB believes the ongoing Interference-Resolution Process provides the most appropriate forum for considering LightSquared’s satisfaction of the interference-resolution conditions of the Conditional Waiver Order, it is associating LightSquared’s Petition with the docket established by the Commission for petitions for reconsideration of the Conditional Waiver Order, IB Docket No. 11-109. To the extent the Petition raises general issues about the regulatory status of GPS devices, these issues will be considered in ET Docket No. 10-142.

Comments on LightSquared’s Petition for Declaratory Ruling (IB Docket No. 11-109 or ET Docket No. 10-142) are due February 27, and replies are due March 13.

blue line

VERIZON POSTS $2 BILLION 4Q LOSS DUE, IN PART, TO SUBSIDIZING SMARTPHONES: The Associated Press reported last week that Verizon posted a loss of $2 billion in the fourth quarter of last year. AP said this was due primarily to Verizon subsidizing its newly launched iPhone 4S. Although sales of the iPhone were high—4.3 million along with 7.7 million total smartphones—Verizon took a beating because of its subsidy policy. The company pays Apple about $600 per phone, and sells them for about $200 retail, according to AP. Verizon’s rationale, AP said, is that the company believes it will make the money back in service fees over a two-year contract with consumers. Some analysts dis-agree with this rationale, stating that AT&T has been sell-ing smartphones since 2007, but has not yet seen any big profits. However, AP noted that the smartphone loss has been masked by a large charge for adjusting Verizon’s pension plans. Nevertheless, AP said, Verizon Wireless added 1.2 million new subscribers on contract-based plans, which are the most lucrative. It was the second-best result in the last two years, further solidifying the company’s position as the industry leader, with 87.4 million phones and other devices on contract-based plans, and 108.7 million total.

Source: BloostonLaw Telecom Update Vol. 15, No. 4 February 1, 2012

 

This newsletter is not intended to provide legal advice. Those interested in more information should contact the firm. For additional information, contact Hal Mordkofsky at 202-828-5520 or halmor@bloostonlaw.com

blue line

TECH TIP OF THE WEEK

blue line

Servicing Japanese Radios

J.I.S. (Japanese Industrial Standard) screwdriver tips are slightly different than the Phillips screwdriver tips typically found in the U.S. All Phillips screws are not the same. If you experience cam-outs, or find that you are ripping and damaging screw heads, you are probably using a US Phillips screwdriver, when you should be using a JIS screwdriver. As JIS screws become more popular, the best way to reduce cam-outs and/or ripping out screw heads, is to purchase JIS screwdrivers.

Source: Amazon

blue line

UNTIL NEXT WEEK

blue line

Brad Dye
With best regards,

brad's signature
Newsletter Editor

73 DE K9IQY

CMA logo

Wireless Messaging News
Brad Dye, Editor
P.O. Box 266
Fairfield, IL 62837 USA

mensa member animated gif

Skype: braddye
Telephone: 618-599-7869

E–mail: brad@braddye.com
Wireless Consulting page
Paging Information Home Page
Marketing & Engineering Papers
CMA web site

pagerman WIRELESS
wireless logo medium
MESSAGING

blue line

THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

blue line

  • You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
  • What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
  • The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
  • You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
  • When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

blue line

advertise here

signup

CLICK THE LOGO ABOVE FOR A FREE SUBSCRIPTION

blue line

left arrow Newspapers generally cost 75¢ a copy and they hardly ever mention paging. If you receive some benefit from this publication maybe you would like to help support it financially? A donation of $25.00 would represent approximately 50¢ a copy for one year. If you are willing and able, please click on the PayPal Donate button to the left.

blue line

iland internet sulutions This newsletter is brought to you by the generous support of our advertisers and the courtesy of iland Internet Solutions Corporation. For more information about the web-hosting services available from iland Internet Solutions Corporation, please click on their logo to the left.

blue line

THE WIRELESS MESSAGING NEWSLETTER & THE PAGING INFORMATION RESOURCE

blue line

Home Page | Directory | Consulting | Newsletters
Products | Reference | Glossary | Send e-mail