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the wireless messaging news

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Wireless News Aggregation

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Friday — September 5, 2014 — Issue No. 621

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

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Dear Friends of Wireless Messaging,

I was listening to, and watching a new video promoting “spōk MOBILE” a new non-paging app being offered by the paging company formerly known as USA Mobility.

I had to look-up the code to make an o into a lower-case-long o e.g. ō. By the way, the long mark over a vowel is called a macron.

Anyway back to the video. I have some pretty good speakers on my computer, but even turning them up to be fairly loud the audio seemed to be a little fuzzy. I had a little trouble understanding how the young lady in the video was pronouncing spōk.

As probably the largest paging company in the world, I would never want to write anything negative about them. They deserve our respect. I understand that they are making money and keeping their investors happy.

I just want to clarify that name, “spōk.” It should be pronounced like “spoke” as in the spokes of a wheel. Sort of like The Wheel of Fortune that I have been promoting for the last 24 years, or its replacement, The New Wheel of Fortune.

So don't say “spɑk” (IPA ɑ) — that sounds like the character that Leonard Nimoy played in the Star Trek series — “Spock.”

And it's not “spook” either. That's a ghost or apparition.

OK students, I hope that clarifies how to pronounce this word. For another humorous tip on English Grammar, please see the THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK near the end of this issue.

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NEW STUFF

A reader has suggested that I start using “Flattr” — a microdonation service — to make it easier for people to support the newsletter with small-monthly donations.

Supporters set their own monthly budget, which, at the end of every month, is divided by the total number of “flattrs” they've made. Every Creator (that's me) gets their cut on the 10th of the month.

Flattr is already built-in to YouTube, Instagram, Soundcloud, Flickr, Github, Vimeo, App.net, and 500px — so it can be used on those sites as well.

DETAILS FOLLOW IN THE NEXT TWO SECTIONS

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Flattr lets you turn your “likes” into micro-donations

BUSINESS 18 MARCH 13
by DAVID CORNISH

The micro-donation site Flattr has launched a new improved service that hopes to make the process of donating money to your favourite creators and content as easy as registering a “like.”

Flattr first went live in 2010, as a solution for donating small amounts of money to digital content creators. While PayPal was a functional tool for larger cash sums, co-founder Peter Sunde was frustrated by the site's transaction costs. “I started Flattr to give everyone a completely equal chance to make money on the content they make,” explains Sunde on the Flattr blog. “Without coercion, censorship, or locking up the of information. Flattr encourages sharing of information and money. This is how the internet works.”

This newest iteration of Flattr sees the micro-donation site gain an all-new social integration, as the designers have attempted to create a donation system that “becomes a natural part of being online.”

To use it, you create a Flattr account and set a monthly budget that you would like to donate to digital content creators that impress you, and connect it to social networks you already use — it supports Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, Github, Flickr, Vimeo, 500px and App.net. Once connected, whenever you “like”, “favourite” or generally flag up content that floats your digital boat Flattr registers your appreciation and divides up your monthly budget into equal parts based on those “likes”, racked up throughout the month. The creators of this content then receive your donation, the hope being that they continue making the content that made you reach for “like/star/insert appreciative button here.”

Much in the same way that Kickstarter lets people reach creators with small-to-generous donations, Flattr looks to give creators support at the point at which we're consuming their wares. “Our vision has always been to bridge the gap between consuming content and supporting it,” said Flattr's Linus Olsson. “Now we can just favourite a tweet and part of my monthly Flattr budget will go to that tweeter.”

While making it very easy to donate money to content creators, the way that Flattr interprets your “likes” might see you change your social network behaviour. Should your friend add a new picture of their dog to Instagram, and you proceed to star that picture, your friend will receive a Flattr donation. “It's not for Flattr to decide/care if they feel the content is worthwhile or creative enough or not,” Flattr's Eileen Burbidge explained to Wired.co.uk. “It's for users to express appreciation for whatever they choose.” Burbidge was happy to report the new service, launched on 14 March, has gone down well with existing Flattr users.

To generate revenue, Flattr takes ten percent of each donation you send. The model that Flattr has built encourages creatives to sign up to its service in order to receive any donations their content has attracted; should you attempt to “flattr” some content that belongs to someone who doesn't have a Flattr account, the donation will register as an “unclaimed Flattr.” Your donation will remain in your account until that creator joins up to the service, at which point they will receive your donation, and thus further spread the influence of the Flattr service. In turn, if you have a Flattr account, you'll be able to receive flattrs as well as giving them — though you're only able to remove the money you've received once it passes €10 (£8.56). [Euros (€) automatically exchanged for US Dollars—so don't worry.]

Flattr's new layout follows Vimeo's recent announcement of an on-demand pay-per-view service, encouraging content creators to the video-sharing site with the promise of pennies for their creative projects. While Kickstarter and Indegogo have proved that internet users are willing to pay for creative content that suites their tastes, these microfunding sites generate a large amount of money for yet-to-be-created content. Flattr has been running successfully since 2010, so one can only assume there are enough generous content-appreciators out there willing to give money to things they found and read/consumed/viewed for free.
[source]

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Now on to more news and views.

The Weather in
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Wireless Messaging News
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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.

I spend the whole week searching the Internet for news that I think may be of interest to you — so you won't have to. This newsletter is an aggregator — a service that aggregates news from other news sources. You can help our community by sharing any interesting news that you find.

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Editorial Policy

Editorial Opinion pieces present only the opinions of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of any of advertisers or supporters. This newsletter is independent of any trade association.

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Back To Paging

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Still The Most Reliable Protocol For Wireless Messaging!

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Subscriptions

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If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter just fill in the blanks in the form above, and then click on the “Subscribe” bar.

free There is no charge for subscription and there are no membership restrictions. It's all about staying up-to-date with business trends and technology.

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CAN YOU HELP?

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Can You Help The Newsletter?

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You can help support the Wireless Messaging News by clicking on the PayPal Donate button above. It is not necessary to be a member of PayPal to use this service.

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Reader Support

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Newspapers generally cost 75¢ $1.50 a copy and they hardly ever mention paging or wireless messaging, unless in a negative way. If you receive some benefit from this publication maybe you would like to help support it financially?

A donation of $50.00 would certainly help cover a one-year period. If you are wiling and able, please click on the PayPal Donate button above.

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How Flattr works

1 Get a Flattr account

Any individual, company or organization can use Flattr. You can be located anywhere in the world. Getting an account is easy and free.

All Flattr users can both give and receive money.

2 Choose budget

You decide how big your total monthly budget is. Regardless of how many creators you will support, the total of your donations will be this budget.

You can change the budget at any time.

3 Add money to your account

To be able to give, you transfer money to your Flattr account. The budget you chose will be taken from your Flattr account each month, similar to how a pre-paid telephone card works.

We accept most international and local credit and debit cards as well as PayPal. Flattr use Euro as its base currency, but it doesn’t matter what currency you use, we take care of the exchange.

4 Flattr content you want to support

Whenever you read, watch and listen to content you want to support, you simply flattr it. Remember that you can flattr as many times you want during a month, as you never will exceed your chosen budget.

You can flattr on YouTube, Instagram, Soundcloud, etc by clicking “Favorite”, “Like” or “Star”.

5 We divide your budget

At the end of each month, we divide your budget into as many pieces as you made flattrs. For example 25 flattrs will divide your budget into 25 pieces. With a 10 euro budget, each piece is 40 cents.

Flattrs for people that don't yet have a Flattr account are not part of the division. These flattrs are saved for later and will be part of the division the month the creator signs up.

6 Creators receive your money

On the 10th date of the following month, your money is sent to the creators you flattred. They can then use it to create even better content for you to enjoy.

Creators receive 90% of the money you give.

Signing up is free Join Flattr You choose your budget

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Advertiser Index

American Messaging
Critical Alert Systems
Critical Response Systems
Easy Solutions
Hahntech USA
Hark Technologies
Infostream Pty Limited
Ira Wiesenfeld & Associates
Ivycorp
Leavitt Communications
Preferred Wireless
Prism Paging
Product Support Services — (PSSI)
Paging & Wireless Network Planners LLC — (Ron Mercer)
WaveWare Technologies
WiPath Communications

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American Messaging

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amsi

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American Messaging

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WaveWare Technologies

wavewear
sales@wirelessmessaging.com
800-373-1466
2630 National Dr., Garland, TX 75041

New Products

SPS-5v9E Paging System

  • 1 Serial Port Connection
  • 2 Ethernet Connections
  • Browser and Serial Port Configuration
  • TAP, COMP2, Scope, WaveWare SNPP, COMP2, & PET Protocols
  • 2W, 5W Option

DMG Protocol Converter

  • Linux Based Embedded System
  • Up to 4 Serial Port Connections
  • Ethernet Connections
  • Browser Configuration
  • Protocol Conversion
  • TAP, XMPP, SMS, HTTP, UDP
  • Additional Protocols Available Soon
WaveWare Technologies

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Easy Solutions

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easy solutions

Easy Solutions provides cost effective computer and wireless solutions at affordable prices. We can help in most any situation with your communications systems. We have many years of experience and a vast network of resources to support the industry, your system and an ever changing completive landscape.

  • We treat our customers like family. We don't just fix problems . . . We recommend and implement better cost effective solutions.
  • We are not just another vendor . . . We are a part of your team. All the advantages of high priced full time employment without the cost.
  • We are not in the Technical Services business . . . We are in the Customer Satisfaction business.

Experts in Paging Infrastructure

  • Glenayre, Motorola, Unipage, etc.
  • Excellent Service Contracts
  • Full Service—Beyond Factory Support
  • Contracts for Glenayre and other Systems starting at $100
  • Making systems More Reliable and MORE PROFITABLE for over 30 years.

Please see our web site for exciting solutions designed specifically for the Wireless Industry. We also maintain a diagnostic lab and provide important repair and replacement parts services for Motorola and Glenayre equipment. Call or e-mail us for more information.

Easy Solutions
3220 San Simeon Way
Plano, Texas 75023

Vaughan Bowden
Telephone: 972-898-1119
Website: www.EasySolutions4You.com
E-mail: vaughan@easysolutions4you.com

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Easy Solutions

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Apple iPhone 6 and iWatch on the verge, potential buyers line up in New York

Tuesday, September 9 looks to bring the iPhone 6, iWatch, and possibly the iPad Air 2

Deidre Richardson | On 05, Sep 2014

It’s that time of year again when the iFaithful assemble to see what Apple has up its sleeve next. The crowds has started gathering in front of the 5th Avenue Apple Store, just to grab an iPhone 6. iPhone users start counting their pennies and looking forward to see if they’ll have enough to buy yet another favorite iDevice for Christmas. The iFaithful get ready to “hit that button” on their iPhones in anticipation of another update to the world’s most advanced operating system. The time when Tim Cook and Apple engineers show us what they’ve planned all year.

Yes, it’s time for the iPhone 6 and the iWatch!

We’ve been bringing coverage of the iPhone 6 and the iWatch for months now, but with next Tuesday right around the corner, we can go ahead and be more precise in what you can expect. Let’s start with the fabled iWatch.

iWatch

The iWatch is headed to market, although our sources still state that it won’t be available until 2015. This doesn’t mean much for the iPhone 6 announcement since Apple will likely reveal the iWatch there, anyway. LG did the same with its first-generation Android Wear G Watch back in May when it announced the G3, and Samsung recently announced the Gear S in a press release before showing it off at its Galaxy Note 4 announcement on Wednesday.

There will be two iWatch sizes, a 1.5-inch and 1.3-inch model with flexible, AMOLED displays. While we don’t have an official price, Apple could charge as much as $400 for the iWatch and, with all of the medical authority integration alongside of the user medical data that the iWatch looks to keep, you may end up paying for the right to have the iWatch place your doctor on demand for emergencies.

See Also: Apple to live stream iPhone 6 launch event – How to watch

The iWatch will also feature a wireless charging method that won’t mandate connecting your iWatch to your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, sources have said. This explains the $400 price tag surrounding the iWatch, since Apple could sell the wireless charging system as an accessory that comes with the iWatch — as Samsung sells the wireless charging cradle and USB cable along with its Gear smartwatches.

Sources say that there will be some sort of sapphire glass built into the display above the flexible screen to make it tougher against hits and impacts, so the iWatch will certainly be built to last.

iPhone 6

The iDevice that started the Apple revolution is back, bigger and bolder than ever.

Apple’s making a statement with the upcoming iPhone 6 announcement, taking the phone that revolutionized the smartphone industry as we know it and transforming it into a new device that you’re sure to love.

Apple is no stranger when it comes to marvelously-crafted design, and the iPhone 6 should be just as pleasing (if not more) than the first iPhone you owned or purchased. From what our sources tell us, the iPhone 6 will have more rounded edges than any iPhone to date, and will bear a brushed aluminum finish that will make you give up your iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s for it. We also know that the camera sensor on the back camera is bigger than last year’s, so the 13MP camera is a given.

See Also: Apple’s spaceship campus construction video leaked by a drone and GoPro Hero camera

And, we can confirm, happily, that Apple does have two iPhone 6 sizes in its lineup: a 4.7-inch display for those who think 5+-inch displays are nothing short of “behemoth,” and a 5.5-inch display for those who have bigger hands and want to go bigger with the iPhone than ever before. If you ask us, we think the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 users will be missing out, but to each his or her own.

We can also confirm a price increase for the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 model. Still, it is a worthy price to pay if you don’t like the idea of smaller screens (we can’t blame you if you want a 5.5-inch screen; we do, too). Apple is helping customers with the integration of a one-handed mode for those who think a 5.5-inch screen mandates the feature. Similar to Samsung’s Galaxy series, the feature will allow you to turn it on and off at whim.

The 4.7-inch iPhone 6 will feature a 1,810mAh battery while the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 will feature a 2,915mAh battery (or 2,900 mAh, approximately), so it’s easy to understand why many consumers would favor the larger model.

iPhone 6 and the Mobile Wallet Payment System

Near Field Communication, or NFC, is headed to the iPhone 6 as well as the iWatch, our sources tell us – meaning that you’ll be able to make payments wirelessly on both devices. Apple has been experimenting with this feature regarding its own iProducts in local Apple retail stores, but NFC integration into the iPhone 6 experience will open up Apple’s “experiment” to credit card and debit card companies.

It was confirmed as of one week ago that Apple had signed credit card giants Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to its list of mobile wallet partners — so Apple’s been hard at work on this feature for a long time.

Now that we’ve been told the iWatch will get NFC integration too, it won’t be hard to pay for something with the tap of a finger on your wrist. Apple further shakes things up, could announce the iPad Air 2 alongside iPhone 6. Are you ready for the iPad Air 2? Well, if you are, it may come a little earlier this year.

An entire month early, in fact.

Apple’s been known to have two product releases each year, September for the iPhone and October for the iPad Mini and iPad Air (the large iPad that, until last year, was never honored with a name). Well, from what we’ve been told, the iPad Air 2 could arrive on September 9, the same day that Apple announces the iPhone 6.

What could be behind this tip from our sources? Well, it seems as though October has been a rather late month to release the iPad Air and iPad Mini. We’ve been told that the iPad Mini may not receive a refresh this year but that Apple would release the iPad Air 2 early in order to reach eager individuals who don’t like the idea of waiting.


iPhone-lovers-out-apple-store

Another idea behind the early release of the iPad Air 2 may have something to do with beating rival manufacturer Samsung to the punch. Samsung just revealed its Galaxy Note 4 on Wednesday, and we’ve been told that Samsung’s most prestigious phone of the year will arrive at carriers on October 10. Apple’s larger, 5.5-inch iPhone 6 has been designed to corner Samsung’s Galaxy Note phablet line, which has taken some customers from Apple. With an early release of both the iPhone 6 and the iPad Air 2, Apple would be able to steal a few customers who would otherwise buy from Samsung — and have nothing left to give to Apple for the holiday season.

See Also: Apple Inc. finally shedding light on why apps get rejected from App Store

Google and HTC are also teaming up to announce the release of the Nexus 9 this October-November, and the Nexus 6 would make its entrance around the same time (October 31, 2014). With Android releases coming in October, and November, and Samsung’s Note 4 arriving in early to mid-October, Apple’s early, late-September release just may be the thing that gives Apple, the edge with consumers.

Apple’s all set for this coming Tuesday, to show the world that, once again, its proud tradition continues. Are you ready for your iPhone 6, iWatch, and iPad Air 2?

Source: Inferse.com

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infostream

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State-of-the-art paging network infrastructure, fully supported at an affordable price – and it integrates with your other gear, include most makes of transmitters

Whether you are replacing or upgrading your existing network or building out new infrastructure, Infostream has the new equipment and systems that you need.

  • POCSAG & FLEX
  • Optimised for mission critical and public safety networks
  • Highly integrated base station controller
    • GPS
    • 3G modem
    • HTML User Interface
    • Ethernet switch, IP and router
    • Optional integrated radio modems
    • Dual channel capable
    • Integrated off-air (self monitoring) receiver
  • Ultra high reliability configuration (99.999%)
  • Message encryption plug-in
  • Fully featured central site VOIP, CAD, HTML, TAP, TNPP, SMPP access
  • NMS integration including Nagios, SNMP and syslog
  • Comprehensive diagnostics including adjacent site monitoring
  • Deployed internationally in mission critical applications
  • 21 years of industry experience in design, build and integration

Infostream is a world leading supplier of paging and messaging infrastructure, specialized paging receivers and consultancy services. The company was founded in 1993 and has engineered and supplied equipment for some of the largest public safety networks and private paging customers around the world.

Medical • Fire • Police • Security • Mining • Petrochemicals • Financial Markets • Telemetry • Custom Applications

infostreamInfostream Pty Limited
Suite 10, 7 Narabang Way, Belrose, NSW 2085, AUSTRALIA
Sales Email: sales@infostream.com.au | Phone: +61 2 9986 3588 | Afterhours: +61 417 555 525

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Ivy Corp 

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ivy

ivy

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Please click the Learn More button.

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Critical Response Systems

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More than Paging.
First Responder Solutions.

Our patented technology notifies clinical personnel immediately, while tracking who receives and responds to each alarm. Users confirm or defer each event with a single button press, and analytic dashboards display response statistics in real time, as well as historically broken down by time, unit, room, and individual.

Our systems not only notify your personnel quickly and reliably, but also provide actionable feedback to fine-tune your procedures, reduce unnecessary alarms, and improve patient outcomes.

www.criticalresponsesystems.com

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AT&T's connected car tech now delivers weather, radio and parking help

by Jon Fingas | September 5, 2014

If you're frustrated that many cars still don't have Internet-savvy software built-in, take heart: AT&T just gave its Drive connected car platform a big boost with the addition of six big-name apps. Automakers who put Drive in their infotainment systems can now easily give you forecasts on the road through AccuWeather, as well as customized listening through iHeartRadio , Stitcher or Tribune's Newsbeat. You can also share your whereabouts through Glympse, and find that all-important parking spot using Streetline's Parker. You'll have to wait for manufacturers to roll these apps into their vehicles before you see the benefit, but don't be surprised if your next ride is that much smarter.

Source: engadget.com

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leavitt

Specialists in sales and service of equipment from these leading manufacturers, as well as other two-way radio and paging products:

UNICATIONbendix king
ZETRON

motorola blue Motorola SOLUTIONS

COMmotorola red Motorola MOBILITY spacer
 usalert
Philip C. Leavitt
Manager
Leavitt Communications
7508 N. Red Ledge Drive
Paradise Valley, AZ 85253
CONTACT INFORMATION
E-mail: pcleavitt@leavittcom.com
Web Site: www.leavittcom.com
Mobile phone:847-494-0000
Telephone:847-955-0511
Fax:270-447-1909
Skype ID:pcleavitt

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Product Support Services, Inc.

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Repair and Refurbishment Services

pssi logo

pssi

Product Support Services, Inc.

511 South Royal Lane
Coppell, Texas 75019
(972) 462-3970 Ext. 261
sales@pssirl.com left arrow
www.pssirl.com left arrow

PSSI is the industry leader in reverse logistics, our services include depot repair, product returns management, RMA and RTV management, product audit, test, refurbishment, re-kitting and value recovery.

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Leavitt Communications

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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.

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

leavitt logo

7508 N. Red Ledge Drive
Paradise Valley, AZ 85253
www.leavittcom.com

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What Happened to Motorola

How a culture shift nearly doomed an iconic local company that once dominated the telecom industry.

BY TED C. FISHMAN
Chicago magazine
PUBLISHED AUG. 25, 2014, AT 11:50 A.M.

On the 18th floor of the Merchandise Mart, in a soaring two-story space underneath a vast industrial-looking stairway, a small crowd of business types, pols, and journalists gathers. They’re here on this warm April day to check out the geek-chic new offices of Motorola Mobility, the mobile phone maker that spun off from then-struggling telecommunications company Motorola (now Motorola Solutions) in January 2011 and got snapped up by tech giant Google seven months later.

A big, silver-haired man wearing a dark suit, a Silicon Valley–style open-neck shirt, and a high-wattage smile steps up to the podium. Rick Osterloh has been the president and COO of Motorola Mobility for all of 10 days, the fourth man to run the place since its split from the mother ship. In a few minutes, this amiable Stanford grad will launch visitors on a tour of the slick 14-acre space. They’ll see images and artifacts from Motorola’s storied history—the first car radios, the first handheld mobile phones, the first device to carry voice and video from the moon to the earth—interspersed with lots of glass and metal and Google-bright colors. They’ll visit a game room complete with retro pinball machines, seven big labs with see-through walls, and 10 kitchens with tech themes. (In the NASA kitchen, snack bags nestle inside an Apollo space helmet.)

But first Osterloh gives a short speech. He feels good about the future of Motorola Mobility and of Chicago, he says. The company’s growth rate, he claims, would be the envy of any startup: “Motorola Mobility shipped 6.5 million devices in the first quarter of the year, up 61 percent over the [same quarter] last year.”

What Osterloh doesn’t mention is that those devices represent a paltry 2 percent of the global market for smartphones. Or that Motorola Mobility lost $198 million in the first quarter of 2014. Or that its losses just since Google took over have totaled more than $1 billion, even as the company has cut some 17,000 workers.

Osterloh then cedes the podium to a dapper Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who had helped convince Google brass to move the business downtown from suburban Libertyville. “Motorola Mobility will act as a major economic engine,” Emanuel declares, “bringing 2,000 jobs to the city.”

No one, least of all the mayor, acknowledges the elephant in the room. Three months earlier—less than two years after Google completed the deal to buy Motorola Mobility in the first place—Google’s CEO, Larry Page, agreed to sell the company to Chinese computer maker Lenovo for $2.9 billion. (Currently undergoing regulatory scrutiny, the deal is expected to be finalized sometime this fall.) Already, obsolescence haunts these halls. The Google colors were out of date before the place even opened.

As for those 2,000 Chicago jobs? Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing can do with them what he likes. The future of Osterloh and his Google-anointed team, in particular, looks far from certain.

Getting outflanked by tech upstarts, hacked in two by a fearsome corporate raider, and finally taken over in part by a Chinese company that exists largely because of the world Motorola made for it: Such a fate would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Motorola was then one of America’s greatest companies, having racked up a stunning record of innovation that continually spawned new businesses, which in turn created enormous wealth. Motorola had the vision to invest in China long before most multinational companies. It even developed Six Sigma, a rigorous process for improving quality that would be embraced by management gurus and change the way companies nearly everywhere operate.

However, as the history of many giant corporations (Lehman Brothers, General Motors) shows, great success can lead to great trouble. Interviews with key players in and around Motorola and its spinoffs indicate that the problems began when management jettisoned a powerful corporate culture that had been inculcated over decades. When healthy internal competition degenerated into damaging infighting. “I loved most of my time there,” says Mike DiNanno, a former controller of several Motorola divisions, who worked at the company from 1984 to 2003. “But I hated the last few years.”

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Motorola began as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928, just before the Great Depression, founded by a 33-year-old native of Harvard, Illinois, named Paul Galvin. Its small offices stood on Chicago’s West Harrison Street, a dozen blocks from the Loop. Two years later came the company’s first big breakthrough: commercializing the first mass-market car radio by figuring out how to eliminate static interference from under the hood. But success didn’t come easily, says Paul’s grandson Chris Galvin, who ran Motorola from 1997 to 2004. Paul was a serial entrepreneur, and two previous ventures of his had flopped. “The company’s success,” Chris explains, “was born of failures.”

As Paul and his brother Joe built the company, they created an environment that drove people to invent and fail and learn and invent again. Motorola became known for its culture of risk taking, its investment in training and development, and its almost fanatical insistence on respectful dealings among employees.

motorola drama

NOTES: Numbers are not adjusted for inflation. Charted value of the public companies (Motorola, Motorola Solutions, and Motorola Mobility until mid-2012) is measured by market cap (total value of shares outstanding); data are as of the last trading day of each calendar year except for 2014, when they are as of June 30. Motorola Mobility’s value in 2012 and 2014 is measured by the sum its acquirers paid or have agreed to pay. SOURCES: Google; Motorola Solutions; Thomson Reuters Datastream. PHOTOS: (Icahn) Mark Lenniham/AP; (Rosenberg) courtesy of Google; (all others) courtesy of © Motorola Mobility/Legacy Archives Collection/Reproduced with permission

In its early years of nonstop innovation, the company would make plenty of consumer electronics, including home radios and TVs. But Motorola’s bread and butter was technologies and devices sold to other enterprises, particularly those charged with public safety and defense. Two-way radios used by police, walkie-talkies carried by soldiers in World War II, microwave radio systems for civil defense communications—under Paul Galvin, Motorola invented them all.

The public safety business, says Martin Cooper, the electrical engineer who led the company’s development of the first cellular phone, “was really the essence of what we did.” Working at Motorola was more than a job. It was a mission.

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In 1942, tragedy struck: Paul’s wife, Lillian, was murdered by an intruder in their Evanston home. The case remains unsolved. After her death, the Galvins, citing inheritance taxes, took their company public. But Motorola still felt like a family operation. In 1956, when Paul decided to step down as president (the title Motorola then used to denote the head of the company), his 34-year-old son, Robert, took his place.

What the father built nationally the son scaled up globally. Charismatic, farsighted, and fiercely competitive, Bob Galvin would be hailed as one of the greatest American industrialists of the 20th century. From 1959 to 1990 (the year he stepped down as chairman), the company’s annual revenues ballooned from $290 million to nearly $11 billion, making Motorola one of the 50 largest companies in the nation.

Bob Galvin, and the immediate successors he helped choose, firmly believed that competition drives excellence. Because Motorola faced little external competition back then, explains Chris Galvin, “we had to create our own competition internally.” For example, the CEOs pitted divisions against one another by dangling bonuses for top performance.

Such internal competition helped two complementary businesses boom in the Bob Galvin years and just after: communications and semiconductors. Motorola’s communications division made networks, radios, and phones for government and corporate customers. Its semiconductor division supplied chips to the communications division and, later, to outside companies such as Apple.

Not every important Motorola innovation during Bob’s time led to a physical product. For example, in the early 1980s—a period when American companies were struggling to compete with superior products pouring out of Japan—Motorola developed a system for total quality management called Six Sigma. (A Six Sigma process is one in which 99.99966 percent of products are free from manufacturing defects.) A good chunk of the Fortune 500, including General Electric, IBM, and Boeing, wound up adopting it.

Long foiled in his efforts to enter the Japanese market, Bob began to see that China could someday overtake Japan. So when Chinese market reform began, he made his move. Stuck at a tedious state ceremony during a tour of the country in the early 1980s, he broke protocol and turned to the minister of the railroads next to him. Was the minister satisfied doing a serviceable job, Bob asked, or would he prefer to help make China a world-class society?

Chinese officials eventually agreed to let Motorola set up manufacturing in the country, on one condition: that Motorola teach its Chinese employees and suppliers how to make products good enough for global customers. Bob knew that China would, little by little, copy the company’s technology and compete with Motorola. But the Chinese market would be so large, he figured, that even a small slice would be worth the investment.

So Bob insisted that Motorola bring its best technology to China and that the company’s factories there manufacture to the strictest standards. Hundreds of Chinese suppliers, including state-owned firms, learned how to make things the Motorola way. Those suppliers, which had second- and third-tier suppliers of their own, spread that knowledge throughout a growing swath of China’s economy. Motorola also helped China build its national communications networks, using technology that leapfrogged that in the States. Altogether, Motorola did more than just about any other foreign company to create a market-ready Chinese industrial complex.

No wonder Bob Galvin achieved almost godlike status among many Motorolans. Phil Cerney, who worked at the company from 1959 to 2009, rising to accounting director (he’s now the controller at Palladium Energy in Woodridge), calls him “the second greatest man I ever met, after my dad.”

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Of all Motorola’s inventions, none were as transformative as the cell phone. A request from Orlando Wilson, Chicago’s police chief from 1960 to 1967, provided the impetus. Violent crime in the city was surging. Wilson wanted his patrol officers out of their cars and on foot, but he didn’t want them on the street without a way to stay connected.

Cooper, among others, envisioned a solution: a handheld phone that functioned on a wireless cellular network. Bob Galvin realized that the market for such a device could extend well beyond law enforcement. So he committed $100 million to developing it. In 1973, Cooper made his first call—to a rival at AT&T’s Bell Labs—on a boot-size prototype.

It wasn’t until 1984, two years before Bob Galvin retired as CEO, that a model—the DynaTAC—was ready to go to market. After that, the cellular business “exploded,” says DiNanno: “It was the glamour sector of the company, the industry, and the country.”

But it also introduced a toxic element into Motorola’s corporate culture. Employees in the public safety division, who were chugging along selling to cops and firefighters, watched and seethed as the handset division lavished riches on its own. Handset people bought luxury cars the day they got their bonuses. At one celebratory party during the go-go years, the division’s marketing department hired male models to paint themselves green, wear big dollar signs, and sing “We’re in the Money.”

“Top management believed in letting the sector guys run the businesses their way. If that rubbed others the wrong way, tough luck.”

—Former Motorola executive Mike DiNanno

The era of “warring tribes,” as Motorolans refer to it, had begun. Screaming fights between sector heads rattled the corporate halls. CEOs William Weisz (1986–88) and then George Fisher (1988–93), committed to the strategy of stirring up internal competition, did little to stop them. “Top management believed in letting the sector guys run the businesses their way. If that rubbed others the wrong way, tough luck,” recalls DiNanno. As a result, he says, there was “no cohesive plan for network technology and handset technology. The two operated totally independently, in totally different directions.”

On the network side of the business, Motorola had been an early developer of the digital cellular technology that was supplanting the old analog cellular system in Europe and Asia. Its digital network patents were yielding a lucrative stream of royalties. Yet, incredibly, the handset division saw no urgency to switch from analog to digital.

So Motorola’s network engineers simply went their own way. DiNanno describes working with “a thousand” of them in the 1990s, all using digital phones made by Qualcomm, one of Motorola’s bitterest rivals in telecom semiconductors. “There was not a Motorola phone anywhere in the building,” he marvels, “even though the other side of the company was engaged in a bloody fight against Qualcomm that went on for years.”

It took a while for the looming disaster to show up in the company’s numbers. Indeed, thanks largely to its still-growing cellular business, in 1994 Motorola rose to 23rd on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s biggest public companies, with revenues of $22 billion and profits of nearly $2 billion. By 1994, 60 percent of the mobile phones sold in the United States were Motorolas, with the wireless business making up nearly 65 percent of the company’s revenues.

But Motorola was about to fall off a cliff. Because Finnish rival Nokia had wisely retooled for digital, by the time Gary Tooker’s four-year run as CEO ended in 1997, Nokia had surpassed Motorola as the world’s largest mobile phone maker. It had become a newly powerful competitor in building networks, too. Nokia would remain the world’s largest maker of mobile phones by volume—if not by revenue—for the next 15 years.

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In 1997, Motorola’s board summons another Galvin to turn things around. Bob’s son Chris, a Kellogg MBA, knew the company as well as anyone: He had spent nearly two decades there, working his way up the ladder his father had built for him. Chris Galvin inherited a bureaucratic Goliath with 60 different businesses spread throughout the world, nearly all of them weak. (Phones were the biggest drag of all.) And another problem hung, literally, over his head: Iridium.

Bob Galvin had championed the Iridium satellite system in the late 1980s as a way to provide the universal coverage that cellular systems could not. Motorola poured $2.6 billion and countless engineer hours into a $5 billion consortium to develop it. But once Iridium was finally operable in the late 1990s, its bulky $3,000 phones and $7-a-minute calls proved prohibitively expensive. Iridium declared bankruptcy in 1999 and sold off the bits for $25 million.

A Drastic Slimdown
In the past 17 years, Motorola and its spinoffs have reduced their total work force by 84 percent.*

NOTES: *They did so in large part by conducting layoffs and selling businesses. Motorola Solutions will shed 4,500 more jobs this fall, when Zebra Technologies completes its purchase of the company’s enterprise division. Data for 2014 as of June 30. SOURCES: Google; Motorola Solutions.

World events seemed to conspire against Chris Galvin, too. The tech and telecom crash that began in 2000 hammered Motorola’s stock. (Its price fell nearly 40 percent during his seven-year tenure as CEO.) The 2001 World Trade Center attacks and the 2002 SARS scare halted the company’s international supply chains and crushed sales. In 2001 alone, Motorola’s revenues plunged by nearly $8 billion, to $30 billion; its losses neared $4 billion.

To limit the damage, Chris eliminated 56,000 of the company’s nearly 150,000 workers. He closed plants, including a new $90 million one in Harvard, Illinois, the town where his grandfather Paul grew up. One bright spot: the public safety division, where orders were picking up following 9/11 and where margins were high. Still, says DiNanno, “by the early 2000s we were in trouble, and everyone knew it.”

Chris pinned his hopes on developing and marketing a sexy new digital-ready phone. The Razr would be thin and nearly all metal; it would fold up and exude luxurious design. He didn’t survive in the job long enough to see it launched.

One of the cruel facts about corporate life is the phenomenon of executive luck. “An executive who inherits a very challenging situation and makes a lot of the right moves can run out of runway before he or she is able to gain sufficient altitude,” says David Garfield, a managing director at Chicago management consulting firm AlixPartners. “Sometimes [a successor] gets the benefit.” Chris Galvin, it seems, had uncannily bad executive luck.

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A fit 64-year-old with Irish-blue eyes, Chris Galvin wears a custom shirt with a monogrammed cuff as he sits down to discuss his ouster. “One day [in September 2003], I was in my office and two board members came to see me and to apologize,” he says, recounting the moment deliberately. “One of them was genuinely remorseful. The company, they said, was in such terrible shape that the board decided it must do a shocking removal of the CEO. Typically, that only happens when a company is going out of business or there is an integrity issue. But not in this case.”

Chris handed in his keys during the first week of January 2004. Seeing him walk through the Motorola cafeteria for the last time, Phil Cerney was overcome. “I turned to the person next to me,” Cerney remembers, “and said, ‘This is going to go down as the worst day in the company’s history.’ ”

“I turned to the person next to me and said, ‘This is going to go down as the worst day in the company’s history.’ ”

—Phil Cerney

Shortly after the board showed Chris the door, the Galvin family decided to begin selling its 3 percent stake in Motorola, worth about $720 million at the end of 2003. A few years later, the Galvins were out of Motorola completely.

Figuring out where to put the freed-up funds helped lead Chris to his current career. With a partner, he and his younger brother Michael founded a venture capital firm on South Wacker Drive called Harrison Street, in honor of Galvin Manufacturing’s first address. (Harrison Street invests mostly in software businesses and in real estate. “It’s the first firm to apply the principles of Six Sigma to the real-estate business,” Chris says.)

Three months after Chris Galvin left Motorola, the company’s numbers began to turn around dramatically. The Razr proved to be a monster hit, with 50 million selling in its first two years on the market. By the end of 2004, Motorola’s market cap—the market value of its outstanding shares—hit $42 billion. The person celebrating was Galvin’s replacement, Ed Zander.

Formerly the COO of pioneering computer company Sun Microsystems (now owned by Oracle), Zander was a skilled corporate showman who entertained with verve and humor. At a leadership seminar in Silicon Valley after he took the job, Zander joked to the audience that the Motorola he inherited was so slow moving, so blind to the coming convergence of telecommunications technologies, that he cried on his first day.

With the success of the Razr, he could soon put his tears on hold. Motorola began generating billions in cash. In Zander’s first two years, the stock price doubled. The new CEO rode the Razr as long as possible, producing a dizzying variety in different colors and shapes and with slightly different features. The big carriers demanded it, says Zander, who currently sits on several boards: “Verizon would want the power button on one side, and AT&T would want it on the other.”

Meanwhile, in arguably one of the worst decisions ever made by a major corporate CEO, Zander struck a deal with his Silicon Valley friend Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple. Together their companies created a Motorola iTunes phone, the first phone connected to Apple’s music store. “We can’t think of a more natural partnership than this one with Apple,” Zander said at the time. Named the Rokr, the phone launched in the fall of 2005. Jobs, who introduced it, called it “an iPod Shuffle right on your phone.”

Zander says he believed that by working with Apple, Motorola could become cool again. But much as it had taught the Chinese to compete with it years before, Motorola was teaching one of the most creative, competitive, and consumer-savvy companies of all time how to make a phone.

Two years later, when Jobs introduced the first iPhone, Zander’s Motorola was still pushing Razrs, pumping up sales by taking new variations further and further downmarket. The result: ever-lower profit margins. One analyst calculated that the company made, on average, only about $5 per device.

Partly because of the huge layoffs of recent years, Motorola’s innovation machine was stalling. The company had long numbered among the top 10 American firms registering U.S. patents, notes analyst Joan Lappin; by 2006 it dropped to No. 34.

Zander insists that he saw the smartphone onslaught coming but that Motorola “didn’t have the DNA or the people” to understand the software involved. He also blames a less-than-speedy Motorola supplier that, he says, caused the company to miss nearly a year in the product cycle. “We should have just broken the contract” with the supplier, he says now. “The one regret I have is that I should have taken myself out of the CEO job and run the [phone] division [myself].”

Another mistake: Zander never engaged in China the way the Galvins had, leaving the details to his division heads and country managers. When China upped its networks to 3G, his managers pushed what they had—older 2G phones—at steep discounts in order to preserve market share, unbeknownst to the CEO. The collapse of the China business in 2007 left Zander dumbstruck. That year the South Korean company Samsung topped Motorola in phone sales for the first time, and it never looked back.

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Zander’s poor performance pushed Motorola toward another sad rite of passage for many once-proud American companies: an incursion from Wall Street. In Motorola’s case, it came in the person of Carl Icahn, the man Fortune once called “the shrewdest investor on the planet.” Much of his $20 billion-plus fortune stems from his uncanny ability to see and exploit the untapped wealth inside companies that have weak leaders.

“Ed Zander was not a bad guy, but he was doing a terrible job,” says Icahn in a call from his vast offices overlooking New York City’s Central Park, where he first faced down the CEO. The company “unfortunately went downhill very fast.”

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The activist investor had but guarded hope for Motorola’s phone division—“it’s a very tough and arcane business”—but he saw a great undervalued opportunity on the public safety side. So, in 2007, Icahn began snapping up Motorola shares. He eventually owned more than 6 percent of the company and fought to seat board members of his choosing. His goal: get the board to agree to break the company into parts in order to maximize its value to shareholders.

He succeeded. In 2008, Motorola set a course to split the phone division from the public safety and enterprise businesses. Zander, of course, was out. The reshaped board chose Greg Brown, who had run the latter business since 2003, as the new CEO.

A polished man with a calm baritone who sits on lots of boards (including that of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago), Brown had run the software firm Micromuse, so he had the necessary experience. He kept his corners of the company steadily profitable, maintained high margins, and had a quality that mattered greatly to Icahn: He could see the potential that Icahn saw.

But finding someone who could run the troubled phone business proved tough. “There were only a few people in the whole world who could do it,” Icahn says. “They all said no because they didn’t want to be anything but a CEO, and Motorola [already] had a CEO.”

The phone business would soon spin off anyway, Icahn reasoned. So he finally suggested that the board hire a co-CEO to work alongside Brown. Brown agreed to the arrangement. Sanjay Jha, a former Qualcomm COO who possessed a deep understanding of both the software and hardware sides of telecom, accepted the position. Jha’s package would ultimately net him close to $60 million over the next three years. Explains Icahn: “The board needed him.”

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The Indian-born, U.K.-educated engineer walked into a marketing organization that seemed completely disconnected from what was happening in the market. “On my second day at Motorola in August 2008,” says Jha, “I did a portfolio review of all the company’s phones. I sat for three hours and looked at everything, flabbergasted. There were no smartphones.”

Jha called a meeting of the engineers to see how current they were. “I was told that Motorola actually developed and patented a lot of the stuff the company’s phones didn’t have,” he says. “The company was the first with a QWERTY keypad, with color screens, with 3G and touch.” But few Motorola phones had any of those features.

“On my second day at Motorola in August 2008, I did a portfolio review of all the company’s phones. I sat for three hours and looked at everything, flabbergasted. There were no smartphones.”

—Sanjay Jha

The only way to stop hemorrhaging money, Jha decided, was to slash both costs and the number of phones. At Motorola, 60 managers worked on dozens of different models. By contrast, Apple heaped all its genius into perfecting one phone. Jha figured he had one shot at saving the business: making a successful phone for Verizon, which was struggling to compete with AT&T, then the exclusive seller of the iPhone.

First Jha had to decide what operating system to bet on. Motorola’s five in-house systems didn’t make the cut; none were mature enough to rival the iPhone’s. Jha says that Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft at the time, presumed that he would choose Windows Mobile. “Steve told me that . . . I ought to devote 400 engineers to a Windows Mobile phone,” he says. “I told him that Microsoft’s success wasn’t my priority. I needed first to survive and did not have the resources to put even one engineer on it.” (Ballmer could not be reached for comment by press time.)

The pressure was intense. Engineers told Jha—who was still commuting between his family’s home in San Diego and Motorola’s headquarters in Schaumburg—that they could not complete the new model before the spring of 2010. Verizon demanded a phone by October 2009. Meanwhile, his division was losing about $600 million a quarter.

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Jha chopped 4,000 more jobs. The cuts devastated Motorola’s remaining pool of engineers. One star, Iqbal Arshad—who had extensive experience trying to get Nokia’s Symbian smartphone operating system onto Motorola’s phones overseas—was ready to quit. The pain of shutting his labs in Europe and firing his team had been too great. Jha convinced him to reconsider.

On a flight from Europe with Jha, Arshad prepared a presentation for executives back in Schaumburg. The plan, code-named Mission Impossible, was to build a phone on Google’s new Android operating system. It would be only the second such phone on the market.

The presentation, held in early 2009, grew heated. One top Motorola executive declared that choosing Android over Windows Mobile was madness. Google’s system wasn’t ready for prime time, he argued, whereas Microsoft was one of the most powerful software companies in the world.

Jha would not budge. Motorola’s board faced two options: go with Jha’s recommendation or shut down the mobile phone business altogether.

By a vote of 4 to 3, the board members chose the former. Quickly, Arshad handpicked a team of 200 in-house engineers to work closely with a Google team led by Andy Rubin, who had created the Android system. “They wanted Motorola to be successful and to prove everyone wrong,” says Arshad. “To save the company.”

Save it they did—for a while. The new phone, called the Droid (Verizon licensed the name from movie director George Lucas, who had coined it for Star Wars), hit the market in October 2009. In the Droid’s first few months, through the holiday season, Motorola shipped more of them than Apple shipped iPhones, Jha says. By late 2010, after four years of huge losses, the phone division was profitable again.

For longtime Motorolans, however, the success had to be bittersweet. Droid was not the kind of world-changing invention the company had been known for. Motorola had accepted that the most important innovations in phones were better aped than forged. It had latched its fortunes to a bigger, more powerful company and was surfing in its wake.

What’s more, Motorola had shown the world how to make a good Android phone. Soon the company’s old rivals, especially Samsung, were once again dwarfing it in the market. By the time Motorola split in January 2011—nearly three years after Icahn’s activism began and much later than the board had anticipated—buckets of red ink had spilled back onto the phone division’s balance sheet.

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A couple of months after the cleaving of Motorola Mobility (the mobile phone company) from Motorola Solutions (the public safety and enterprise company), Google began overtures to buy the former. Sure, phone-making ability was one attraction; Google was easing into the hardware business. But the more valuable prize was Motorola Mobility’s portfolio of about 17,000 patents, largely created in the old days of feverish innovation. That intellectual property would make it easier for Google to defend itself against the spate of patent lawsuits that perpetually looms over the telecom sector.

For Icahn, Brown, Jha, and Motorola Mobility’s shareholders, the deal—announced in August 2011—was vindication of the wisdom of the split. It was also financial deliverance. The guys from Silicon Valley offered $40 per share, a 63 percent premium over the market price for Motorola Mobility stock at the time. The total cost: $12.5 billion. Google took possession in May 2012, announcing on its website that “we plan to run Motorola as a separately operated business.”

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Jha left immediately. (He became CEO of semiconductor maker GlobalFoundries.) Google chief Larry Page replaced him with Dennis Woodside, a triathlete who had been Google’s head of sales and operations in the Americas. Woodside was quoted calling Motorola “the Google of its day”—a painful reminder to some in Libertyville that Motorola’s “day” was long ago.

Woodside brought in a nearly clean slate of execs, many from Silicon Valley. They decided to build those hip Mart headquarters, to close one-third of Mobility’s remaining offices, and to make another brutal round of job cuts. Eliminating 17,000 more workers left Mobility with a mere 3,600 worldwide. About 600 of them, including Osterloh and almost all the other top executives, are based in Sunnyvale, California, just down the road from the Googleplex.

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New top software engineer Steve Horowitz, who had worked on Google’s original Android team, held strong views on what was wrong with most Android phones. For one thing, most were too customized: Virtually every phone maker and every carrier “skinned” the operating system to give it a branded feel and loaded on their own apps. “I didn’t like that,” says Horowitz. “I knew Android and the code team that built it, and they made really good code. I wanted to go back to pure Android.”

Motorola Mobility’s first phone developed under Google ownership, the Moto X, appeared in August 2013. It mostly wowed reviewers for all the reasons its creators had hoped, including sleeker design and software that did not try to suck users into superfluous proprietary services and content. You could control the phone by voice without touching it—a major innovation. Sensors could even pick up on whether you were driving and then switch automatically to touchless control. Multiple microphones helped filter out background noise as you talked or shot video. Even seven months after Moto’s launch, “the true defining features of the phone are still unique and make the phone stand out among a slew of other Androids,” said the review site PhoneDog.

Nevertheless, initial sales were slower than the company had hoped. So it cut prices by about 25 percent. You can now buy a Moto X for $299—$300 less than Samsung’s top-tier phone. Or you can choose one of the two lower-priced phones Mobility introduced in the past year, the $179 Moto G and the $129 Moto E. They sold well in India and Brazil, luring buyers who once could afford only basic “nonsmart” phones.


Above left: The Moto E ($129), released in May, targets less affluent buyers. Above right: Mobility’s much-anticipated Moto 360 smartwatch hits stores shortly. PHOTOS: COURTESY OF © MOTOROLA MOBILITY/LEGACY ARCHIVES COLLECTION/REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION

But Osterloh says that the company must drive prices down still further. That, of course, would increase pressure on profit margins. Reducing margins on consumer electronics, phones in particular, had been a recipe for disaster under Motorola Mobility’s previous masters. Even mighty Samsung’s profits are shrinking—pressured, in part, by the Moto phones. Only Chinese companies seem to have figured out how to grow while driving down margins. Remember, Google’s Motorola Mobility division is still losing money: $68 million in the last quarter.

Those losses no doubt factored into Larry Page’s recent decision to sell Mobility to Beijing-based Lenovo, the world’s biggest computer maker, for a relative song. The $2.9 billion deal struck by Yang Yuanqing is less than a quarter of what Google had paid 20 months before. (One reason for the low price: Google is keeping the patents and a skunkworks of “advanced technology” engineers in California.) The purchase will give Lenovo—which sells enough low-priced Androids in China to make it the world’s No. 4 mobile phone maker—access to the U.S. market for the first time.

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Lenovo Executives say that the two companies complement each other well. The purchase will wed Lenovo’s huge economies of scale to Motorola Mobility’s brand name and market share outside China. Lenovo will also reap the benefit of a slate of innovative new products that Mobility is about to launch, says the Google team, though it won’t talk details. That’s in addition to a new Moto model and a highly anticipated Android wristwatch, the Moto 360 (pictured on page 89), both of which will likely launch within the next couple of months.

Those products may give Yang some executive luck. He may need it, given his ambitious prediction that Lenovo will make the Mobility business profitable in 12 to 18 months. As to whether fulfilling that prediction may require layoffs: Lenovo executives steer away from that kind of talk. But it’s hard to imagine that jobs won’t go after Lenovo closes the deal this fall. History shows that transitions tend to bring cuts.

Happily, anyone at Motorola Mobility who winds up getting shown the exit can tap a robust network of tens of thousands of former colleagues, many of whom have gone on to become entrepreneurs or big guns at other tech ventures. “If you look at who’s behind the startups [in the Chicago area],” says Anders Gustafsson, CEO of Zebra Technologies, a maker of barcode printers in Lincolnshire (which is in the process of acquiring Motorola Solutions’ enterprise division for $3.5 billion), “you’ll see that a lot of the founders or key employees are former Motorolans.” Gustafsson is one himself.

Any layoff victims might also do well to call Greg Brown back in Schaumburg. True, Motorola Solutions—“the bedrock that Motorola was built on,” as Brown calls it—has slashed its global work force by more than a third since the spinoff, to 20,000. (It will shed 4,500 more jobs when the sale to Zebra wraps up this fall.) But its stock price has risen 68 percent during that time, edging out the S&P 500. Even after shedding the enterprise division, Solutions will be worth roughly four times more than what’s left of Motorola Mobility. And in software development, for example, Brown says he’s hiring.

How has he managed this? For one thing, Solutions’s customers are institutions, so the company remains largely immune from the race-to-the-bottom pricing of the consumer market. Another plus is that Solution’s business model resembles Apple’s. That is, the more a customer buys, the more that customer is bound to the company’s ecosystem of products and services. Solutions currently dominates the U.S. market for emergency communications equipment, by most estimates. (In March, the McClatchy newspapers ran a series of articles suggesting that Solutions’s practices are anticompetitive. In mid-July, three House Democrats, including Henry Waxman, sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, asking him to investigate.)

Brown’s main push these days is to develop the very thing with which the old Motorola had so mightily struggled: Software. Specifically, advanced software that could dramatically improve how safety officers do their jobs. Imagine a jacket-mounted camera that turns on whenever a cop pulls a gun from his or her holster, beaming the images back to police headquarters. Or Google Glass–like spectacles that give officers data—maps, feeds from nearby security cameras—in real time. Or sensors that can automatically detect gunfire in a neighborhood and dispatch patrols before anyone calls 911.

It’s cool stuff. So perhaps it’s fitting that Brown has placed 200 salespeople, engineers, and creatives not in sleepy Schaumburg but in the old Railway Exchange Building at 224 South Michigan Avenue. The tower’s huge new Motorola Solutions sign shines over Grant Park. And if the company decides to move more people from the burbs to the city, who knows? A certain familiar occupant of the Merchandise Mart may wind up with some extra office space to sublet.

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This article appears in the September 2014 issue of Chicago magazine.

Source: Chicago Magazine

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SEE WEB FOR COMPLETE LIST:

www.preferredwireless.com/equipment left arrow

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 left arrow

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Preferred Wireless

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critical alert CA Partner’s Program
 

Providing better communications solutions to hospitals across the country — together!

For CAS, strong partnerships remain key to providing our software-based communications solutions to our customers. These solutions include:

ca dr and nurse
nurse call systemscritical messaging solutionsmobile health applications

We provide the communication, training and resources required to become a CA partner. In turn, our partners provide customers with the highest levels of local service & support. CA Partners may come from any number of business sectors, including:

  • Service Providers
  • System Integrators
  • Value Added Resellers and Distributors
  • Expert Contractors
If you would like to hear more about our CA Partners program, we’d love to hear from you. criticalalert.com

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Selected portions of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update, and/or the BloostonLaw Private Users Update —newsletters from the Law Offices of Blooston, Mordkofsky, Dickens, Duffy & Prendergast, LLP are reproduced in this section with the firm's permission.

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BloostonLaw Telecom UpdateVol. 17, No. 33September 2, 2014

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Special Issue

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Regulatory Fee Payments Due September 23, 2014

The FCC has announced that all annual regulatory fee payments for fiscal year 2014 will be due no later than Tuesday, September 23, 2014. However, as discussed below, the FCC’s financial management software has been known to put licensees into “red light” status even when they have timely paid their regulatory fees, if the fee payment has not been processed by the deadline. Therefore, we recommend submitting the fee payment several days before the September 23, 2014 deadline if at all possible. Please let us know if you need assistance in preparing and/or making your regulatory fee payments.

It is important to note that a failure to make the payment by Tuesday, September 23, 2014 will result in the imposition of a 25 percent late payment fee.

New this year, the FCC has reduced the percentage paid by submarine cable/terrestrial and satellite bearer circuits by approximately 5 percent, and increased the regulatory fees paid by satellite earth station licensees by approximately 7.5 percent, to more accurately reflect the regulatory environment in that industry.

Fee Schedule for FY 2014

CMRS Mobile/Cellular/Cellularized SMR — $0.18 per subscriber unit as of December 31, 2013

CMRS Messaging Services (Paging, IMTS, non-Cellularized SMR — $0.08 per subscriber unit as of December 31, 2013

Broadband Radio Service (formerly MDS/MMDS) — $715.00 per call sign as of October 1, 2013

Local Multipoint Distribution Service — $715.00 per call sign as of October 1, 2013

CARS stations — $605.00 as of October 1, 2013

Cable Television Systems — $0.99 per subscriber as of December 31, 2013
Interstate Telecommunications Service Providers – 0.00343 per revenue dollar

Earth Stations — $295.00 per call sign as of October 1, 2013

Payment Instructions

Mandatory Use of the Fee Filer System New this year, all regulatees that pay annually must make their regulatory fee payments electronically via the Commission’s online Fee Filer payment system or by wire funds transfer directly to the US Treasury. The FCC will no longer accept paper checks, cashier’s checks or money orders.

Payments for Cellular, PCS, AWS, 700 MHz, Paging, SMR and most other CMRS/commercial licensees as well as telecommunications and cable television services must be made annually. As a result, regulatees will be required to access the FCC’s Fee Filer system (www.fcc.gov/fees/feefiler.html) with their valid CORES FRN and password in order to initiate the process of filing their annual regulatory fees. For FY 2014, payment may be made electronically through the Fee Filer system as a credit card transaction or as an ACH Payment that utilizes your bank account information. Wire funds transfers to the US Treasury will be addressed below. As in prior years, the FCC no longer mails invoices for regulatory fees. These invoices are viewable in the FCC’s Fee Filer System.

Should you desire to make your payment by wire funds transfer to the US Treasury, please contact our office for instructions. The FCC has not yet released its detailed instructions and we do not want to rely on prior year instructions in case there are any changes . Nonetheless, we recommend scheduling your payment for no later than Monday, September 22, 2014 in case there is an issue with the wire funds transfer. Additionally, it will be necessary to fax a copy of the Fee Filer generated Form 159-E to US Bank, St. Louis, Missouri at 314-418-4232 at least one hour before the wire funds transfer is initiated so that there are no delays in crediting your account. Finally, you should make arrangements with your banker a few days in advance so that your financial institution has enough time to initiate the wire funds transfer without running up against the payment deadline.

Assessment Notifications

As we announced in our August 20, 2014 special edition of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update, the FCC has made Interstate Telecommunications Service Providers (ITSPs) and CMRS regulatory fee assessment data available for review in its Fee Filer system. Thus, the FCC is allowing you to view a “preview” of your regulatory fee bill. For ITSPs, the fee assessment data is based upon revenues data reported in the Form 499 for 2013. For CMRS providers, the fee assessment data is based upon subscriber counts derived from the Form 502 numbering report. The FCC will not be mailing out this data to CMRS providers like it did in prior years. CMRS Carriers are permitted to make revisions to the subscriber data by Wednesday, September 10, 2014 and the FCC will either accept or reject the proposed revision. Because some carriers do not file their numbering data on the Form 502, the FCC will not have a telephone number count as of December 31, 2013. In those cases, CMRS providers should calculate their regulatory fee based upon the number of telephone numbers assigned to subscribers as of December 31, 2013.

In order to view this data and verify its accuracy, it will be necessary to log into the Fee Filer System. Once logged into the system, you should click on the link to view the appropriate revenue data (for ITSPs) or subscriber data (for CMRS providers.) The data for ITSPs cannot be revised, since it is based upon the 2013 ITSP revenue data that was reported on FCC Form 499.

Payments by NECA for ITSP Fees

Several of our Local Exchange clients pay their ITSP regulatory fees through NECA. While the FCC permits regulatees to use other entities for the payment of fees, it is important to remember that the ultimate responsibility rests with the regulated entity. In this regard, it is also important to note that if there are other ITSP regulatory fees for which you are liable that are not covered through NECA (e.g., CLEC, long distance or VoIP interstate revenue), that it will be necessary for you to initiate the payment of those fees in the FCC’s Fee Filer system.

Exemptions from Regulatory Fees

Governmental entities and non-profit entities under Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code are exempt from the payment of regulatory fees. Any entity claiming exempt status must submit (or have on file with the Commission) a valid IRS Determination Letter documenting its non-profit status or a certification from a governmental authority attesting to its exempt status. Finally, a regulatee will also be exempt from the payment of regulatory fees if the sum total of all of its regulatory fees owed is less than $10.00.

Upcoming Changes and Reforms Starting Next Year

The FCC adopted various reforms to its regulatory fee collection program which will not be effective until next year. Of note, these reforms include: (a) increasing the de minimis exemption amount from $10.00 to $500.00 for all fees due from a single regulate; (b) elimination of regulatory fees for the 218-219 MHz band, broadcast auxiliary stations and satellite television construction permits and (c) adding a new regulatory fee category for Toll-Free telephone numbers.

We will update you as further information is released by the FCC. Please let us know if you have any questions or need any assistance with your regulatory fee payments.

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BloostonLaw Telecom UpdateVol. 17, No. 34September 3, 2014

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Auction 97 Short Forms due September 12; Open Internet NPRM Replies due Sept 15

As the BloostonLaw Telecom Update returns from its August break, we would like to remind clients of two upcoming deadlines: the short form application deadline of September 12 for Auction 97, and the Open Internet reply comment deadline of September 15.

We note that the Open Internet reply deadline was originally set for September 10, but was extended by the Wireline Competition Bureau issued on August 15, 2014.

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Headlines

Parties Request Extension of Time to File Replies on CAF FNPRM

On August 22, 2014 the Competitive Carrier’s Association (CCA) filed a motion with the FCC seeking a 30-day extension of the reply comment deadline for the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Connect America Fund Phase II. The deadline, currently September 8, 2014, would be extended to October 8 if the motion is granted. On August 26, 2014, a group of rural wireless carriers, including U.S. Cellular, Smith Bagley, Inc., and Nex-Tech Wireless, LLC, filed comments in support of the CCA’s motion.

As a reminder, the FNPRM seeks comment on multiple topics relating to CAF Phase II, including how to implement the 100 percent competitive overlap; increasing the broadband speed requirement for USF support to 10 mbps downstream and 1 or more mbps upstream; and an optional two-step transition mechanism for rate-of-return carriers.

House Seeks Comment on Universal Service White Paper

On August 22, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) announced the release of the latest white paper seeking public input in preparation for an update to the Communications Act. Comments are due September 19.

This white paper, entitled “Universal Service Policy and the Role of the Federal Communications Commission,” is the fifth in an ongoing series. Comment is being sought on eight specific USF issues:

  1. How should Congress define the goals of the Universal Service Fund? Should Congress alter or eliminate any of the six statutory principles, codify either of the principles adopted by the FCC, or add any new principles in response to changes in technology and consumer behavior?
  2. Universal service was created to fund buildout in areas incapable of economically supporting network investment. How should our policies address the existence of multiple privately funded networks in many parts of the country that currently receive support?
  3. What is the appropriate role of states and state commissions with respect to universal service policy?
  4. What is the appropriate role of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service in a broadband, IP-enabled, largely interstate world? What is the appropriate role of related joint boards, such as the Federal-State Joint Board on Separations or the Federal-State Conference on Advanced Services?
  5. The Universal Service Fund is one of several federal programs that support buildout of communications facilities. Are current programs at other federal agencies, like the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (which oversaw the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program) or the Rural Utility Service (which oversees lending programs and oversaw the Broadband Initiatives Program) necessary?
  6. How can we ensure that the Universal Service Fund is sufficiently funded to meet its stated goals without growing the fund beyond fiscally responsible levels of spending?
  7. Are all of the funds and mechanisms of the current Universal Service Fund necessary in the modern communications marketplace?
  8. In lieu of the current support mechanisms, could any of the programs be better managed or made more efficient by conversion to:
    1. A state block grant program;
    2. A consumer-focused voucher program;
    3. A technology-neutral reverse auction; or,
    4. Any other mechanism?

BloostonLaw is prepared to help clients compose and submit comments on these issues.

FCC Seeks Comment on Streamlining Part 32 Accounting Rules

On August 20, 2014, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing to streamline the Uniform System of Accounts that carriers are required to implement by Part 32 of the Commission’s rules. The major issues on which comment is being sought include:

  • consolidating class a and class b accounts;
  • aligning the Uniform System of Accounts with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles;
  • requiring price cap carriers to comply with the Uniform System of Accounts;
  • requiring price cap carriers to comply with targeted accounting requirements;
  • state accounting requirements;
  • effects of revisions on rates;
  • timing of implementation of any changes; and
  • legal authority.

Comments will be due 60 days after the NPRM is published in the Federal Register, and replies will be due 30 days after that.

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Law & Regulation

Tenth Circuit Denies Petitions for Rehearing in Transformation Order Review

On August 27, 2014, the Tenth Circuit denied two Petitions for Rehearing En Banc in the USF/ICC Transformation Order proceeding, filed separately by Transcom and Allband, on issues raised and previously denied on May 23, 2014.

According to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, rehearings en banc (in which a case that was originally heard by a panel of judges is reheard by all of the judges of the court) ordinarily will not be ordered unless en banc consideration is necessary to secure or maintain uniformity of the court's decisions, or the proceeding involves a question of exceptional importance. A majority of the circuit judges who are in regular active service and not disqualified in a case make the decision whether to grant a rehearing en banc. A judge reviewing the petition for rehearing may request a poll of the other judges on whether rehearing should be granted.

According to the orders denying the Petitions, no judge in this case requested that the court be polled, and therefore the Petitions were denied.

FCC Issues Order, Further Notice on TRS Mandatory Minimum Standards

On August 22, 2014, the FCC issued a Report and Order, Declaratory Ruling, and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking addressing a number of issues related to telecommunications relay service (TRS), Internet-based relay services (iTRS), and captioned telephone service (CTS).

Specifically, in the Report and Order, the FCC:

  • exempted iTRS providers from mandatory minimum standards for certain “types-of-calls,” equal-access to inter-exchange carriers, pay-per-call, speech-to-speech (STS), ASCII/Baudot-compatible services, and call-release;
  • exempted video relay service (VRS) providers from mandatory minimum standards requiring text-to-voice and voice-to-text features, and exempted CTS and IP CTS providers from mandatory minimum standards requiring text-to-voice features;
  • amended rules concerning the applicability of mandatory minimum standards for multiple forms of voice carry over (VCO) and hearing carry over (HCO) as these standards pertain to different types of iTRS and CTS providers;
  • for CTS providers, codified as exemptions existing waivers from mandatory minimum standards requiring ASCII/Baudot-compatible services and the call-release feature; and
  • terminated existing waivers for mandatory minimum standards requiring three-way calling and speed dialing.

In the Declaratory Ruling, the FCC confirmed that Spanish Language Services over iTRS and CTS are voluntary services.

In the FNPRM, the FCC seeks comment on amending the definition of TRS in section 64.601 of the Commission’s rules to conform to the definition of TRS in section 225(a)(3) of the Communications Act of 1934 (Act), as this definition has been amended by the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010. Comments are due 30 days after publication in the Federal Register; replies are due 30 days after that.

Time Warner Enters into $1.1 Million Consent Decree for Network Outage Reporting Violations

Time Warner Cable, Inc. has entered into a consent decree with the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to close an investigation into whether or not Time Warner violated the FCC’s network outage reporting requirements. While not admitting fault, Time Warner has agreed to pay a civil penalty to the US Treasury in the amount of $1.1 million.

Under the FCC’s rules, communications providers are required to report certain disruptions to their networks. Depending upon the nature of the network outage, telecommunications providers are required to file reports with the FCC within specifically defined time periods. In particular, the FCC’s Rules require providers to report outages of at least 30 minutes in duration that (a) potentially affect at least 900,000 user minutes of either telephony or paging, (b) affect at least 1,350 DS3 minutes, (c) potentially affect any special offices or facilities or (d) potentially affects any 911 special facility. Wireline carriers are required to make this notification within 120 minutes of discovering a reportable outage, then file an Initial Communications Outage Report within 72 hours of discovery and a Final Communications Outage Report within 30 days of discovery. VoIP providers have slightly different standards and are required to report outages of at least 30 minutes that potentially affect (a) at least 900,000 user minutes of interconnected VoIP service and results in a complete loss of service, (b) any special offices and facilities or (c) any 911 special facility.

Here, Time Warner, a wireline communications and interconnected VoIP service provider, apparently failed to file a required Final Report in connection with a reportable VoIP network outage for which it had timely filed a required notification. Upon further investigation, the FCC discovered that Time Warner had failed to file a substantial number of Initial Reports and/or Final Reports in connection with numerous reportable wireline and VoIP network outages — which it ultimately corrected after being notified of the deficiencies by the FCC.

In addition to paying a $1.1 million civil penalty, Time Warner has also agreed to enter into a Compliance Plan that will include the development of operating procedures, a compliance manual and training program. Additionally, all future reporting by Time Warner is required to include the date and time the outage was discovered and Time Warner shall provide periodic reports to the FCC.

Because the network outage reporting is designed to keep the Commission apprised of the overall condition and reliability of the telecommunications network — in furtherance of its obligations to protect homeland security and the health and welfare of the public — it is critically important that outage reports be filed in a timely manner. As can be seen from the Time Warner consent decree, a failure to make these filings in a timely manner can lead to steep penalties.

Comment Deadline Established for IP Captioning FNPRM

Last month, the FCC published the Second Order on Reconsideration and Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the captioning of video clips on the Internet in the Federal Register, establishing comment deadlines for the FNPRM portion of the document (see the BloostonLaw Telecom Update of July 16 for more information). Comments are due October 6, 2014 and replies are due November 3, 2014.

In the FNPRM, the FCC seeks comment on a number of IP captioning issues including:

  • the application of the IP closed captioning rules to the provision of video clips by third party video programming providers and distributors;
  • whether in the FCC should decrease or eliminate the 12-hour timeframe within which IP-delivered video clips of video programming previously shown live on television must be captioned and the eight-hour timeframe within which IP-delivered video clips of video programming previously shown near-live on television must be captioned;
  • the application of the IP closed captioning requirements to files that contain a combination of one or more video clips that have been shown on television with captions and online-only content that has not (“mash-ups”); and
  • the application of the IP closed captioning rules to video clips that are added to the video programming distributor’s or provider’s library on or after January 1, 2016 for straight lift clips and January 1, 2017 for montages, but before the associated video programming is shown on television with captions (“advance” video clips).

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Industry

California Adopts Smartphone Kill-Switch Bill

On August 25, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill that requires all smartphones sold in the state to come with a “kill switch” starting July 2015. Importantly, the bill appears only to affect manufacturers and providers of operating systems, not carriers.

Specifically, the bill requires that any smartphone manufactured on or after July 1, 2015 and sold in California thereafter “shall include a technological solution at the time of sale, to be provided by the manufacturer or operating system provider, that, once initiated and successfully communicated to the smartphone, can render the essential features of the smartphone inoperable to an unauthorized user when the smartphone is not in the possession of an authorized user.”

Existing solutions offered by Google and Apple don’t appear to meet the bill’s requirements, as it further states, “[t]he technological solution shall be reversible, so that if an authorized user obtains possession of the smartphone after the essential features of the smartphone have been rendered inoperable, the operation of those essential features can be restored by an authorized user.”

It will be interesting to see how the law impacts smartphone manufacturing nationwide, as it is unclear whether it will make much sense for manufacturers and operating system providers to make a California-specific solution that isn’t included on all models.

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Calendar At-a-Glance

September
Sep. 4 – Reply comments are due on WCB Public Notice on Terminating Dormant Proceedings.
Sep. 4 – Comments are due on Tenth Broadband Report Notice of Inquiry.
Sep. 8 – Reply comments are due on the FCC’s Omnibus USF/ICC Order.
Sep. 10 – Deadline to revise CMRS subscriber data for FY2014 regulatory fees.
Sep. 12 – Auction 97 short-form application filing window closes.
Sep. 15 – Reply comments are due on the Open Internet NPRM.
Sep. 15 – Reply comments are due refreshing the record on the 2010 Broadband NOI.
Sep. 15 – Comments are due on E-Rate Modernization NPRM.
Sep. 19 – Reply comments are due on Tenth Broadband Report Notice of Inquiry.
Sep. 19 – Comments are due on fifth Congressional White Paper.
Sep. 23 – Annual Regulatory Fee Payments for Fiscal Year 2014 are due.
Sep. 29 – Reply comments are due on Rural Broadband Experiment FNPRM.
Sep. 30 – Reply comments are due on E-Rate Modernization NPRM.
Sep. 30 – FCC Form 396-C (MVPD EEO Program Annual Report).

October
Oct. 1 – FCC Form 477 due (Local Competition and Broadband Reporting).
Oct. 6 – Comments due on IP Captioning proceeding.
Oct. 14 – Deadline for applications for rural broadband experiments.
Oct. 15 – Auction 97 upfront payments are due.

November
Nov. 3 – FCC Form 499-Q (Quarterly Telecommunications Reporting Worksheet) is due.
Nov. 3 – Reply comments are due on IP Captioning proceeding.
Nov. 13 – Auction 97 begins

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

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Friends & Colleagues

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Ira Wiesenfeld, P.E.

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Complete Technical Services For The Communications and Electronics Industries Design • Installation • Maintenance • Training • Engineering • Licensing • Technical Assistance

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

Tel/Fax: 972-960-9336
Cell: 214-707-7711
Web: IWA-RADIO.com
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Ira Wiesenfeld, P.E.

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Wireless Network Planners

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Wireless Network Planners
Wireless Specialists

www.wirelessplanners.com
wirelessplannerron@gmail.com

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

Cellphone: 631-786-9359

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Wireless Network Planners

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Prism Paging

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PRISM IP MESSAGE GATEWAY

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THE ULTIMATE IN COMMERCIAL AND PRIVATE RADIO PAGING SYSTEMS

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  • VoIP telephone access — eliminate interconnect expense
  • Call from anywhere — Prism SIP Gateway allows calls from PSTN and PBX
  • All the Features for Paging, Voice-mail, 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
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prism

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WiPath Communications

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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

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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

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Paging Controlled Moving Message LED Displays

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  • Variety of sizes
  • Indoor/outdoor
  • Integrated paging receiver

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Hark Technologies

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Wireless Communication Solutions

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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)

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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

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Other products

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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

hark David George and Bill Noyes
of Hark Technologies.

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Hark Technologies

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advertise

Click on the logo above for more info.

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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From:Scotty “DeepGeek” Fitzgerald
Subject: Newsletter Re-vamp
Date:September 2, 2014
To:Brad Dye

Hi, Brad,

Congrats on pulling through your recent health situation!

Glad to hear you going to re-vamp the newsletter a bit. I wanted to ask for consideration of two things toward that end.

1) RSS feeds, please.

2) Think you can get a Flattr account? I would like to support, but PayPal gives me a lot of grief.

Thanks,

Scotty “DeepGeek” Fitzgerald

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UNTIIL NEXT WEEK

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The Wireless Messaging News


Best regards,
brad's signature
Newsletter Editor
73 DE K9IQY

Brad Dye
P.O. Box 266
Fairfield, IL 62837 USA

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CONTACT INFO & LINKS
Skype: braddye
Twitter: @BradDye1
Telephone: 618-599-7869
E–mail: brad@braddye.com
Wireless: Consulting page
Paging: Home Page
Marketing & Engineering Papers
K9IQY: Ham Radio Page

Back To Paging
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Still The Most Reliable Wireless Protocol For Emergencies!

Wireless
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Messaging

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THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

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When you say “I seen,” I assume you won't finish that sentence with “the inside of a book.”

I see

I saw

I have seen

professor

Some ignorant Americans are vocal in their criticisms of immigrants or visitors to the USA who can not speak English very well. e.g. “Let them learn English!”

These mis-guided citizens should work on their own grammar before criticizing anyone else. Besides, I think most of our ancestors came to America from somewhere else.

One of my favorite jokes is:

  • A person who can speak three languages is called trilingual.
  • A person who can speak two languages is called bilingual.
  • A person who can speak only one language is called an American.

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PHOTOS OF THE WEEK

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DANIEL BEREHULAK—THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

August 28, 2014. A burial team in protective clothing removes the body [of] an Ebola victim from an isolation ward in the West Point neighborhood of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

[source]

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RIJASOLO—AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Aug. 28, 2014. A swarm of locusts invades the center of Madagascar capitol Antananarivo.

[source]

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OLIVER BLUETT—AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Aug. 29, 2014. Mount Tavurvur erupting in eastern Papua New Guinea, spewing rocks and ash into the air, forcing the evacuation of local communities and international flights to be re-routed.

[source]

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