Dear Friends and Industry Colleagues,

The holidays are frequently a mixed blessing. I hope you enjoyed yours. Now that they are finally over, we can get back to business. Although business is usually very dead between Christmas day and New Year's day, this year was different for me. I was very busy with some interesting new projects. Let's hope this is an indication that 2003 will be a good year for business—for all of us.

I remain convinced that it's not over yet for paging! We are just redefining who we are and what we do. Change is often painful, but it is inevitable. Remember the saying: "insanity is thinking that the same behavior will produce different results." I am afraid that some of our paging carriers are still following the same arrogant business attitudes that contributed to their bankruptcy. Let's get creative with Wireless Data and build some new businesses. Read about one of the building blocks below; the Paging Data Receiver.

Let me remind everyone that to be in business you must have customers. If you don't have customers, you don't have a business. First you have to get the customers, and then you have to keep them. Both the getting and the keeping involve supplying them with things they want and solving their problems. That's why they give us money. If we can't keep them, they go away and give their money to someone else.

I know this may all sound a little too simple to some, and I think they probably don't teach these principles to MBA students. I can't be sure because I don't have an MBA, but when I see businesses in trouble turning down new customers, it makes me wonder. I am sorry, but I guess I am just not smart enough to understand this kind of business practice. We used to joke that some of the large paging carriers were only losing a little bit of money on each subscriber, but they were making it up in the volume. Then they all went bankrupt and it wasn't funny anymore.

THERE IS STILL TIME TO JOIN THE AAPC AND ATTEND THE PTC MEETING IN TAMPA
The Paging Technical Committee (PTC) of the American Association of Paging Carriers (AAPC) is seeking input from paging operators regarding technical issues of general concern to the paging industry. If you have a technical topic you believe has general interest to the paging community please contact Stephen Oshinsky at: E-MAIL ADDRESS REMOVED to have it included in the upcoming PTC meeting. The next meeting will be held in Tampa, Florida at the Crowne Plaza hotel on January 22. These meetings are generally attended by lead technical personnel of paging operators in the US.

We would like to invite you to attend and participate. Members of AAPC are automatically included as voting members of PTC. For AAPC information see: www.pagingcarriers.org.

I have already ordered my plane ticket and hotel room. I am really looking forward to meeting some of you there. By the way, the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team is playing the Montreal Canadiens at home in Tampa on January 22nd. Game time is 7:00 p.m. at the St. Pete Times Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa, FL 33602. You can still get tickets to the game on the Internet by clicking here.

From: RCR Wireless News

WIRELESS MAN OF THE YEAR
Each year RCR Wireless News chooses the person who has most impacted the wireless industry. [Their] choice for 2002 is Dennis Strigl, Verizon Wireless Inc.'s chief executive. Verizon, the nation's largest carrier, is known as a conservative company, and that has served it well this year, especially in this downtrodden market. In an industry that often drowns in promising too much, Strigl has been wise to focus on core competencies. Strigl has guided Verizon with a steady hand, concentrating on the basics, like great network coverage, while cautiously rolling out third-generation services. Meanwhile, the carrier put significant money behind a wireless data marketing campaign to educate audiences about the promise of 3G. And Verizon should be commended for leading the fight to get re-auction pledges back from the government, a battle that helped a number of carriers.

THE PAGING INFORMATION RESOURCE
For several years I have tried to update the style and appearance of my web site at the beginning of each new year. The changes this year are subtle but still involved a lot of work. The site has become compliant with XHTML 1.0 transitional coding for easy access from wireless devices. (XML 1.0 / ISO 8859-1.) This involved upgrading my web authoring tools to the latest and greatest Dreamweaver MX Studio package and then reworking several hundred pages. You can't see this change but it makes a big difference to wireless devices trying to access the site. The blue on white and white on blue color theme is now more consistent across the whole site and all the blues are the same shade. Roll-over navigation buttons were added in the middle of last year. They are very complex to write but are made somewhat easier with Dreamweaver's powerful scripting.

I took a one-day course sponsored by Motorola at Florida Atlantic University about 11 years ago on how to develop web sites. I am not a programmer, I am a web author. After the initial course, I learned everything else on my own.

Over the last couple of weeks, the fonts were all changed to "Verdana" which is a special font created by Microsoft to be readable on a computer display screen. There were over 15,000 instructions that had to be modified to accomplish this one change. Most fonts are designed to look good when printed on paper. Verdana looks good on a computer screen and is easier to read. It is a "sans-serif" font similar to Arial on Microsoft Windows and Helvetica on the Macintosh, but slightly larger. Most of the text size is set at two points, which is one size smaller than what is considered normal on most browsers. I hope you like it.

Scarcely a day goes by that someone doesn't send me a message saying they enjoyed visiting BradDye.com and asking to subscribe to the newsletter. The number of subscribers has just about doubled over the last year and the 47 issues of the newsletter. If you know someone who might enjoy this newsletter, please click on your e-mail "forward" button and send it to them or tell them to check out the newsletter archive at: http://braddye.com/newsletters.html.

PL-900 FLEX RECEIVER

The Daviscomms TMR (Telemetry Messaging Receiver) is a one-way FLEX™ telemetry device and is being manufactured by Daviscomms in Singapore. It is being stocked and distributed in the Americas by Vytek Wireless Products as the PageLink™ PDR (Paging Data Receiver)

If you want to build a new Wireless Data business segment, this is one of the building blocks that you can use. Vytek now has these units in stock, here in the USA, for immediate shipment.

Vytek Wireless has expanded their Paging Telemetry Product line to include the PL-900 FLEX™ Paging Data Receiver.  The PL-900 provides a solution for customers looking for a CreataLink™ one-way receiver replacement.

PL-900 FLEX Module
The PL-900 is ideal for providing remote control and one-way telemetry.

The PL-900 receivers are synthesized and operate in the 929-932 MHz frequency range, have eight addressable high/low output lines or serial output and are capable of receiving data for up to 16 programmable capcodes for flexible group and sub-group addressing. The PL-900 comes with either an on-board antenna or a connection for an external long-range antenna.

To download the product brochure, please click here.

CreataLink is a trademark of SmartSynch Communications Corp. The product and trademark were formerly owned by Motorola Inc.

PAGING
INFORMATION
RESOURCE

Best regards,

Brad Dye
Wireless Data Consultant

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FLEX, ReFLEX, InFLEXion, and PageWriter are trademarks or registered trademarks of Motorola, Inc.
CreataLink is a trademark of SmartSynch Communications Corp.