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FRIDAY - MARCH 7, 2008 - ISSUE NO. 301

Dear Friends of Wireless Messaging,

USA Mobility has reported their fourth quarter and 2007 operating results. Following, are direct quotations, clipped from the company's press release:

  • The Company reported a net loss of $46.7 million, or $1.70 per fully diluted share, for the fourth quarter.
  • The annual rate of unit erosion declined to 15.1 percent in 2007 from 16.0 percent in 2006. Net unit losses were 620,000 in 2007 versus 781,000 in 2006. Total units in service at year-end 2007 were 3,485,000, compared to 4,105,000 a year earlier.
  • . . . cash distributions represented a return of capital to stockholders of $98.3 million.
  • Thomas L. Schilling, chief operating officer and chief financial officer, said: "We are pleased the financial guidance we provided for 2007 was largely on target."
  • "We made excellent progress in the fourth quarter and during 2007," said Vincent D. Kelly, president and chief executive officer. "We continued to operate the Company profitably while meeting our primary operating goals, reducing costs, increasing organizational efficiencies and expanding product offerings to our core market subscribers throughout the country."

The day after this announcement, shares of USA Mobility fell almost 17% to $9.04. [source]

I really don't understand this. Maybe some of you Harvard-trained MBA weenies out there can explain why these USMO managers are so proud of themselves after losing $46.7 million dollars last quarter. I didn't go to Harvard, in fact, I have never even driven by Harvard. Oh well . . . I guess I'm just not smart enough to understand this corporate doublespeak.


Sprint's troubles inspire rumor mill

March 6, 2008

Sprint's recent troubles have made plenty of investors and subscribers uneasy, which has led to a number of acquisition-related rumors and highly speculative analysis. Here are three:

Sprint to spin-off Nextel

According to a Seeking Alpha report, Sprint Nextel has hired Morgan Stanley to implement board director Ralph Whitworth's plan to spin-off Nextel. Rumor has it the spin-off will be announced within the next two to four weeks. Most of Sprint's trouble can be traced back to the Nextel acquisition in the first place.

T-Mobile may acquire Sprint

Merrill Lynch analysts told the Kansas City Star today that Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile USA, might be considering a takeover of Sprint in an attempt to prevent a price war between the mobile carriers. Sprint's low share price and the weakness of the U.S. dollar both favor the European company, but Merrill Lynch said it is not privy to any inside information--it's just speculating.

Should Verizon buy Sprint?

Last week the Wall Street Journal's deals blog considered whether Verizon should acquire Sprint. The post brings up Verizon's stellar decision not to make a bid for Sprint back in 2004.

[source]


"When text messages become mission-critical"

Two readers sent in copies of the same article from Telephony Online about mission-critical-text messaging. The article is reproduced below. Regular readers will know why I felt ill, and got a headache while reading this article. Others may want to read my views on Critical Messaging, published here many times previously. Just click on Pagerman on your right. These "pinheads" are working with the communications industry and the government to develop a critical messaging system that can quickly send one text message to thousands of people instead of trying to send out thousands of individual messages at the same time — causing network congestion. Duuuhhhh . . . paging technology solved that problem many years ago — we call it group call.

Now on to more news and views . . .

aapc logo emma logo
brad dye
Wireless Messaging Newsletter
  • VoIP
  • Wi-Fi
  • Paging
  • WiMAX
  • Telemetry
  • Location Services
  • Wireless Messaging
WIRELESS
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MESSAGING

This is my weekly newsletter about Wireless Messaging. You are receiving this because you have either communicated with me in the past about a wireless topic, or your address was included in another e-mail that I received on the same subject. This is not a SPAM. If you have received this message in error, or you are not interested in these topics, please click here, then click on "send" and you will be promptly removed from the mailing list.

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

A new issue of The Wireless Messaging Newsletter gets posted on the web each week. A notification goes out by e-mail to subscribers on most Fridays around noon central US time. The notification message has a link to the actual newsletter on the Internet. That way it doesn't fill up your incoming e-mail account.

There is no charge for subscription and there are no membership restrictions. Readers are a very select group of wireless industry professionals, and include the senior managers of many of the world's major Paging and Wireless Data companies. There is an even mix of operations managers, marketing people, and engineers—so I try to include items of interest to all three groups. It's all about staying up-to-date with business trends and technology. I regularly get readers' comments, so this newsletter has become a community forum for the Paging, and Wireless Data communities. You are welcome to contribute your ideas and opinions. Unless otherwise requested, all correspondence addressed to me is subject to publication in the newsletter and on my web site. I am very careful to protect the anonymity of those who request it.

NOTE: This newsletter is best viewed at screen resolutions of 800x600 (good) or 1024x768 (better). Any current revision of web browser should work fine. Please notify me of any problems with viewing. This site is compliant with XHTML 1.0 transitional coding for easy access from wireless devices. (XML 1.0/ISO 8859-1.)


Anyone wanting to help support The Wireless Messaging Newsletter can do so by clicking on the PayPal Donate button above.


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

pagerman

The local newspaper here in Springfield, Illinois costs 75¢ a copy and it NEVER mentions paging. If you receive some benefit from this publication maybe you would like to help support it financially? A donation of $25.00 would represent approximately 50¢ a copy for one year. If you are so inclined, please click on the PayPal Donate button above. No trees were chopped down to produce this electronic newsletter.


ENTERPRISE WIRELESS 2008

enterprise 2008

AAPC will join with the Enterprise Wireless Alliance to host more than 400 wireless industry professionals, including carriers, suppliers, and network providers, for three days of information sharing, technical sessions, vendor exhibits, and networking opportunities.

Paging and wireless technologies are recognized as a “must have” component in all emergency situations, due to their affordability and reliability. Spend three days with your colleagues attending dedicated paging-related sessions, perusing cutting-edge technologies in the vendor hall, and networking with friends.

With more than 330 days of sunshine, 200 golf courses, an array of outdoor activities, and outstanding shopping and dining, Scottsdale is the premier destination for business and leisure travelers. The new venue, the Doubletree Paradise Valley Resort, is inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and is situated on 22 acres of towering palms, has majestic desert mountain views, is easily accessible from the Sky Harbor airport, and is located minutes from Old Town Scottsdale.

Call for presentations

We are currently soliciting speakers and presentation ideas for the fall conference. Please e-mail Linda at info@pagingcarriers.org with presentation suggestions or speakers that you would like to hear.

enterprise wireless 2008

ENTERPRISE WIRELESS 2008

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PAGING CARRIERS

 
 aapc logo AAPC Bulletin
www.pagingcarriers.org • 866-301-2272
The Voice of US Paging Carriers
 

Thanks to our Gold Vendor member!

prism
PRISM Paging

Thanks to our Silver Vendor Members!
isc technologies
ISC Technologies, Inc.
recurrent software
Recurrent Software Solutions, Inc.
unication
Unication USA

Thanks to our Bronze Member Vendors!

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

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PAGING CARRIERS

FEATURED ADVERTISERS SUPPORTING THE NEWSLETTER

Advertiser Index

AAPC—American Association of Paging Carriers Outr.net
ATCOM Wireless Paging & Wireless Network Planners LLC
CPR Technology, Inc. Preferred Wireless
CRS—Critical Response Systems Prism Paging
CVC Paging Raven Systems
Daviscomms USA Ron Mercer
EMMA—European Mobile Messaging Association Swissphone
GTES—Global Technical Engineering Solutions  
Hark Systems TAPS—Texas Association of Paging Services
HMCE, Inc.  
InfoRad, Inc.    UCOM Paging
Ira Wiesenfeld Unication USA
Minilec Service, Inc. United Communications Corp.
Nighthawk Systems, Inc. WiPath Communications
Northeast Paging Zetron Inc.

USA Mobility posts $46.7M 4Q loss

Thursday, March 6, 2008 - 10:09 AM EST
Washington Business Journal
by Erin Killian Staff Reporter

USA Mobility Inc. lost money in the fourth quarter and ended the year in the red as the company slashed more than 230 jobs in an effort to consolidate and control expenses, the company said late Wednesday.

The Alexandria-based provider of wireless messaging and communications services lost $46.7 million, or $1.70 per diluted share, in the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared to a profit of $8.3 million, or 30 cents per share, in the comparable quarter last year.

The company attributed the loss to a $61.8 million income tax expense in the fourth quarter.

Fourth quarter revenue was $100.2 million, a 14 drop from $116 million in the same quarter last year.

The decrease was largely because of less money generated from its pager business, which brought in $91.8 million in revenue in the fourth quarter, a 15 drop from $107.5 million in the year-ago quarter.

For 2007, USA Mobility (NASDAQ: USMO) lost $5.2 million, or 19 cents per diluted share, compared with a $40.2 million profit, or $1.46 per share, in 2006.

Annual revenue was $424.6 million, down from $497.7 million in 2006.

To get back on track, USA Mobility's chief executive Vincent Kelly said he'll "create new sales and service opportunities" to get the company's core market segment to sign on to its wireless services, which include health care, government and large enterprise.

Kelly is also focused on turning around its stock, which has fallen in the last nine months, to retain stockholders.

"The board of directors is evaluating our strategy for returning capital to stockholders which may include periodic recurring cash distributions, special cash distributions, a stock repurchase program or a combination of these alternatives," said Kelly in a statement.

USA Mobility employed 1,000 people as of the end of 2007.

The company's stock fell 12 percent to $9.50 in morning trading.

Source: Washington Business Journal

For more information, see: USA Mobility's Press Release


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Comments on The History Of Paging

By Ron Mercer

Brad, I have become intrigued by the discussion of the origins of radio paging that has unfolded in your Newsletter in recent weeks. For what it’s worth, then, here are my two cents worth:

While employed at Bell Canada in 1961/62, to permit the company to define a service to be offered to their hospital customers, I was directed to perform a technical evaluation of the only two radio paging system products, featuring selective signaling, then believed to be available:

  • A Multitone system that was manufactured in England;
  • A Bogen system that was manufactured in Paramus, New Jersey.

Multitone had been founded by a Russian immigrant to the UK whose name was something like Polikoff. (maybe someone at Multitone can refine my memory here). The earliest Multitone systems used Wired Loop technology which was upgraded to use AM radio transmission with tone signaling in the mid to late 1950’s. As I remember it, the Multitone product was then called a “selectively alerted receiver” and it used a proprietary tone signaling format.

In the late 1950’s, a consultant/designer named John Scantlin designed a radio product for Stromberg Carlson in Rochester, NY. The original Scantlin design was a tone only product using sub-miniature vacuum tubes in a super-regenerative AM receiver that used sequential tone signaling. (Scantlin moved to California and later developed a number of additional products including an early Stock Quotation system and a solid-state decoder for use in pre-cellular mobile telephone systems replacing the mechanical “Wheel & Pin” designs then in use.)

Bogen purchased the Scantlin design from Stromberg, moved it to New Jersey and updated the design to use transistors. For some years, Bogen had manufactured amplifiers for use in loudspeaker systems that, taking the name from the Pages (or Pageboys) of an even earlier time (remember the “Call For Phillip Morris” adds) were called “overhead paging” systems. I believe that the use of the term “Paging” to describe our industry was first used by Bogen and grew out of their association with “overhead paging.”

Both the Multitone and the Bogen systems included manual encoders and both were intended primarily for private system use in hospitals. Work on these systems, however, provided the incentive to develop dial accessed city-wide systems for sale to the general public.

In the mid 1960’s Motorola introduced pagers using a superhetrodyne, crystal controlled design and improved resonant reed decoders. In the same timeframe, a division of Bell & Howell purchased a superhetrodyne pager design from a fellow named Sholly Kagen and began producing the TP 11 pager using similar technologies (remember the Bell & Howell sardine can?) Motorola and Bell & Howell were the paging industry’s major competitors for a number of years and were followed be a number of other paging manufacturers as the industry matured.

It is true, however, that in 1950/51, several years before the introduction of either Multitone or Bogen pagers, an inventor named Robert Florac designed a subscriber notification system device that did NOT include selective signaling and was activated by a manual operator.

In the Florac system, every subscriber carried a small radio receiver that was equipped with a “push to listen” button. Each subscriber was also assigned a three-digit numeric code. When a system operator took a message for a subscriber, the operator would insert a short section of magnetic tape containing a voice recording of that subscriber's code number onto a large rotating drum causing the code number to be recited repeatedly via the system radio transmitter in ascending sequence with all the other code numbers of subscribers with messages waiting. From time-to-time, each subscriber would hold the receiver up to his/her ear and push the “listen” button to hear the stream of code numbers being transmitted. If a message was waiting, his or her number would be heard in sequence.

Ron Mercer, Consultant
PAGING & WIRELESS NETWORK PLANNERS LLC
217 First Street South
East Northport, NY 11731

Cell Phone: 631-786-9359

Source: Ron Mercer

Ron has agreed to write a follow-up article about the history of Paging if there is sufficient interest.


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Tompkins officials anticipate better signals

By Tim Ashmore
Journal Staff
The Ithaca Journal

ITHACA — After 10 years of planning, engineering, negotiating and installation, Tompkins County officials expect to switch radio communication systems for fire, EMT and law enforcement to digital by the end of the month.

The new 11-tower network will provide increased coverage for fire, emergency medical, law enforcement and various departments throughout the county, including remote areas in the gorges, the outskirts of the county and other areas where it's been difficult to get a signal under the current system.

Lee Shurtleff, director of Tompkins County Emergency Response, said the new system, which cost $20 million, has been testing better than expected, even in areas where the signal was anticipated to fade.

“I haven't found a dead spot in the county yet,” he said. That includes trips into the gorges, out to Spencer and into areas where Motorola, the company that won the bid for the equipment, predicted there would be dead spots.

Even before the current communications system began failing, there was a need for a new system that would provide better communication in the gorges and into steel-framed buildings.

“Some of our key areas are in the gorges and heavily constructed buildings,” Ithaca Fire Chief Brian Wilbur said. “Our experience so far in testing the new system is amazing penetration from the heavy constructed buildings.”

The existing system is a network of 15 transmission sites, some designated specifically for fire and EMS, and some for law enforcement. Shurtleff said if any one tower goes down, the entire system will likely collapse.

“We experienced a significant degradation of the signal over this winter,” Wilbur said.

Another problem with the old system dealt with paging capability. Tompkins County Legislator Greg Stevenson, D-Enfield and Newfield, who is also a paid Ithaca firefighter and the former chief of the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company, said that when the paging system goes down, it presents another obstacle for emergency personnel, and it can mean turning to a phone tree to activate volunteers.

“When you're in the business of getting people places as fast as you can, turning to a phone tree isn't the best way to work,” he said.

Last week, Shurtleff switched the main paging device from the old 2-gigahertz microwave transmitter to a 6-gigahertz microwave because the smaller console had become a regular source of failure. Wilbur and Shurtleff said they immediately noticed a difference in the performance.

The new system will use simulcast, where each tower “talks at once,” Shurtleff said, which would allow a tower to go down without affecting the whole system. Simulcast also allows individuals to talk on one frequency without having to switch frequencies as they move throughout the county.

As the old system erodes, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and police officers have been forced to find ways to communicate around it.

“We have molded together a number of different work-arounds,” Wilbur said. “None of us has the time or resources to do that, but we did it anyway.”

The Ithaca Fire Department installed a repeater — a device that allows agencies to keep heavy traffic off the failing system — at Ithaca College and asked the county to link a transmitter to the repeater. That system served as a paging resource, Wilbur said.

Officials have also been using cell phones to work around the system, he said.

Once key personnel are trained and ready and the new system goes up, Shurtleff will run both systems simultaneously for several months to make the transition as seamless as possible.

Shurtleff said somewhere between 600 and 800 pagers will need new frequencies programmed into them to work on the new system, which could take some time.

The Emergency Response Center has been training staff on the new system for the last month.

Source: The Ithaca Journal


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Nighthawk Systems Receives Its Largest Initial Electric Utility Order To Date From Public Works Commission of Fayetteville, NC

SAN ANTONIO, TX - 3/5/08 - Nighthawk Systems, Inc. (OTC BB: NIHK), a leading provider of intelligent wireless power control devices and solutions, today announced that it has been awarded a contract for the purchase of 485 of its CEO700 wireless disconnect units by the Public Works Commission (“PWC”) of Fayetteville, NC. The electric utility division of the PWC of Fayetteville serves approximately 67,000 customers and is the 5th largest city in North Carolina with a total population of 341,363. This order represents the largest initial order of CEO700’s to date from a new customer, and is expected to be shipped within the next 30 days.

“The ever-increasing demand for energy and limited new supply continues to create both upward price pressure on electricity as well as a resurgent interest in intelligent power control solutions. There is no doubt that the Nighthawk product line provides significant cost savings to our customers who are battling rising fuel and personnel-related costs,” commented H. Douglas Saathoff, Nighthawk’s CEO. “Over the past five quarters we have delivered consistent quarterly year over year revenue growth in our remote disconnect business. Given the pace of our current order flow, spurred by both market conditions and a deliberate increase in our sales effort, we have begun to witness a decided growth acceleration in this segment of our business such that we anticipate a doubling of remote disconnect units sold during 2008 over 2007.”

About the CEO700
The CEO700 gives electric utilities the ability to wirelessly disconnect and reconnect power to residential electric meters from a centralized location, improving customer service response times and saving the utility significant time and money over the traditional manual disconnect method that requires multiple truck rolls and field personnel.

About Nighthawk Systems, Inc.
Nighthawk is a leading provider of intelligent devices and systems that allow for the centralized, on-demand management of assets and processes. Nighthawk products are used throughout the United States in a variety of mission critical applications, including remotely turning on and off and rebooting devices, activating alarms, and emergency notification, including the display of custom messages. Nighthawk’s IPTV set top boxes are utilized by the hospitality industry to provide in-room standard and high definition television and video on demand. Individuals interested in Nighthawk Systems can sign up to receive email alerts by visiting the Company’s website at www.nighthawksystems.com.

Forward-looking statements
Statements contained in this release, which are not historical facts, including statements about plans and expectations regarding business areas and opportunities, acceptance of new or existing businesses, capital resources and future business or financial results are "forward-looking" statements. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, customer acceptance of our products, our ability to raise capital to fund our operations, our ability to develop and protect proprietary technology, government regulation, competition in our industry, general economic conditions and other risk factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, they relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made, and our future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements may not meet these expectations. We do not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in our expectations, except as required by law.

CONTACT:

Doug Saathoff
dsaathoff@nighthawksystems.com
(877) 7-NIGHTHAWK, Ext 701

Or

Yvonne Zappulla
Managing Director
Grannus Financial Advisors, Inc
Yvonne@grannusfinancial.com
212-681-4108

Source: Nighthawk Systems


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SATELLITE CONTROL FOR PAGING SYSTEMS

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TAPS—Texas Association of Paging Services is looking for partners on 152.480 MHz. Our association currently uses Echostar, formerly Spacecom, for distribution of our data and a large percentage of our members use the satellite to key their TXs. We have a CommOneSystems Gateway at the uplink in Chicago with a back-up running 24/7. Our paging coverage area on 152.480 MHz currently encompasses Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Kansas. The TAPS paging coverage is available to members of our Network on 152.480 MHz for $.005 a transmitter (per capcode per month), broken down by state or regions of states and members receive a credit towards their bill for each transmitter which they provide to our coverage. Members are able to use the satellite for their own use If you are on 152.480 MHz or just need a satellite for keying your own TXs on your frequency we have the solution for you.

TAPS will provide the gateways in Chicago, with Internet backbone and bandwidth on our satellite channel for $ 500.00 (for your system) a month.

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When text messages become mission-critical

Mar 4, 2008 12:35 PM
By Sarah Reedy

Telephony Online

In an emergency situation, the SMS networks are likely to become congested. How are carriers making vital texts a first priority?

In the wake of last year’s Virginia Tech massacre, history’s deadliest school shooting in which the university was criticized for failing to provide reliable preventative action, universities across the nation have been quickly ramping up emergency alert systems to more promptly spread the word when a crisis occurs. A fundamental piece of this relies on SMS text messages, and a dependable method of reaching an increasingly ubiquitous network of wireless users may already be embedded in each handset. This technology, however, has gone entirely overlooked.

“Text messaging has gotten to the point where it is mission-critical,” said Danny Briere, CEO of TeleChoice. “Are the networks keeping up? No. They are clearly not keeping up with text messaging as a mission-critical application. The standards appear to let you do some rudimentary things to apply priority, but you really need to have more levels of priority and a more discrete ability to designate messages as being very high priority and have that accepted by everyone you pass it on to.”

The standard Briere referred to is the Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol (SMPP) priority standard, which uses a one-byte integer to allow wireless users to assign a zero for non-priority or one for a priority message. A designation of one means that the message will move to the top of the priority queue to be routed before other non-vital messages. While this open industry standard is in place, the priority service is not a part of any large carrier’s offerings to date.

According to Verizon and Sprint spokespeople, neither carrier offers a priority text messaging service to their customers. AT&T refused to comment and would not confirm if it had any type of technology in place to enable priority text messaging. Bruce Lee, public-sector industry solutions manager for Sprint, said that the industry is addressing these issues, but the landscape for SMS is much more complex than most realize. The main roadblock with text messaging that makes it significantly harder to manage than voice calls is the point-to-multipoint nature of the application. One SMS text can potentially be sent to 10,000 recipients, totaling 10,000 messages rather than simply one message broadcast out to all the receivers.

“That is probably one of the biggest misconceptions people have,” Lee said. “They think that a broadcast goes out one time to 10,000 people and it is still one message, so why is it getting blocked or filtered or slowed down? The reality is, that is 10,000 messages going out to a very small area in a very short time. That contributes to the issues where messages are not delivered in a timely matter or blocked or whatever it might be.”

In fact, Lee said that the carriers and the vendors at the front end have little to no control over what happens on the delivery portion of the messaging process. Issues such as the message content, volume and aggregation affect the ultimate delivery of the message. However, migrating to a more broadcast-like approach for SMS is the industry’s ultimate goal, according to Lee. Sprint is working with all the wireless carriers, including AT&T and Verizon, and the Federal Communications Commission to create a commercial mobile alert system that address the point-to-multipoint issue and makes it more efficient, thus reducing network congestion.

Called the Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee (CMSAAC), this government initiative created in 2006 was formed to develop recommendations on technical standards and protocols to voluntarily transmit emergency alerts to their subscribers. The goal of the committee is ultimately to come up with standards, protocols, procedures and other technical requirements. Lee expects the process to take months to complete, moving at least into 2009.

“It is not just a matter of flipping a switch,” he said. “It is a matter of getting an agreement of not just the carriers but an agreement by all the device manufacturers and the companies that make the technology components to come to an agreement on the standard. Unfortunately, the need is now, as we know; the industry-wide technology is not. We as carriers can only control and have an impact on what we do with our own subscribers.”

Priority services do currently exist for voice calls in the form of the Nationwide Wireless Priority Service (WPS). In emergencies, when cellular networks are congested or network facilities have been damaged, high-priority emergency wireless calls are routed first for the next available wireless voice channel ahead of end users not subscribing to WPS Access. Similar to the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS), which allows emergency calls to avoid congestion on landline networks, the WPS is overseen by the FCC. Even in non-emergency times of high congestion, priority is assigned based on five categories of wireless ownership: executive leadership and policy makers; disaster response and military; public health, safety and law enforcement command; public services and welfare; and disaster recovery.

To date, participation in the WPS system is optional for telephone companies. Support is only available on participating networks, which include AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and usually requires additional fees for activation, availability and use. Sprint also offers Direct Connect services for push-to-talk (PTT) technology, which provides another route for cell phone users to get through to other PTT users in an emergency.

Briere is not convinced that these methods are enough. “If they wanted to prioritize SMS, they could,” he said. “Up to now they have not seen a reason to do so. What I'm suggesting is that there's a viable business case here to do so and make some very good money with premium class delivery.”

Briere could envision a system that mirrors that of Microsoft Outlook emails in which a priority level can be assigned to an email, designating it with a flag as high priority, low priority or requiring follow-up. Although a standard for what constitutes each level of priority in both the email and SMS text arenas is still needed. “It is not like we’ve solved this problem in one messaging area and now we’re solving it in another area,” Briere said.

Briere suggested putting a hurdle in place in the form of a steep initiation fee to keep the service a truly priority-driven application. Even with an initiation fee and cost per priority text sent, he still sees a viable market that would be interested for, if nothing else, legal reasons. In an emergency, all priority messages would be routed first. If leftover capacity remains, the remaining text messages would also be delivered in descending order of priority. The consumers sending messages with little or no priority would be the only messages delayed.

“Think of it is as throttling a choke point,” Briere said. “You are not redesigning the network; you are just making the network gates and the way things are sent around be throttled. It is almost like controlling the opening of a dam when there is floodwater. You may open it a little more, but you are controlling how much floodwater comes through there.”

Briere is looking into priority text messaging for his family’s start-up, MoxMe. Along with his four children and two of his children’s friends, age 11 through 14, Briere formed this Web-based company as an alert and notification portal to enable group organizers such as coaches, administrators, or civic and government organizations to communicate more effectively with individual group members. Using member-driven permission-based communications, the site translates a group message to each member’s desired mode of communication – email, cell phone, voicemail or Instant Message. Briere could envision using MoxMe, now in Beta, when an emergency arises to ensure the message is delivered as promptly as possible in a means that each individual is most likely to get right away.

The University of Connecticut is among the colleges reevaluating its emergency alert system and the role text messaging plays in getting out word of emergencies. The university originally installed Sigma Communications’ Reverse 911 system for alerting students over SMS. According to UConn’s chief information officer, Mike Kerntke, the system experienced high latency and was simply not fast enough in the university’s test runs.

“We had initially installed a system that we thought would do the job, and it didn’t do the job,” Kerntke said. “It wasn't timely, that sort of thing. We have issued an RFD to look at alternatives to the solution that we have in place, while still working with the vendor to resolve some of the performance issues of their system.”

The ideal solution will allow UConn officials to send out text messages to those who register their cell phones with the university. Out of the approximately 30,000 constituents on campus, approximately 60% had already signed up for the service, Kerntke said. With some messages not being received hours or even days later on Sigma’s service, the university decided an alternative, and a message aggregator, was essential for the timely delivery of alerts.

“We just worked with a vendor that sends out a message,” Kerntke said. “We tried to work with the carriers and were unsuccessful on that. Carriers do not seem willing to work with individual institutions. They didn’t really give us a reason. My sense is that they don’t want to have service level agreements in place with that many numbers of different institutions. They would like to have us work through aggregator solutions.”

According to Sprint’s Lee, when a flood of messages comes out or goes into a given geographic area with limited infrastructure, delays will be the reality, and no carrier can make the guarantee that all the messages will get through. That being said, there are a lot of things that can be done in the handoff between consumer and carrier to mitigate the delivery issues. The first option, UConn’s original plan, is to establish a connection with every carrier and give them the power to handle the message handoff and delivery by whatever means they can. As Kerntke learned, however, this is not always feasible. The second, more common method would be to go through a message aggregator that already has a pre-established connection to one or many carriers and which can organize the front-end of the list-management process.

“By doing that, I am now – one of several issues – not going through that public gateway where everybody has access and everybody is going to be subject to that throttling and filtering mechanism,” Lee said. “Not to say you aren't going to have any issues beyond that point. There are still other issues, but I’m going to be getting into a preferred connection, not the public one. I am going in the back door, so to speak.”

At UConn, the text messaging solution will be part of a larger ecosystem of preventative measures, including an emergency email list serve, Code Blue phones throughout campus for students to use if they sense a nearby emergency, blue warning lights on top of each phone and Web alerts. SMS alerts would be the final piece of the puzzle, Kerntke said, and the primary method his students have indicated they want.

The appeal of priority text messages is not just in emergencies, either. Take any big gathering or event — New Year’s Eve, the Super Bowl or almost any event on a local or national level that brings large groups of people together. Networks can get so congested that both voice calls and text messages take hours to get through – if they get through at all. This has always been an issue with voice calls, and as SMS becomes a more popular method of cellular communication, the perceived immediacy of SMS is becoming less and less of a reality.

“It is not as simple as, ‘Well, why we can’t just make it a priority so these things get through?’ In reality, this is the basic fact. This is just a law of physics. No system of any carrier has unlimited capacity,” Lee said.

Lee added that Sprint can bring in resources to accommodate large groups of people—for, say, a large sporting event—when that event is planned for and expected. An unplanned event, whether it be a natural disaster, school shooting or national emergency, throws a wrench in the plans and causes significant delays and hold-ups.

While Briere recognizes that the matter is simply about how much capacity a carrier has, he said considering that a significant number of applications are built around the idea that consumers can alert someone about something right away, something should and can be done to fix the problem. Building off the standards in place today, before reinventing the wheel, may be the best starting point.

Source: Telephony Online

This article was sent in by two readers, Wayne Markis, and Tom Harger.


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VoIP Spam Is Called SPIT

It’s the same junk you’re used to with email, but it takes up to 10 times more bandwidth.

Cindy Waxer on March 4, 2008

As if an inbox jam-packed with email ads for organ-enlargement and weight-loss products was not bad enough, now VoIP users can look forward to becoming a brand-new target. Slowly but surely, spammers are adding SPIT (SPam over Internet Telephony) to their bags of tricks. Warned Terrence Brewton, a Frost & Sullivan market analyst, “SPIT is an evolving threat that will come on par with the prevalence of spam, all because of the VoIP products we’re now seeing in homes and the commercial marketplace.”

More than simply an annoyance, SPIT’s real-time impact on a network “ ... creates business risks because it opens up companies to denial-of-service attacks like any other IP-based system,” said Brewton. What’s more, SPIT can consume bandwidth, thereby diminishing call quality and reducing employee productivity.

While it’s true that SPIT is still quite rare, VoIP’s growing popularity is certain to make its presence more widespread. Fortunately, there are steps that companies can take to combat SPIT.

Filtering: According to Brewton, “The best course of action for any IT manager who is trying to protect his VoIP system is to buy filtering technology and keep up with patch management.” But while VoIP providers can help filter out obvious SPIT before it traverses a network, there is always a risk of false positives — legitimate traffic or large-scale message transmissions that are accidentally flagged as SPIT and prevented from reaching employees.

Firewalls: A VoIP firewall is an application driven by a security policy that defines whether to allow or deny certain calls. Administrators set policies through GUIs similar to those found in traditional data firewalls. A first line of defense against numerous threats, this technology detects and blocks VoIP DoS (denial-of-service) attacks, SIP attacks, toll fraud, virus infections and SPIT.

VoIP SEAL: NEC Corp.’s VoIP SEAL is a new tool that targets calls originating from spam-generating software and ill-intentioned humans. SPIT is detected and blocked based on communication patterns observed during the call. If a spam-related call comes in, VoIP SEAL will prevent the phone from ringing.

Voice Recognition: Microsoft has developed V-Priorities, a system for automatically screening phone calls. The technology works by analyzing characteristics of a caller's voice and word usage to figure out how urgent a call is and whether the caller is a friend, a family member, a colleague or a stranger.

Although the aforementioned security options are effective SPIT countermeasures, they also present drawbacks. “Any time you try to run any type of packet through any kind of filter, it’s going to slow down network processes. That’s because VoIP is a very sensitive piece of technology,” said Brewton. Such latency issues can lead to reduced quality of service and customer frustration.

Nor is there a panacea for SPIT. Even the brightest and best-prepared IT managers can be a step behind hackers. Said Brewton, “Everything changes at the speed of light on the Internet. Spammers are changing their tactics constantly because they’re trying to make money like anybody else. So by the time you’ve figured out what they’re doing, they’ve gone on to the next attack. That’s the one thing people really have to remember about security; we’re always fighting yesterday’s attack.”

Further complicating matters is the fact that the savings accrued through a VoIP network can be somewhat offset by having to invest in the appropriate security technologies. In the end, said Brewton, companies need to weigh what they stand to gain — and possibly lose to SPIT — by deploying a VoIP network. “With any technology,” said Brewton, “you really need to take pause and ask yourself, ‘Do I really need to deploy this? Is this going to be cost-effective? What is going to be my total cost of ownership for purchasing such a new technology?’”

Source: VoIP NEWS

This article was sent in by Barry Kanne.


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Commtech Partners with Spacelabs Healthcare To Deliver Critical Information Real-Time to Mobile Caregivers

Enhancing Patient Safety at Lafayette Surgical Specialty Hospital

February 25, 2008: Issaquah, WA

Issaquah, Wash., February 25, 2008 Spacelabs Healthcare, an innovator of patient monitoring and connectivity solutions and Commtech, expert in IT/IS planning, design, and implementation services, have provided an enhanced communication and alarm notification solution for Lafayette Surgical Specialty Hospital, Lafayette, Louisiana.

We are very pleased that Spacelabs patient monitoring seamlessly integrates with Commtech's Integrated Alarm Management (IAM) Module to deliver critical information, real-time, to mobile caregivers in this patient focused environment, said Spacelabs Joe Davin, Group President North American Operations.

The integrated system architecture includes Commtechs IAM, INTELPage paging transmitter, and 7900 series alphanumeric pagers. Uniquely positioned to offer both an end-to-end solution as well as device interoperability with other communication technologies such as the hospitals existing SpectraLink wireless phones, Commtechs solution has helped Lafayette Surgical Specialty Hospital achieve higher levels of patient safety via an automated safety net for secondary alarm notification.

We are delighted to see that by using Commtechs innovative solutions, including the Fusion Series of integrated network appliances, hospitals such as Lafayette Surgical Specialty Hospital can enhance the levels of safety and treatment they provide to patients, stated Bret Boehly, VP Sales and Marketing for Commtech Americas. Commtech is uniquely positioned to offer both end-to-end solutions as well as interoperability to most commercially available communication technologies used by mobile caregivers in healthcare environments. Added Zane Lewis, President of Commtech, Our global partnership with Spacelabs will allow healthcare organizations, worldwide, to leverage our leading portfolio of alarm management and event notification solutions. Our modular and scalable Fusion Series has been developed for use in healthcare settings of all sizes, and will blend extremely well with the proven use models of Spacelabs healthcare customers both domestically and internationally.

About Commtech
Commtech provides real-time communication and connectivity solutions for mobile workers to enhance safety, service levels, productivity and workflow. With worldwide headquarters now located in Jacksonville, Florida, and global sales and services operations in both Asia/Pacific and Europe, Commtech has delivered solutions to its global customer base of over 5,000 customers in 53 countries. For more information, please contact the company at 904-281-0073 or visit the Web site at www.commtechwireless.com

Contact Information
Dan Prueher
Spacelabs Healthcare
dan.prueher@spacelabs.com
608-695-5957

Bret Boehly
Commtech Wireless
Enterprise Workflow Solutions
bboehly@commtechwireless.com
954-587-3559

About Spacelabs Healthcare, Inc.
Spacelabs Healthcare, Inc. (www.spacelabshealthcare.com) is an international developer, manufacturer and distributor of medical equipment and services including solutions for patient monitoring and connectivity, anesthesia delivery and ventilation, diagnostic cardiology and supplies and accessories selling to hospitals, clinics and physician offices. Additionally, the company provides centralized cardiac safety and diagnostic services (QT Studies, ECG, Holter, ABP, and Event Monitoring) to biopharmaceutical companies undertaking clinical trials.

The company has established brand names in both medical devices and medical services such as "Spacelabs," "Blease" and Del Mar Reynolds. It employs approximately 1,100 personnel in its offices located in the United States, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Finland, India and Singapore.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such statements include information regarding the Company's expectations, goals or intentions about the future, including, but not limited to, statements regarding the capabilities and performance of medical devices and software. The actual results may differ materially from those described in or implied by any forward-looking statement. Other important factors are set forth in the Securities and Exchange Commission filings of OSI Systems, Inc. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made, and we undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Source: Spacelabs Healthcare


NEWS FLASH — SATELLITE FAILURES

  • January 11, 1997—Telstar 401 suffers a short in the satellite circuitry—TOTAL LOSS
  • May 19, 1998—Galaxy 4 control processor causes loss of fixed orbit—TOTAL LOSS
  • September 19, 2003—Telstar 4 suffers loss of its primary power bus—TOTAL LOSS
  • March 17, 2004—PAS-6 suffers loss of power—TOTAL LOSS
  • January 14, 2005—Intelsat 804 suffers electrical power system anomaly—TOTAL LOSS

DON’T WAIT FOR THE NEXT SATELLITE OUTAGE

Allow us to uplink your paging data to two separate satellites for complete redundancy! CVC owns and operates two separate earth stations and specializes in uplink services for paging carriers. Join our list of satisfied uplink customers.

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For inquires please call or e-mail Stephan Suker at 800-696-6474 or steves@cvcpaging.com left arrow

New ReFLEX Telemetry Module

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check Parameter Settings:
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check Message size—Transmit and Receive:
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Download the complete specification here. left arrow

CONTACT:
Cory Edwards
Director of Sales & Operations
ATCOM Wireless
Telephone: 800-811-8032 extension 106
Fax: 678-720-0302
E-mail: cory.edwards@suntelecom.com
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Web site: www.atcomwireless.com
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Vilnai: Renovate Ashkelon shelters

Tue., March 04, 2008 Adar1 27, 5768
By Yuval Azoulay

Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai yesterday ordered the immediate renovation of about 120 public bomb shelters in Ashkelon. The directive is a response to the recent escalation of fighting in Gaza and the firing of Katyusha and Grad rockets in the South. The cost of the renovations, estimated at about NIS 3 million, will be borne by the Ministry of Defense. The work will be carried out by contractors hired by the ministry and is expected to start within a few weeks.

All of the public shelters in Ashkelon were opened yesterday for people who find themselves outside and without other options during a rocket attack.

The Home Front Command, in cooperation with the Association of the Deaf in Israel, yesterday began distributing about 160 paging devices to hearing-impaired Asheklon residents that will notify them of a Color Red alert. (Yuval Azoulay)

Source: Haaretz

My good friend, the late Froike Biegun, and I supplied the first vibrating pagers to the hearing impaired in Israel during the "Desert Storm" conflict. (Details here.)


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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 Services Messaging
  • Utilities Job Management
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PDT2000 Paging Data Terminal

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Paging Controlled Moving Message LED Displays

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  • Cross band repeating, paging coverage infill, store and forward
  • Alarm interfaces, satellite linking, IP transmitters, on-site systems

Mobile Data Terminals & Two Way Wireless  Solutions
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Contact
Postal
Address:
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4845 Dumbbarton Court
Cumming, GA 30040
Street
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Cumming, GA 30040
Web site: www.wipath.com left arrow CLICK
E-mail: info@wipath.com left arrow CLICK
Phone: 770-844-6218 Office
770-844-6574 Fax
805-907-6707 Mobile
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I am an authorized Manufacturer Representative for WiPath Communications. Please contact me directly for any additional information. left arrow CLICK

Preferred Wireless
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Equipment For Sale
Miscellaneous:
2 Aluminum Equipment racks
1 Outdoor Motorola Cabinet (many others)
1 Outdoor Hennessey Cab w/AC
10 Glenayre PM-250C (NEW) Power Monitor Panels w/Alarms
13 RL-70 XC Midband Link Receivers
  Several New 900 MHz Antennas
Link Transmitters:
1 Glenayre QT6994, 150W, 900 MHz Link TX
2 Glenayre QT4201, 25W Midband Link TX
1 Glenayre Hot Standby Panels
3 Motorola 10W, 900 MHz Link TX (C35JZB6106)
2 Motorola 30W, Midband Link TX (C42JZB6106AC)
VHF Paging Transmitters
8 QT-100C, 100W VHF, TCC, RL70XC
17 Glenayre GL-T8411, 225W, w/I20
3 Motorola PURC 5000, 350W, ACB or TRC
6 Motorola Nucleus 350W, NAC
UHF Paging Transmitters:
12 Glenayre GLT5340, 125W, DSP Exciter
10 Motorola PURC 5000, 110W, ACB
2 Motorola PURC 5000, 225W, ACB
3 Motorola Nucleus 125W
900 MHz Paging Transmitters:
1 Glenayre GLT 8600, 500W
76 Glenayre GLT-8500, 250W, C2000, I 20
10 Motorola PURC 5000, 300W, DRC or ACB
2 Motorola Nucleus, 300W, C-Net
GL3000 & Unipage Cards—Many misc. cards.
1 Complete GL3000L w/ T1s, 2.2G HD, LCC

 SEE WEB FOR COMPLETE LIST:
www.preferredwireless.com/equipment
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Too Much To List • Call or E-Mail
Preferred Wireless
Rick McMichael
888-429-4171

rickm@preferredwireless.com
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Ask for Special Newsletter Pricing.

Please call: 800-222-6075 ext. 312 for pricing.


Contact
E-mail: whittinghill@minilec.com  left arrow
Minilec Service, Inc.
Suite A
9207 Deering Ave.
Chatsworth, CA 91311
Minilec Service


Apple tops 'Most Admired Companies' list

by Peter Cohen
Mar 3, 2008 9:11 am

Fortune Magazine on Monday announced its 26th annual list of "America's Most Admired Companies." This year Apple tops the list, rising six places from 2007. Apple beat out Berkshire Hathaway and General Electric to top the list.

Fortune and its survey partner Hay Group start with the Fortune 1,000 list as a baseline, which ranks the 1,000 largest U.S. companies by revenue, then sort them by industry and select the ten largest companies in each. They then ask executives, directors and analysts to rate companies in their own industry on eight criteria ranging from investment value to social responsibility.

The top 20 list is culled from the responses submitted by 3,721 executives, directors and security analysts who had responded to the surveys to select the ten companies they admired the most. They chose from a list comprising the companies that ranked in the top 25 percent in the 2007 survey, plus those that finished in the top 20 percent in their industry.

The full results appear online now. They'll also be in the March 17th edition of Fortune, which hits newsstands on March 10th.

Source: Macworld


 

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These parts are fully refurbished to like new condition.
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Prism Message Gateway Systems Modular and Configurable

Your Choice of Options

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Popular Choice for Domestic and International

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Contact
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300 Colonial Center Parkway,
Suite 100
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Telephone: 678-353-3366
Internet: www.prismpaging.com left arrow CLICK HERE
E-mail: prismsales@prismpaging.com left arrow CLICK HERE
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See the Prism Paging video

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Unication USA

Unication’s

Paging

Products

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The Paging Industry expects quality, reliable, and high performance paging products.

We at Unication have listened and delivered.

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M90™ Messenger™—Our newest ReFLEX 2-Way Advanced Messaging solution. Finally the Industry has a true replacement for the Motorola T900 but with more features and improved RF performance.


  • One-Way Pagers
    • Alpha Elite and Alpha Gold—Our top of the line FLEX™ / POCSAG, 4-line alphanumeric pagers with an identical user interface and comparable RF performance to the Motorola Elite and Gold pagers.
    • NP88—Our newest numeric FLEX / POCSAG pager with the best backlight in the Industry.
  • Telemetry
    • We offer RF and decoding solutions.
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About Unication Co., Ltd.

  • A Taiwan company founded in 1992 with extensive experience designing and manufacturing paging and broadband products.
  • An ODM to major telecommunications companies.
  • More than 300 associates worldwide with Engineering Design Centers in Taipei, China and Vancouver, BC. The engineering team has years of experience in wireless systems, embedded SW, RF design and protocols for infrastructure and pagers.
  • Our Accelerated Life Testing facility ensures the highest quality of products for our customers.
  • ISO 9001 and 14001 Certified
  • Fully licensed by Motorola for product design technology and the FLEX Family of Protocols.
  • Sales and Engineering support office in Arlington, Texas.
unication logo

  Contact Information

  Kirk Alland
  Unication USA
  1901 E. Lamar Blvd.
  Arlington, TX 76006
  (817) 926-6771
  kirk@unication.com

Unication USA
Hark Technologies

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Wireless Communication Solutions

isi image

ISI-LX Internet Serial Interface with Protocol Conversion

  • Converts Serial TAP message to SNPP, SMTP, or WCTP
  • Pass through Serial Data to TCP/IP and TCP/IP back to Serial
  • Supports Ethernet or PPP Connection to Internet w/Dial Backup
  • Includes 4 Serial Ports for Multiplexing Traffic
isi image

IPG Internet Paging Gateway

  • No Moving Parts Such as Hard Drives or Fans to Fail
  • Supports 10Base-T Network Connection to Internet
  • Accepts HTTP, SMTP, SNPP, and WCTP from Internet
  • Sends TAP or TNPP to Your Paging Terminal
pagetrack

PageTrack

  • Inexpensive method of automating your paging monitoring
  • Uses standard paging receiver
  • Available in 152-158 POCSAG or 929 FLEX (call for others)
omega image

Omega Unified Messaging Server

  • Full Featured Internet Messaging Gateway
  • TAP Concentrator and TNPP Routing Functions w/TNPP over Internet
  • Serial Protocols Supported: GCP, SMDI, SMS, TAP, TNPP
  • Internet Protocols Supported: AIM, HTTP, SMPP (out only), SMTP, SNPP, and WCTP
  • Full Featured, Easy-to-use Voice/Fax/Numeric Mail Interface
  • One Number For All Your Messaging
  • Optional Hot-swap Hard Drives and Power Supplies Available
Please see our web site for even more products designed specifically for Personal Messaging carriers. For example, the Omega Messaging Gateway and Email Throttling Gateway (anti-spam).
Contact
Hark Technologies
3507 Iron Horse Dr., Bldg. 200
Ladson, SC 29456
Tel: 843-285-7200
Fax: 843-285-7220
E-mail: sales@harktech.com left arrow CLICK
Hark Technologies

BLOOSTON, MORDKOFSKY, DICKENS, DUFFY & PRENDERGAST, LLP

BloostonLaw Telecom Update

Published by the Law Offices of Blooston, Mordkofsky, Dickens, Duffy & Prendergast, LLP

[Selected portions reproduced here with the firm's permission.]

www.bloostonlaw.com

   Vol. 11, No. 9 March 5, 2008   

Comment Dates Set For USF Reform NPRMs

The FCC has established a comment cycle for its three Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRMs) issued earlier this year to address the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service’s recommendations on high-cost Universal Service Fund (USF) reform (BloostonLaw Telecom Update, January 30, February 6, and February 13). Comments in this WC Docket No. 05-337 proceeding are due April 3, and replies are due May 5.

In the Joint Board NPRM, the Commission seeks comment on ways to reform the high-cost USF program. Specifically, it seeks comment on the Joint Board’s November 20, 2007, Recommended Decision. The Joint Board NPRM also incorporates the other two NPRMs:

The Identical Support Rule NPRM seeks comment on the Commission’s rules governing the amount of high-cost universal service support provided to competitive eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs), and tentatively concludes that the FCC should eliminate the “identical support rule,” which provides competitive ETCs with the same per-line high-cost universal service support that incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs) receive.

The Reverse Auctions NPRM seeks comment on the merits of using reverse auctions (a form of competitive bidding) to determine the amount of high-cost universal service support provided to ETCs serving rural, insular, and high-cost areas. Support generally would be determined by the lowest bid to serve the auctioned area.

BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

DTV Consumer Education Order Imposes Reporting Requirements On 700 MHz Winners, USF Recipients

The FCC has released a DTV Consumer Education Order requiring television broadcasters, Multi-Channel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs), telecommunications carriers, retailers, and manufacturers to promote awareness of the nation’s transition to digital television on February 17, 2009.

Included in the Order is the requirement that telecommunications companies participating in the Low Income Federal Universal Service Program provide notice of the transition in their monthly customer billing statements to their low income customers and potential customers.

Also included is the requirement that winners of the 700 MHz spectrum auction provide the Commission with regular updates on their consumer education efforts.

These requirements stem, in part, from a May 24, 2007, letter to the Commission from House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and House Telecommunications & Internet Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

700 MHz Auction: The FCC will require winning bidders in the 700 MHz spectrum auctions (Auctions 73 and 76) to detail what, if any, DTV transition consumer education efforts they are conducting. The “Letter” from Dingell and Markey suggested that, “given the significant stake of 700 MHz auction winners in a successful transition, the Commission could require those entities to report their specific consumer outreach efforts.” The rule the FCC adopted conforms with this proposal, the Commission said. It added that no commenters expressed opposition to this proposal. Specifically, during the DTV transition the FCC said: “We will require each entity obtaining a 700 MHz license to file this report with the Commission on a quarterly basis, with the first such report due by the tenth day of the first calendar quarter following the initial grant of the license authorization that the entity holds.”

Universal Service: The FCC will require that all eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) that receive federal universal service funds provide DTV transition information in the monthly bills of their Lifeline/Link-Up customers. Similar to the requirements for MVPDs, the notice must be provided as a “bill stuffer” or as part of an information section on the bill itself. It must be noticeable, and state that on February 17, 2009, full-power analog broadcasting will end, and analog-only televisions may be unable to display full-power broadcast programming unless the viewer takes action. It must also note that viewers can get more information by going to www.DTV.gov, and more information about the converter box program by going to www.dtv2009.gov or calling the NTIA at 888-DTV-2009. The notice may also, at the ETC’s discretion, provide contact information for the DTV Transition Coalition. The notice should be provided in the same language or languages as the bill. If the ETC’s Lifeline/Link-Up customer does not receive paper versions of either a bill or a notice of billing, then that customer must be provided with equivalent monthly transition notices in whatever medium they receive information about their monthly bill. Finally, ETCs that receive federal universal service funds must provide this same basic information as part of any other Lifeline or Link-Up publicity campaigns. The customer bill notice requirement will run concurrently with the MVPD bill notice requirement (i.e., from 30 days after the effective date of these rules through March 2009), and the publicity requirement will run for the same period.

Commissioner Robert McDowell, in a separate statement, noted his “concerns about the First Amendment implications of these two parts of our order: first, requiring telephone companies that receive Universal Service funds to provide DTV transition information in the monthly bills of Lifeline/Link-up customers; and second, requiring winning bidders in the currently open 700 MHz spectrum auction to detail what, if any, consumer education efforts they are conducting. In both cases, the nexus between our governmental purpose and the means to achieve that purpose are quite remote. In the case of telephone companies, it is unclear whether there is a correlation between Lifeline and Link-up customers and over-the-air viewers. Our order makes no such correlation. Yet, the order requires phone companies to provide a message, on government’s behalf, that is unrelated to the services they provide. With respect to the winners of the 700 MHz auction, they will not provide service until after the digital transition ends, and when they do, the service may not be related to television. Given the infirmities in rationale for both of these requirements, I would have preferred not to adopt these mandates. Therefore, I must concur in these parts of the order.”

BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

NTCA Asks D.C. Circuit For Stay Of FCC’s LNP Order

The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA) has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to stay the effectiveness of the FCC’s recent Order extending local number portability obligations to voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) providers and reinstating the intermodal (wireline-to-wireless) porting requirement for small carriers (BloostonLaw Telecom Update, February 27). NTCA’s request is limited to the reinstatement of the intermodal requirement, which responds to a 2005 stay of the FCC’s Intermodal Number Portability Order by the D.C. Circuit, which required the Commission to analyze the impact of its requirements on small entities under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA).

As NTCA states in its Emergency Motion for Stay, its request is limited to a stay only insofar as it applies to wireline carriers that are considered “small entities” under the RFA. Without such a stay, small wireline carriers would be required to provide LNP to wireless carriers effective March 24. The stay would maintain the status quo until the FCC publishes a “lawful” final RFA (FRFA), NTCA said. It argues that the current FRFA does not comply with the Court’s instructions.

“The FCC has merely reiterated conclusions based on its assumption that the Intermodal Order imposes no new obligations on small carriers. As a result, the Order on Remand defies the Court’s finding that a new ‘location portability’ rule was promulgated in the Intermodal Order,” NTCA said.

BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

LAW & REGULATION

FCC PROPOSES $5 MILLION “SLAMMING” FINE AGAINST HORIZON TELECOM OF LAS VEGAS: The FCC has issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (NAL) in the amount of $5,084,000 against Horizon Telecom, Inc., a Las Vegas, Nevada, company that provides long distance calling services for apparently willfully or repeatedly failing to respond on a timely basis to 21 informal complaints served on it by the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau (CGB). In addition, it apparently changed the preferred carriers of 125 consumers without proper authorization, a practice commonly known as “slamming.” Of the 21 complaints at issue, Horizon failed to respond to 12. Moreover, Horizon’s responses to the 9 remaining complaints were filed not only beyond 30 days of service, the time frame in which Horizon was given to respond in all of these informal responses, but also beyond an FCC Public Notice. The FCC concluded that Horizon apparently willfully or repeatedly violated a Commission rule by failing to timely provide a written response to 21 informal complaints. It noted that each of the 125 consumers who filed complaints that form the basis of this NAL maintain that they did not authorize Horizon to change their preferred carriers, but that Horizon nevertheless changed their preferred carriers to Horizon. Horizon states that authorization was received and confirmed when a letter of agency was signed and processed. However, the FCC found that Horizon has failed to produce a preponderance of evidence that the complainants authorized a carrier change. Apparently, Horizon used an inducement — two free roundtrip airline tickets — but did not provide a means or location for a consumer’s electronic signature, as required by FCC rules. The FCC noted that such inducements are “in apparent violation of our rules.” BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

FCC PROPOSES $458,500 FINE FOR UNSOLICITED FAXES: The FCC has issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (NAL) in the amount of $458,500 against SMC, LLC for apparently willfully or repeatedly violating Commission rules delivering at least 86 unsolicited advertisements to the telephone facsimile machines of at least 54 consumers. The NAL is based on evidence that the consumers received unsolicited fax advertisements from SMC after the Commission’s citation. The facsimile transmissions advertise affordable life insurance and polo shirts. Further, according to the complaints, the consumers neither had an established business relationship with SMC nor gave SMC permission to send the facsimile transmissions. The faxes at issue here therefore fall within the definition of an “unsolicited advertisement,” the FCC said. BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

DEADLINES

MARCH 31: FCC FORM 507, UNIVERSAL SERVICE QUARTERLY LINE COUNT UPDATE. Line count updates are required to recalculate a carrier's per line universal service support, and is filed with the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC). This information must be submitted on July 31 each year by all rate-of-return incumbent carriers, and on a quarterly basis if a competitive eligible telecommunications carrier (CETC) has initiated service in the rate-of-return incumbent carrier’s service area and reported line-count data to USAC in the rate-of-return incumbent carrier’s service area, in order for the incumbent carrier to be eligible to receive Interstate Common Line Support (ICLS). This quarterly filing is due March 31 and covers lines served as of September 30, 2007. (Normally this filing is due March 30, but this year, March 30 falls on a Sunday.) Incumbent carriers filing on a quarterly basis must also file on July 31 (for lines served as of December 31, 2007); September 30 (for lines served as of March 31, 2008); and December 30 (for lines served as of June 30, 2008). BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

MARCH 31: FCC FORM 525, COMPETITIVE CARRIER LINE COUNT QUARTERLY REPORT. Competitive eligible telecommunications carriers (CETCs) are eligible to receive high cost support if they serve lines in an incumbent carrier’s service area, and that incumbent carrier receives high cost support. CETCs are eligible to receive the same per-line support amount received by the incumbent carrier in whose study area the CETC serves lines. Unlike the incumbent carriers, CETCs will use FCC Form 525 to submit their line count data to Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC). This quarterly report must be filed by the last business day of March (for lines served as of September 30 of the previous year); the last business day of July (for lines served as of December 31 of the current year); the last business day of September (for lines served as of March 31 of the current year); and the last business day of December (for lines served as of June 30 of the current year). CETCs must file the number of working loops served in the service area of an incumbent carrier, disaggregated by the incumbent carrier’s cost zones, if applicable, for High Cost Loop (HCL), Local Switching Support (LSS), Long Term Support (LTS), and Interstate Common Line Support (ICLS). ICLS will also require the loops to be reported by customer class as further described below. For Interstate Access Support (IAS), CETCs must file the number of working loops served in the service area of an incumbent carrier by Unbundled Network Element (UNE) zone and customer class. Working loops provided by CETCs in service areas of non-rural incumbents receiving High Cost Model (HCM) support must be filed by wire center or other methodology as determined by the state regulatory authority. CETCs may choose to complete FCC Form 525 and submit it to USAC, or designate an agent to file the form on its behalf. BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

MARCH 31: FCC FORM 508, PROJECTED ANNUAL COMMON LINE REVENUE REQUIREMENT FORM: Section 54.903(a)(1) of the FCC's rules requires each rate-of-return incumbent telecommunications carrier to provide information needed to calculate the Projected Annual Common Line Revenue Requirement for each of its study areas in the upcoming funding year to the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC). This information must be submitted on March 31 each year, in order for the carrier to be eligible to receive Interstate Common Line Support. This collection of information stems from the Commission's authority under Section 254 of the Communications Act. The data in the form will be used to calculate the amount of support, if any, that each reporting carrier is eligible to receive from the Interstate Common Line Support Mechanism. Carriers are permitted to submit a correction to their March 31 projected carrier common line revenue requirements and supporting data from April 1 until June 30 for the upcoming funding year (July 31, 2008, through June 30, 2009). Additionally, on June 30, carriers are permitted to submit an update to the projected data for the ICLS funding year ending on that date. Permitting these revisions to projected data for current and upcoming ICLS funding years will mitigate the lag between projected and actual data filings and give carriers more meaningful opportunities to revise projections to adjust ICLS where necessary. After the June 30 correction deadline each year, any corrections to projected common line revenue requirement and supporting data shall be made in the form of true-ups, using actual cost and revenue data that a carrier must report in FCC Form 509, Annual Common Line Actual Cost Data Collection Form. (This form is due December 31.) BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

MARCH 31: Last day to submit revisions to FCC Form 497, Lifeline and Link-Up Worksheet, for 2006. The Universal Service Administrative Company’s (USAC’s) administrative window for submitting revisions to Form 497 will close March 31 for all months prior to January 2007. This applies to submission of data on Form 497, including original (first-time) submissions and revisions of previously submitted data. USAC's administrative window for submitting data for the year 2005 is currently closed. BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

APRIL 1: FCC FORM 499-A, TELECOMMUNICATIONS REPORTING WORKSHEET. This form must be filed by all contributors to the Universal Service Fund (USF) support mechanisms, the Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) Fund, the cost recovery mechanism for the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA), and the shared costs of local number portability (LNP). Contributors include every telecommunications carrier that provides interstate, intrastate, and international telecommunications, and certain other entities that provide interstate telecommunications for a fee. Even common carriers that qualify for the de minimis exemption must file Form 499-A. Entities whose universal service contributions will be less than $10,000 qualify for the de minimis exemption. De minimis entities do not have to file the quarterly report (FCC Form 499-Q), which was due February 1, and will again be due May 1. Form 499-Q relates to universal service contributions, but not to the TRS, NANPA, and LNP mechanisms. Form 499-A relates to all of these mechanisms and, hence, applies to all providers of interstate, intrastate, and international telecommunications services. Form 499-A contains revenue information for January 1 through December 31 of the prior calendar year. And Form 499-Q contains revenue information from the prior quarter plus projections for the next quarter. The reporting requirements for determining interconnected voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) providers' contribution to the shared costs of numbering administration and LNP require interconnected VoIP providers to file an annual FCC Form 499-A. Block 2-B of the Form 499-A requires each carrier to designate an agent in the District of Columbia upon whom all notices, process, orders, and decisions by the FCC may be served on behalf of that carrier in proceedings before the Commission. Carriers receiving this newsletter [not the Brad Dye newsletter] may specify our law firm as their D.C. agent for service of process using the information in our masthead. There is no charge for this service. BloostonLaw contacts: Hal Mordkofsky, Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and John Prendergast.

APRIL 21: FCC FORM 497, LOW INCOME QUARTERLY REPORT. This form, the Lifeline and Link-Up Worksheet, must be submitted to the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) by all eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) that request reimbursement for participating in the low-income program. The form must be submitted by the third Monday after the end of each quarter. It is available at: www.universalservice.org. BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

MAY 1: FCC FORM 499-Q, TELECOMMUNICATIONS REPORTING WORKSHEET. All telecommunications common carriers that expect to contribute more than $10,000 to federal Universal Service Fund (USF) support mechanisms must file this quarterly form. The FCC has modified this form in light of its recent decision to establish interim measures for USF contribution assessments. The form contains revenue information from the prior quarter plus projections for the next quarter. Form 499-Q relates only to USF contributions. It does not relate to the cost recovery mechanisms for the Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) Fund, the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA), and the shared costs of local number portability (LNP), which are covered in the annual form (Form 499-A) that was due April 1. BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens and Gerry Duffy.

MAY 1: RATE INTEGRATION CERTIFICATION. Non-dominant inter-exchange carriers (IXCs) that provide de-tariffed domestic interstate services must certify that they are providing such services in compliance with their geographic rate averaging and rate integration obligations. An officer of the company must sign this annual certification under oath. The FCC has issued the following guidelines: (1) Any carrier that provides interstate services must charge its subscribers in rural and high-cost areas rates that do not exceed the rates that the carrier charges subscribers in urban areas; (2) to the extent that a carrier offers optional calling plans, contract tariffs, discounts, promotions, and private line services to its interstate subscribers in one state, it must use the same ratemaking methodology and rate structure when offering such services in any other state; (3) an interstate carrier may depart from geographic rate averaging when offering contract tariffs, Tariff 12 offerings, optional calling plans, temporary promotions, and private line services; and (4) carriers may offer optional calling plans on a geographically limited basis as part of a temporary promotion that does not exceed 90 days. But this limited exception does not exempt optional calling plans from geographic rate averaging requirements. Clients with questions about the FCC's de-tariffing or rate integration requirements should contact us. We have a model rate integration certification letter that may be printed on your letterhead. BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens and Gerry Duffy.

MAY 31: FCC FORM 395, EMPLOYMENT REPORT. Common carriers, including wireless carriers, with 16 or more full-time employees must file their annual Common Carrier Employment Reports (FCC Form 395) by May 31. This report tracks carrier compliance with rules requiring recruitment of minority employees. Further, the FCC requires all common carriers to report any employment discrimination complaints they received during the past year. That information is also due on May 31. The FCC encourages carriers to complete the discrimination report requirement by filling out Section V of Form 395, rather than submitting a separate report. Clients who would like assistance in filing Form 395 should contact Richard Rubino.

JUNE 30: ANNUAL ICLS USE CERTIFICATION. Rate of return carriers and and CETCs must file a self-certification with the FCC and the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) stating that all Interstate Common Line Support (ICLS) and Long Term Support (LTS) will be used only for the provision, maintenance, and upgrading of facilities and services for which the support is intended. In other words, carriers are required to certify that their ICLS and LTS support is being used consistent with Section 254(e) of the Communications Act. Failure to file this self-certification will preclude the carrier from receiving ICLS support. We, therefore, strongly recommend that clients have BloostonLaw submit this filing and obtain an FCC proof-of-filing receipt for client records. BloostonLaw contacts: Ben Dickens and Gerry Duffy.

Source: Blooston, Mordkofsky, Dickens, Duffy and Prendergast, LLP

For additional information, contact Hal Mordkofsky at 202-828-5520 or halmor@bloostonlaw.com


BLOOSTON, MORDKOFSKY, DICKENS, DUFFY & PRENDERGAST, LLP

EUROPEAN MOBILE MESSAGING ASSOCIATION

emma logo

The European Mobile Messaging Association

A Global Wireless Messaging Association

Please find attached the preliminary program and registration form for the next EMMA conference and Round Table meeting to be held in Crete, Greece on April 23 - 25, 2008.

Program Summary

Blue Palace Brochure

Registration Form


You can contact Derek Banner, EMMA President, by calling him on +44 1895 473 551 or e-mailing him at: derek.banner@wirelessmessaging.org.  left arrow CLICK HERE

Visit the EMMA web site left arrow CLICK HERE


EUROPEAN MOBILE MESSAGING ASSOCIATION

AT&T plans $1 billion network investment

by Grant Gross
Mar 5, 2008 11:40 am

AT&T will spend US$1 billion in 2008 to expand its IP (Internet Protocol) networks for large businesses, driven by an “explosive surge” in data, voice and video traffic, the company said Wednesday.

AT&T’s investment in its enterprise networks in 2008 will be a 33 percent increase from 2007 and more than double its investment in 2006, the company said.

Among AT&T’s 2008 network expansions:

  • Added subsea fiber-optic cable capacity to Japan and other parts of Asia as well as the Caribbean. AT&T plans to invest in multiple under-the-sea cable systems to Southeast Asia and Australia and import existing cable servicing India and the Middle East.
  • New Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) routers in Europe, Asia and the U.S., with new or additional MPLS-based IP network access nodes in Paris, Moscow, Kuwait, India, Japan and other countries.
  • Enhanced Ethernet network capabilities, including the rollout of a global virtual private local area network product, initially in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific. AT&T plans to make these services available in 2008 in 14 cities: Frankfurt, London, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Dublin/Cork, Milan, Madrid and Zurich in Europe; and Hong Kong, Sydney, Singapore, and Tokyo in Asia Pacific. By year-end 2008, AT&T expects to have an Ethernet footprint in 39 countries.
  • The addition of DSL (digital subscriber lines) as an access alternative to China, Finland, Norway and Saudi Arabia. By year-end, AT&T plans to have DSL available as an access alternative in 21 countries.

“Companies worldwide are responding to the exploding need to deliver voice, data and video in real time to their end-users, no matter where they are, no matter what the device,” Ron Spears, group president, AT&T Global Business Services, said in a statement. “It is vital that we continue to invest in those geographies and services to meet this demand so our customers can connect their operations, partners and suppliers.”

In the fourth quarter of 2007, AT&T’s Global Business Services unit saw hosting revenues grow by 19 percent, enterprise IP data services by nearly 21 percent, and VPN revenues by 31 percent.

Source: Macworld


nighthawk logo

EMERGENCY AUTOMATION & NOTIFICATION

• FIREHOUSES SCHOOLS PUBLIC FACILITIES GOVERNMENT FACILITIES EMERGENCY ROOMS

WHAT DO FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES, WISPS, HAVE IN COMMON?

THEY ALL USE NIGHTHAWK.

Nighthawk Systems Inc. manufactures low cost and reliable remote control products for fire house alerting, volunteer alerting, activation of warning signs and sirens, and a number of applications for public safety. The Company manufactures the EA1 and the FAS-8 which have been designed specifically for these applications. Both products are paging based and will work with any public or private paging network. They are available in all VHF, UHF, and 900 MHz paging frequencies. The products can serve as the primary notification system or an excellent, low-cost backup to existing systems.

Public Emergency Notification & Volunteer Alerting

The EA1 is the solution for remotely activating public warning signage. Examples include tornado sirens, flash flood warnings, fire danger, Amber Alert, icy roads, etc. The EA1 can also send text messages to scrolling signs. This can occur in conjunction with the activation of audible alarms and visual strobes. This is ideal for public notification in buildings, schools, hotels, factories, etc. The group call feature allows for any number of signs or flashing lights to be activated at the same time over a wide geographic area. In addition, the EA1 Emergency Alert is the perfect solution for low cost yet highly effective alerting of volunteer fire fighters in their home. When activated the EA1 will emit an audible alarm and activate the power outlet on the units faceplate. A common setup is to simply place the EA1 on a table and plug a lamp into the faceplate. When paged from dispatch or any touch tone phone the EA1 will awaken the fire fighter to a lit room. As an option the EA1 can be ordered with a serial cable, allowing for attachment of a serial printer. When paged the alphanumeric message will be printed out at the same time the alarm sounds and the outlet is activated. The EA1 is an ideal complement to alphanumeric belt pagers common to volunteers.

nighthawk sign

Firehouse Automation

The FAS-8 is designed for activating one or more relays in a firehouse and if desired, printing the alphanumeric message to a serial printer. For this application the FAS-8 is set to activate upon receiving the proper paging cap code sent from 911 dispatch. Up to eight different devices can be activated all with individual time functions. The most common devices to turn on include the PA amplifier, audible wake up alarm, and house lights. The most common device turned off is the stove. The FAS-8 can accept up to 8 different cap codes and have separate relay and time functions per cap code. This allows for different alerting to be accomplished at the same physical location depending upon which cap code is sent. This can be very helpful when fire crews and medical crews are housed in the same building.

nighthawk

FAS8

Put the innovative technology of Nighthawk to work for you. For more information on any of our products or services, please contact us.

Nighthawk Systems, Inc.
10715 Gulfdale, Suite 200
San Antonio, TX 78216

Phone: 877-764-4484
Fax: 210-341-2011
E-mail: sales@nighthawksystems.com
Web: www.nighthawksystems.com

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NETWORK PLANNERS LLC

WIRELESS SPECIALISTS

www.pagingplanners.com
rmercer@pagingplanners.com

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217 First Street South
East Northport, NY 11731
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• Cell Phone: 631-786-9359
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Complete Technical Services For The
Communications and Electronics Industries
Design • Installation • Maintenance • Training

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Tel/Fax: 972-960-9336
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CUSTOM APPLICATIONS

outrnet custom apps If you see someone in the field (like salespeople, technicians, and delivery people) using paper forms, their company could probably save a pile of money, and get much better timeliness, accuracy and efficiency, by using converting to Outr.Net's Wireless Forms. Custom applications for as little as $995, delivered in just a few days.Outr.Net has a web page on Wireless Forms for Timeports at: http://www.outr.net/overnight_pw.htm left arrow Their latest newsletter is: "Business Development in Mobile Data" left arrow

Please call me so we can discuss your need or your idea. Or contact me by e-mail for more information left arrow


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

From: Paul Fitzgerald
Date: March 6, 2008 8:17:30 AM CST
To: Brad Dye
Subject: IWCE Las Vegas

Brad,

I did make it to Lost Vegas. The weather was as good if not better then great. I even tried to stay an extra day (Sat.) but the airlines requested an arm & a leg for the change. As for work, I did attend Ron's presentation. I think the panel as a whole was effective. Kore probably being the most effective in scope and progressiveness along with a long list of examples of monitoring and control. Kore as you probably know provides backbone connectivity across most of the cellular PCS networks. Ron of course pushed the paging backbone structure along with campus environment solutions and special applications for emergency notification. Glad we had a presence however we (PTC) still need a show of presence as a group IWCE as there are a lot of paging technology providers present at this show not to mention users. Anyhow, onward/upward!

Hope you are feeling better. Cold and plenty of ice here. Old Lake Erie is a pretty site this time of year though.

Ciao,

Paul
E-mail: paul.fitzgerald@inforad.com

 

From: ARRL CL-IL Division
Date: March 5, 2008 5:57:52 PM CST
To: Brad Dye, K9IQY
Subject: IL S-2796 - Wireless Devices While Driving

Fellow Illinois Amateur Radio Operators:

This pending Illinois Senate bill (currently) does not change any of the regulations for mobile amateur radio use.  It is apparently designed to outlaw cell phone headset use by the driver of a moving motor vehicle.  I doubt if this a good idea, but that's not the point of my message.   

This proposal could be altered in the course of the Illinois legislative process to include mobile amateur radio operation by the driver and should therefore be monitored for adverse changes.  I expect this bill will meet strong resistance from the cell phone service providers and users.

At this time, this message is only an early "heads up" to the Illinois amateur radio community.


ILLINOIS

IL S 2769 - Wireless Devices while Driving

Introduced in the Illinois Senate on February 18, 2008 by Senator Michael Noland (D-22) relating to headset receivers.  

Except as provided in current law, no driver of a motor vehicle on the highways of this State shall wear headset receivers while driving. This does not prohibit the use of any single sided headset type receiving and transmitting equipment designed to be used in or on one ear which is used exclusively for providing two-way radio vocal communications by an individual in possession of a current and valid novice class or higher amateur radio license issued by the Federal Communications Commission and an amateur radio operator special registration plate issued under Section 3-607 of this Code.

The bill is pending in the Illinois Senate Rules Committee.


ARRL Central Division
Director: George Isely, W9GIG
w9gig@arrl.org

 

From: Louise Hippolyte
Subject: EWA/LAO Relocates
Date: March 6, 2008 12:40:10 PM CST

Effective March 7, 2008

EWA’s Licensing Assistance Office relocates to:

EWA/LAO
122 Baltimore Street
Gettysburg, PA 17325
Phone: 800-886-4222
Fax: 717-337-9157
www.dci-lao.com

PLEASE NOTE:

EWA’s Main Office is still located at:

8484 Westpark Drive
Suite 630
McLean, VA 22102
Phone: 703-528-5115
Fax: 703-524-1074
Web: www.enterprisewireless.org

Louise J. Hippolyte
Executive Assistant
Enterprise Wireless Alliance
8484 Westpark Drive, Suite 630
McLean, VA 22102
Direct: 703-797-5106
Fax: 703-524-1074
E-mail: louise.hippolyte@enterprisewireless.org

 

From: Bruce Holsted
Subject: Notification of Donation Received
Date: March 3, 2008 1:20:46 PM CST
To: brad@braddye.com

Glad to do it.

I was going to try and look you up at the last EWA show in San Antonio, but somehow did not make contact with you.

I'll see you in Phoenix this next November.

Thanks for the newsletter. It is superb. I'm started to get excited about paging again. I got my start in the business in paging back in the early 80's working for a guy named Sonny Hale in Little Rock.

I'm thinking that the radiation issue, along with the privacy concerns (location based technology), may give folks reasons to abandon their cell phones and go back to paging.

I'm also thinking that these campus shootings may affirm what you have been saying all along, that paging is the only real way to do mass notifications.

We had a shooting on our urban university campus last week. I'm in touch with Raven Systems, thanks to your newsletter, and I'm going to try to put together a proposal for presentation later in the month.

Thanks for all that you do for the industry.

Bruce
E-mail: bruce.holsted@yahoo.com


UNTIL NEXT WEEK

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With best regards,
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Newsletter Editor

73 DE K9IQY

Brad Dye, Editor
The Wireless Messaging Newsletter
P.O. Box 13283
Springfield, IL 62791 USA

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Skype: braddye
Telephone: 217-787-2346
E–mail: brad@braddye.com
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