Scribbles

Bell Canada International—Interest keeps building in the Japanese Personal Handyphone System (PHS) with the most recent announcement coming from Montreal-based Bell Canada International.

The flagship Canadian telecommunications company will invest C$ 4.8 million in ASTEL Tokyo, a consortium of more than one hundred Japanese and international firms. ASTEL holds a license to offer PHS service within the greater Tokyo area, which is scheduled to begin in October of this year.

Aldiscon, Inc.—As with all new technologies, standards take time to work themselves out. One standard currently under consideration for Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) networks deals with the routing and delivery of short text messages through wireless networks.

The protocol, known as the Limited Size Messaging (LSM) protocol was recently proposed to the CDPD Forum as a standard interface for short message services and has gained the support of Aldiscon, Inc. Aldiscon already markets a complete short messaging system called “Telepath SMSC” to wireless network operators around the world.

Iridium Inc.—Motorola’s consortium to create a 66-satellite low-earth orbit network for worldwide handheld telecommunication services got off the ground last month—financially. The consortium registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer $300 million in notes.

The Iridium public offering of notes is expected to take place in September and will be underwritten by Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co.

Hong Kong Telecommunications Ltd.—With all eyes turning towards China and its continued economic liberalization, Hong Kong Telecom is pursuing talks with Beijing officials to develop a mobile phone project within the Chinese capital.

The negotiations, which began last October between HK Telecom and the Beijing Telegraph Administration is reported to be moving forward, although, not as quickly as HK Telecom initially hoped.

Ameritech—CDPD has arrived in the Detroit area in the form of Ameritech’s Wireless Packet Data Service. Ameritech is the first to offer CDPD service in this Michigan metropolitan area and already has more than 75 percent of the Detroit geographic area covered.

Air Communications—The manufacturer of cellular voice and data handset equipment has moved. No longer located in Sunnyvale, the company can now be found at 2111 Tasman Drive, Santa Clara, California 95054 (408) 567-9000, (408) 567-9090 (fax).

Photonics Corp.—After several years of being nearly the lone voice touting infrared-based network communication in an RF jungle, the San Jose, California-based company quietly laid off most of its workers recently.

Insiders say that a core executive staff has been maintained to search for a buyer, with at least one prominent wireless networking company already having turned them down.

Motorola, Inc.—What to take with you when you’re on the run? San Francisco Marathon organizers decided to get mobile this year and equip their staffers with Motorola Envoy Wireless Communicators and the ARDIS PersonalMessaging Wireless Service.

Marathon workers and press will track the lead male and female runners using the mobile communicators, relaying mile standings to administrators and the press desk.

McCaw Cellular Communications—CDPD hasn’t quite reached epidemic proportions, but it is spreading. Recently, the Wireless Data Division of AT&T’s McCaw Cellular Communications Unit announced the availability of its AirData Business Service in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and the Salt Lake City regions.

AirData is a 19.2 Kbps commercial service implementing the Cellular Digital Packet Data system for wireless data messaging. Noted Lucien Jones, technology support manager for Oklahoma City: “This technology would have helped Oklahoma City enormously during the recent bombing.”

Solectek Corp.—The maker of wireless Campus Area Networks (CAN) has announced the availability of what it claims to be the first long range Token Ring wireless bridge.

Dubbed AirLAN/Bridge Ultra, the system provides high-speed wireless bridging and routing between LANs located up to 25 miles apart.

Sierra Semiconductor—The maker of V.34 and V.32bis modems has licensed the TrueSpeech speech compression technology from Santa Clara-based DSP Group, Inc. The agreement also calls for the two companies to cooperate in developing TrueSpeech for Digital Simultaneous Voice and Data (DSVD) applications.