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August 18, 2004
More on cellular carrier names
Cellular One began in 1984 as the name for the first non-wireline cellular system in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. Delighted with the moniker the partners making up Cellular One decided to cheaply license it throughout the U.S.A. Soon, Cellular One seemed everywhere, although no one company was behind it. As Murray in Wireless Nation (Perseus, 2001) relates:
"It's very likely no one outside the D.C. metropolitan area would ever have heard the name Cellular One if it hadn't been for a second decision the group made. In a brilliant stroke, the partnership decided to license the name, making it available to other non wireline systems essentially for free. The wirelines, many with their RBOC roots and Bell names, had the automatic advantage of regional name recognition, an advantage that threatened to overpower the nonwireline's scattershot marketing strategies."
"But following the decision to license the 'Cellular One' name, it gradually spread across the country, eventually gaining even greater recognition than any one of the names of the giant AT&T offspring. Through there was in fact no national 'Cellular One' company, soon the ubiquity of the name had the effect the nonwirelines hoped: Consumers knew it and trusted it. At last, the nonwirelines had found an advantage of their own."
August 17, 2004
Let's figure out these wireless company names and the technologies they use, okay? I'd like to develop a table or chart with this information. Contact me with contributions and comments, please! (internal link). Here's what I have so far, updated for today, August 17th:
T-Mobile. Originally VoiceStream. Re-named after Deutsche Telekom AG paid over $30 billion for it. Uses GSM exclusively. Years before VoiceStream had aquired both Omnipoint and Aerial Communications. VoiceStream Wireless Corporation came into being after Western Wireless spun it off in October, 1998.
Verizon Wireless is America's largest carrier. It is from a merger of the Bell Atlantic/GTE wireless divisions and the Vodaphone/AirTouch group. Along with wireless holdings from US West and NYNEX. AirTouch Communications came from PacTel Cellular, first part of Pacific Telesis. PacTel Cellular may have early on been called PacTel Access. Vodaphone plc was the wireless subsidiary of Racal, a British defense contractor. AirTouch and U S West early on were joint cellular partners. Vodaphone now controls. Their legacy means Cingular has no presence in the 11 former U S West states.
Cingular Wireless. Formed from SBC Communications and Bell South. Bell South's original wireless company was called Bell South Mobility. Bell South bought Metro Mobile for $2.45 billion in stock in September 1991. They had earlier bought half of Mobile Communications of America.
The wireline SBC parent company includes former regional Bell operating companies Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, Southern New England Telephone (SNET), and Pacific Telesis (Pacific & Nevada Bell).
Nextel Communications Inc. uses iDen, a Motorola proprietary TDMA technology. Originally Fleet Call, the name changing to Nextel on March 24, 1993.
AT&T Wireless. A product of more mergers and aquisitions than I can list. McCaw Cellular was the biggest network they bought. For the most part uses TDMA.
Sprint PCS. The first two letters reflect the original parent company: Southern Pacific .
How about listing old names? Like PCS PrimeCo, the wireless divisions of NYNEX, US West, Bell Atlantic, and Air Touch, formed to put together an early but limited in coverage, nationwide cellular network. I welcome your comments. (internal link)
Latest wireless carrier rankings:
August 14, 2004
Grainy and difficult to read, this is a family tree of Southwestern Bell up until 1984. (402k) (internal link to image.) It appeared in Good Connections by David Park, a corporate history book sponsored by SBC. You might find a copy at http://www.abe.com (external link.) This is the information companies need to post to their websites yet almost none do.
August 12, 2004
Nextel is limited by old technology, iDEN, but mostly by limited spectrum. Founded in 1987 as Fleet Call, Nextel cobbled together a nationwide cellular system by buying bits and pieces of spectrum used in the dispatch industry. These taxi and truck dispatch frequency sets weren't wide compared to conventional cellular radio blocks so Nextel has always battled capacity problems. This will now get worse.
An industry insider explains it like this:
"All of the channels for which Nextel is licensed are 25kHz wide. That's 25 here, 25 there, chopped up among many different licenses in a single market. The most you'd have in one block is 20 channels, for a total of 500 kHz."
"In comparison, IS-95 or 'narrowband CDMA' is 1.25 MHz wide. cdma2000 can occupy up to three of these 1.25 MHz channels. Flarion's OFDM is 1.25 MHz wide. UMTS is 5 MHz wide. Some proposals have been floated for 10 MHz wide channels. See the problem?"
"Even in the very few markets where Nextel might have 1.25 MHz (or more) of spectrum in a geographical area, it's very unlikely it would be contiguous. And it's very few markets where they have that much. No 1.25 MHz blocks of spectrum. No blocks of spectrum, no advanced technologies. No advanced technologies, no Nextel."
Based on overinflated capacity claims the FCC granted Nextel's original operating license, letting them in effect bypass the conventional cellular spectrum auction process. Nextel now hopes to swap frequency sets with other services, freeing them from the trap they created, and, once again, gaining an advantage against the other nation wide wireless carriers. Let's hope the government takes a much closer look at their business this time.
August 11, 2004
The death of frame relay?
When does a transmission technology or a network protocol become obsolete? Frame relay may be dying, Information Week calls it antique. Frame relay uses packets but does not switch them, consequently, more companies are moving to IP or internet protocol based networks. IP is rapidly growing and seems likely the data transmission method of the future. Frame relay was supposed to replace many old X.25 networks, now frame may be replaced itself. Here's some general information on frame at my site. (internal link)
August 10, 2004
Hi Tom. Ken Schmidt here. The most frequent question we receive at Steelintheair.com (external link) is "How can I get a cell tower on my property and start receiving money?"
The real and often disappointing answer is that in most cases, the average landowner cannot. Perhaps the reasons for this could be better understood by asking a similar question, "How can I get a McDonalds on my property?" Both McDonalds and Towers are everywhere, both sometimes lease land, and both pay very good lease rates. But most landowners understand that McDonalds build their locations where they are going to serve as many hamburgers as possible. . . (continues here, internal link)
August 9, 2004
The important things in life
Yesterday I hiked to the top of Pyramid Peak. in sight of Lake Tahoe. At 9,987 feet it's the highest mountain in the Desolation Wilderness Area of California. Along the way I saw and heard:
1) an annual migration of tortoiseshell butterflies, thousands of them making their way south along the ridge of the Sierra Nevada;
2) A smooth barked pine used by a bear as a scratching post. This was a small bear, the highest claw mark was only six feet off the ground. The pine was still bleeding sap;
3) The sound of a deer bathing in Rocky Canyon creek. It sounded like a young kid playing in a bathtub. I could not see it in the water; I saw it only when it rose from the willows around the creek, then passing ghostlike into the forest;
4) The sight and sound of a rattle snake I almost stepped on. He was about three and a half feet long and invisible on the trail. There really isn't a good way to watch for rattlesnakes, they're just there. And handsome in his own way. I stood back and watched him for a moment. He hissed in fury until slowly disappearing into the dry brush.
Click here to read (internal link) about other animals I've seen on my hikes.
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