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EarthVision Newsletter Archive

Sent: September 19th, 1999
Subject: EarthVision Cellular Consumer News!

In this weeks EarthVision Cellular Consumer News:

Internet Deals - Are they for real
AT&T pushes wireless plan to help subsidize 7 cent long distance minute
Phone number exhaustion fuels need for 10 digit dialing
Demand for Nokia cellular phones surpasses Motorola
And would you like Caller ID with your pager?
Bell Atlantic Mobile - Round and round the rumors go

++ Internet Deals - Are they for real ++

BUYER BEWARE when looking to buy an internet deal. The internet has been known for some time as being a great media to reach a broad audience. Many legitimate companies are now offering their wares via the internet although it isn’t very profitable as some would have thought at first. This in turn brought out the concept of auctions that allow the website owner to take a percentage of items sold without holding inventory. However, it has also brought the con artists out of the woodwork too. Consumers that are complaining about having their money taken is on an alarming rise. We have all seen postings that are supposedly a "testimonial" from a consumer that a specific site is a great place to buy. Another email is the one where they make it look like it was addressed to someone else and it just happened to appear in your mailbox. And then there are the postings that are peddling "cheap" prices. We go and look at this site with it’s "cheap" prices. So we look at everything. Yep. Looks good and the price is right, so let’s buy it. Do we get a delivery? Maybe, maybe not. In this case, let us say the delivery arrives. Did we get what we paid for?. Probably. We look the product over real good. Um. Well, this is kind of poor quality. Does it have a warranty. Maybe. If it had a warranty, how long was it? 30 days? 90 days? 6 months even?
Bottom line: Buyer beware is the advice to follow. When you are going to purchase, make sure you are educated on your purchase. Is the company named on the site listed with their home state? Any legitimate business will be registered. Remember that if you purchase an auction item, you really have no recourse to return the item you bought. Is the price of the item in line with what you think the item would really cost. Meaning, can the manufacturer really produce the product for such a low price that a retailer can sell it at that low of a price. Plus, you have to ask yourself if the retailer can actually offer that price even with a volume discount. Most of us don’t realize that if the price is too low, corners had to have been cut somewhere too. A quick call to the secratary of state is all that is needed to ensure that you won’t lose your money altogether. Question the quality on any item that comes with less than a 1 year warranty.

~~Christmas is almost here. Be sure to tell your friends about us. And ask them to sign up for our EarthVision Cellular Consumer Newsletter!~~

++ AT&T pushes wireless plan to help subsidize 7 cent long distance minute ++

AT&T has added it’s digital one rate cell phone plan to the billing for bundled services. The new AT&T long distance rate plan is offered 24/7 to consumers for a $5.95 monthly fee or $4.95 if they allow AT&T to handle local toll calls too. The AT&T wireless plan offers a "family pack" which provides up to 5 cell phones to the family. If you bundle this service with your long distance billing, the monthly fee is waived. And the wireless cell phone plan offers unlimited calling to and from mobile phones to other family members.
Using the wireless one rate plan would cost a family of five using cell phones an access charge of $149.95 for the month. The primary subscriber would pay $49.99 for 400 mintues and each additional member would pay $24.99 with having 60 minutes of air time to call non family members. AT&T is hoping that by offering this bundled service on one bill will create loyalty from customers and reduce churn along with reducing roaming charges. However, other carriers will want customers to take a closer look at the plan. Bell Atlantic Mobile (BAM) in Charlotte, N.C. allows up to 4 users on it’s plan with sharing 600 minutes with it’s share a minute plan and an access fee of only $88.96 a month. And Airtouch Cellular in Seattle can offer a five member family for $120 a month in access charges.

++ Phone number exhaustion fuels need for 10 digit dialing ++

Just as the need for toll free 800 numbers created the 888 and 887 toll free numbers, we are now about to see the same problem hitting cellular phone users. With theincrease in cellular phone subscribers on the rise, cell phone numbers are being depleted very fast. It may be standard practice to have to dial 10 digit numbers within the next 3 years. A heated battle in already taking place between state regulators and the wireless industry. The FCC is having to referee this debate. State regulators are trying to preserve the 7 digit calling pattern only to prevent the public from grumbling about a change in routine! Plus they don’t want to deal with the cost that such a change will put upon the states. The wireless industry feels that the 10 digit dialing will allow for higher efficiency of telephone numbers being doled out and will also work better in the local landline assignments of phone numbers. There are currently 5 states already using the 10 digit dialing and 2 more are in the process of converting to 10 digit dialing.
The need for the change in adding in the area code to use the cell phone even when calling across the street is causing some serious politcial tensions between state politicians and cellular industry advocates. The wireless industry accuses state politicians of trying to block the development of a competitive telecommunications market for local service users. The assumption is that more and more cell phone users are relying on cellular phones and the need for local phone company services is falling. Cellular phones already offer many of the same services as the phone company such as 3 way calling, voice mail, and caller ID. The advantage to cellular phones is that they are portable. This has the LEC (local exchange company) worried that they may lose more revenue to cell phone companies with the introduction of 10 digit dialing.

++ Demand for Nokia cellular phones surpasses Motorola ++

The demand for Nokia phones appears to be in such a state as to have bypassed the demand for the Motorola Star Tac cell phone. The Nokia phones are in such high demand that the finnish manufacturer now has a problem. They cannot keep up with demand. A problem that they are loving. Nokia has announced that they will convert their Fort Worth facility to a phone plant. The manufacturer expects that it will create another 2300 jobs in the manufacturing positions. Nokia now runs the globe’s largest mobile phone factory. The base station manufacturing at the facility will be relocated to Finland and the UK in order to convert the facility into a cellular phone plant. The president of the Nokia America’s mobile phone division stated that the plants have been stretched to it’s limits and needed to add another plant.
Motorola is falling short in the game since PrimeCo also replaced Motorola with Lucent Technologies as a vendor for it CDMA cell phones in six markets. To make the bite even worse, Airtouch in California is replacing Motorola infrastructure equipment with Lucent Technologies. Ericsson has also been burned when AT&T brought in Lucent Technologies in a multi vendor program as well. Ericsson had a problem with meeting demand and production especially in the New York market. It looks like Nokia is the reigning champion in relation to consumer purchases for cell phones in this bout.

~~We have made more changes to the EarthVision Cellular Website. We have also expanded on the number of cellular phone batteries available. We have now included batteries for the discontinued cell phones too. We will be adding even more Nokia faceplates too! ~~

++ And would you like Caller ID with your pager?++

A recent survey showed that 59% of pager users would like caller ID with their service. GTE and another company have banned together to provide this service. This alliance should push up the sales for alphanumeric pagers. This new service is appropriate dubbed "nameed based paging". In the near future, when a person goes to send a page, they will have the option of electing to have the person know who is paging someone to ID themselves to the recipient of the page. The service will be an additional cost to pager service. It appears as if the intial pricing structure will look like a fee of $4.95 for 100 uses and $9.95 for 250 uses.
The mechanics of the process will work in this fashion. You go to page someone and the IVR (computer) unit will ask you if you would like to ID yourself to the recipient. If the caller’s answer is yes, the caller will be prompted to enter their home telephone number. The system will then hit the local phone companies billing database to locate your ID information. The information is then captured and through a series of steps is then transmitted to the subscribers pager. This will not have any bearing on Motorola Pagers since the company offer the network to GTE appears to be a manufacturer of alphanumeric pagers as well. It will not be cheap for paging carriers to implement either since it will cost $40,000 for the software and they must set up an account that will cost $500 a month, plus 1.5 cents per inquiry. A paging carrier would have to have a minimum of 50,000 caller ID subscribers just to meet the minimum charge of $500 a month.

~~If you are looking for a christmas gift, we have it. We are now offering our prepaid cellular phones in a package deal. The demand for prepaid cell phones is growing so we decided to give a little something to you. Our prepaid cell phones are not limited to the local area either. Our prepaid cell phones offer national coverage. If you know of someone needing a prepaid cellular phone or want to buy one as a gift, we are the store to shop. We have the best deal on the internet!~~

++ Bell Atlantic Mobile - Round and round the rumors go ++

Vodafone Airtouch and Bell Atlantic have confirmed they are back at the bargaining table. Industry experts can only speculate a discussion is taking place regarding a possible joint venture between the two companies. The joint venture is expected to occur within the next two motnhs. Some argue that Vodafone Airtouch has more to gain than Bell Atlantic. Others speculate that Bell Atlantic will come out as the dominant company, and still others think it will simply be a 50/50 deal. Bell Atlantic will soon have the GTE territory. This joint venture could lead to some interesting options for the joint companies. Including buying up smaller CDMA companies or those that are struggling to meet FCC auction bids for licenses for specific cellular phone spectrums. It will definitely make them more competitve with AT&T wireless, Sprint PCS, and Nextel Communications.
The question on some analyst’s minds is about MCI Worldcom. The only major carrier not heavily involved in the cellular phone industry. Would they make an offer to buy Bell Atlantic after the joint venture to allow them an established market share. Some think that it would make strategic sense for MCI Worldcom to do so. Bell Atlantic would look pretty attractive to a carrier without a market share. Others are wondering if Bell Atlantic is doing just that. Making itself look pretty for a buyout offer from MCI Worldcom. Duly noting that MCI Worldcom has not made any advances in that regard.

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