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EarthVision Newsletter Archive

Sent: September 4th, 1999
Subject: EarthVision Cellular Consumer News!

First, let us begin by saying that we hope each one of you are having a fun and safe labor day weekend! Now on to the news that you all have been waiting for!

In this issue:
Conxus Leaves Subscribers & Vendors Hanging
Horizon Personal Communications Expands Sprint Customer Base
Women.com and Motorola Become Partners
Special Offer to Subscribers Only
Recycle Your Phones & Batteries
Did You Know?
Access the Web By Voice on Your Cellular Phone
Sprint PCS Frequent Flyer Miles
Prepaid Cellular Services - National or Local

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Conxus Leaves Subscribers & Vendors Hanging
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Conxus Communications has walked away from it's troubled voice messaging business last week. They have left thousands of subscribers in a dozen cities with very costly and most likely worthless pagers. Now, it's resellers will have to clean up the mess. The company spent millions in the FCC auctions and had to file for bankruptcy protection in May. (Did we mention that ICO Global Communications also filed Bankruptcy? How many more bankrupcty filings will we see in the near future? Probably many more!) Conxus was the company which was promoting the "portable answering machine" called Pocket Talk. No other company is currently offering this service which has left Motorola in a bind with 80,000 Conxus customers out there. Rivals and resellers of Conxus are trying to assist former subscribers by offering discounts and other incentives if they signed up for alphanumeric and/or text pagers.

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Horizon Personal Communications Expands Sprint Customer Base
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This company will expand the area if manages for Sprint PCS by triple the current amount. Mainly in the Ohio area. The new area covers a population of about 5 million people. Horizon is also an affiliate of Chillicothe Telephone Company which is providing service in seven markets of the Ohio Valley & Shenandoah Valley region. Sprint service will include areas in West Virginia as follows: Beckley, Clarksburg, Fairmont, Logan, Morgantown, Williamson & Pikesville. In Virginia, Bluefield, Charlottesville, Danville, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Roanoke, Slaughton, and Waynesboro. Cumberland, Maryland and Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol, Tennessee. It will also include Adams, Brown, Highland, Mason, and Cochcton counties in Ohio.

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Women.com and Motorola Become Partners
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As per women.com, the ladies are fast become the major factor in online purchases. Women.com also has a property called Astronet.com catering to women. The info-on-the-go service for women will be provided by Motorola I kno! paging service to include such topics as health, fitness, family, horoscopes, and food. Motorola has recognized this increase in women on the web and has partnered with this company to provide the content to over 4 million subscribers.

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Special Offer to Subscribers Only
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To our newsletter subscribers only, we have the following special. The Uniden FRS 1601 2 Way Radio: It is a family radio service sport radio with up to a 2 mile range, 14 channels, tone alert for incoming calls, 30 hours of operation, 38 tone codes, LCD display, splashroof. Great for the golfers, camping, or tagging to the children and grandchildren for picnics and other activities. And our special price to you? Only $89.95 plus shipping! Now, you too can have this fantastic radio for such a low price. This is a limited time offer for only this week. If you want one for personal use or for a gift, you need to order right away. Since this is a subscriber only special, you will need to respond via email with your telephone number and best time to reach you to place your order. Be prepared to provide your email address to confirm you are a subscriber! Remeber that we have novelty products availabe to fit all types of popular and obsolete cellular phones to include Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Qualcomm and many others. Christmas is just around the corner.

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Recycle Your Phones & Batteries
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If you find that you have an old phone or battery that you just don't know what to do with. Recycle It! You can send these items to EarthVision Cellular and we will make sure that they are properly disposed to ensure that no hazards are presented to the enviroment. You would be shocked to know just how much pollution is caused by cellular phones and batteries being dumped in normal garbage pickup. To get our physical address, just visit our website. Any phones you return in good working order will be collected and sorted to see if it can be donated to a charity "as is". Preferably a charity which has an agreement in place with a carrier who is willing to provide free cellular service to the charity. You can help our enviroment and donate to charity all at the same time with no extra expense. Before you ask, NO! WE DO NOT SELL USED CELLULAR PHONE ACCESSORIES. It is absolutely against our corporate policy to sell used phone accessory products. As far as we are concerned that is an unethical practice that should be reported upon discovery if it has been sold as a new product. In fact, we would recommend that you never buy a used phone accessory from any party. A new accessory does not cost that much that you have to buy a used accessory with an unknown lifetime. We already know we "get what we pay for" in those circumstances.

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Did You Know?
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EarthVision Cellular is now registered with Public Eye to bring you a more confident and safer shopping experience. We want to emphasize that as a consumer of the internet, you need to make sure you are taking precautions against consumer fraud. We recommend dealing with sites that promote and offer consumer rights protection. We also suggest that if doing business on the net make sure to find out if they are registered with their home state. If so, you will have additional protection by filing a complaint with the state attorney general for unethical business practices. If not, then you have reason to worry. We have also been recruited by expertcentral.com to be listed as an expert in our industry for consumers. In addition, we will also be listed with guru.com as well. In due time, we expect that our name will be spreading across the internet like wildfire. We know we will end up a front runner in our industry since we offer the best quality products at the lowest possible price for the quality delivered. Soon enough, we will also be creating a links page to companies of which we feel are reputable and have created a strategic alliance with EarthVision Cellular on behalf of our customers. (We hope to have it started in October.) If they want your business, they have to go through our screening process first. Of course, we cannot guarantee the business practices of our alliances but we will do our best to ensure they are of top quality.

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Access the Web By Voice on Your Cellular Phone
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We mentioned before that cellular phones that can tap the web will be widely available very soon. A company called Speech Works International Inc. is looking to provide consumers with access to the web via a unique entrance using voice! At any time, users will be able to say "fax it", "find it", "back up" or even "help". Voice activation has been attempted before, but the technology at the time was too poor to encourage consumer use. This company is hoping that the advances in technology in addition to the robust enviroment will give consumers incentive to use the speech recognition service.

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Sprint PCS Offers Frequent Flyer Miles
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Under a new initiative by Sprint PCS, members of Northwest Airlines Worldperks program who sign up for a Free & Clear Plan will get 5000 bonus miles and five miles for every Spint PCS dollar they spend. The carrier is discussing the program with other airlines too. Consumers who were asked about loyalty program were asked what qualities they wanted in a program responded "value" first, followed by "simplicity" and "special treatment". Other carriers will probably follow the Sprint incentive program to see the results before they begin offering frequent flyer miles. We are unable to say who may offer frequent flyer miles at this time, that information has not been made available to us as of yet. We will keep you posted if we hear anything. Not a bad deal for the cellular phone user. Although this plan was rolled out to target the heavy volume "business" cellular phone user.

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Prepaid Cellular Services - National or Local
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Prepaid Cellular Phone users are expected to jump to 2.2 million subscibers by 2002. The industry expects two different types of users. Those that will only be using the phone for local services in a limited area and those that will insist on having a roaming option available. Right now, there are a very limited number of companies that can offer a national prepaid cellular service. A recent study found that most consumers did not know that a national service prepaid cellular service was available. Which is good for the local retailer since they can sell the local packages even with a limited coverage area. However, for that individual that wants to have a phone for emergency while travelling, they may find that they do not have service unless they opt for a national service provider or subscribe to both services. EarthVision Cellular has opted to offer the national prepaid cellular service since we believe it is a better deal for our customers in the long run for safety and security purposes. Editors Note: After scrubbing the web for the past 4 months, we have found no other company offering a newsletter to subscribers keeping them updated on the cellular phone consumer industry. A very mystifying situation. Since the burden is on us to provide this information with quality content, we would ask for your support in the form of feedback and referrals of other subscribers. We want folks to know that the information they are wanting to know about is available here. Please provide us with your feedback to help us improve our newsletter. As always, if you want to be taken off of our wonderful newsletter, let us know right away. If you wish to sign up for our loyalty program and referral incentives, contact us for your ID number and program information. For each purchase you make, you will be given points which will eventually equate to a store credit.

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