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EarthVision Newsletter Archive
Sent: February 16, 2000
Subject: EarthVision Cellular Consumer NewsAnother issue of the EarthVision Cellular Consumer Newsletter. This newsletter is for the soon to be educated cellular phone user community. If you know of anyone else that may have an interest in our newsletter, make sure to forward them a copy. Now we move forward at Mach II speed!
[Special Note: This newsletter will now be delivered on Wednesday of every two weeks.] ********************************************************
EARTHVISION PREPAID CELLULAR PRICING HAS JUST PLUMMETED
MISSOURI NOW GOING FOR STATEWIDE BAN ON CELLULAR PHONES
CONGRESS SUPPORTING STATES' RIGHTS ON CELL PHONE NUMBERS
ERICSSON WILL BRING CELLULAR PHONE KEYBOARDS TO USA
NEW DEVELOPMENTS AT EARTHVISION CELLULAR
ASK JEEVES. NOT. ASK WILLIAM AT EXPERT CENTRAL
SPECIALS OFFERED TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS ONE AND ALL
ANOTHER RAT TEST WITH CELLULAR PHONES!
********************************************************
EarthVision Cellular Consumer News Issue #4 Volume 2
EARTHVISION PREPAID CELLULAR PRICING HAS JUST PLUMMETED
Well, we finally were able to do it. The EarthVision Cellular prepaid service pricing and packages have just got a lot lower in price. With competition growing in the prepaid cellular market and AT&T moving into our turf, we had to do something. Now we offer 6 prepaid cellular service packages. We have something to fit anyone's budget. We must note that we had to drop carrying the 30 unit prepaid cards for renewal purposes. We will still include them in packages but not as a stand alone product. The manufacturer was too expensive in carrying the cards for us to continue the practice. If we carried them as renewal cards, we would have been paying you to buy the cards.
Our manufacturer has confirmed that they have lowered their pricing on higher volume airtime cards. We now can offer you the same quality cellular service at a much lower price than we offered before. Not only that, the manufacturer is offering a $30 mail in rebate for first time subscribers when you buy any prepaid cellular package and send it back before March 31st, 2000. If you have had an interest in this service, you may want to look into it to see just how good a deal we are offering. You may want to suggest it to someone who is looking for the service even if you are not. Shop around and see if you will find a better deal.
We are offering the more popular Nokia 918 phone with our prepaid services. And yes, we even carry hands free speaker/plug-in charger kit for these phones. As shocking as it may be that you can find a supplier with such a product. To be blunt, we will put it this way. If we don't carry it then your chances of finding someone who has it will be very slim.
Drop on in and see the changes we have made to our prepaid cellular page. We feel that you will find that we are constantly working in the best interest of our customers and subscribers
MISSOURI NOW GOING FOR STATEWIDE BAN ON CELLULAR PHONES
A recent accident caused by a wireless phone user left an 18 year old woman in a vegetative state. A legislator has not only taken up the cause but is pushing for the most serious punishment. Jail time to any wireless user who is found guilty of driving while using a cellular phone in the state of Missouri.
The penalty. One year in jail and a $1000 fine. And Kansas just recently introduced the same type of bill in their state that assesses a fine without imprisonment. And legislation is already under review by Nebraska as well. [In fact, about the time you are reading this issue of EarthVision Cellular News, William will be standing in front of the Nebraska State Senate Judiciary Committee giving his expert testimony on the use of cellular phones while driving.] It looks like about half the states in the US are now looking at this problem and proposing bills in their respective states.
And one carrier Bell Atlantic has decided to make plans to contract only for phones that can use the universal hands free devices. The company has also required that all of it's suppliers will have to produce phones with voice activated dialing within the next two years.
We have mentioned it before about how dangerous using a cellular phone can be while driving. Not only to the user but to those who are victims of circumstance. It is a small investment to purchase a hands free kit or even pull over off of the road to conduct your call. Due to this recurring problem, please see the specials we are offering in this newsletter.
For those of you who have read our overview, we have listed some of the statistics referencing the use of a cellular phone while driving. For those of you who haven't, you may want to review it. Your chances of this problem happening to you are much higher than an airplane crash. Would you believe that using a cellular phone while driving has the same increase in the likelihood of having an accident as a drunk driver? Well it is true.
CONGRESS SUPPORTING STATES' RIGHTS ON CELL PHONE NUMBERS
As we have mentioned before, cellular phone numbers are fast becoming a premium resource for carriers. With the increased number of cellular phone users and the increased demand for cellular phone numbers, many states are about to run into a critical shortage.
Since the FCC has been taking so long in addressing this problem. Congress is passing bills left and right that are requiring the FCC provide a number allocation plan by June 30th of this year and have it implemented by the end of this year. There are two parts of this that would be of interest to consumers. One, is local number portability. It must be included in the plan provided by the FCC. Right now carriers are exempt from this issue until November of 2002. And second is that carriers will no longer be aloud to hoard cellular phone numbers. They will be audited to ensure they are using the numbers assigned to them and if not then they have to return some of the numbers back to the pool.
In some states like California and New York, the cellular phone number shortage is about to become critical. Reviews have been made of creating an area code just for cellular phone users. That is how short cellular phone numbers are starting to become. For more information, you can contact your state PUC [Public Utilities Commission] who can give you more information as it relates to your particular state.
ERICSSON WILL BRING CELLULAR PHONE KEYBOARDS TO USA
Some of you may or may not know that the US is far behind the other countries such as Europe and Asia with the technology advances of the cellular phone. Already in Korea, streaming video has been introduced and in Europe they are showing off cellular phones that can make purchases from vending machines. In comparison, the USA is very primitive compared to the rest of the world. There is plenty more out there that is already being marketed that the USA has yet to be introduced into our markets.
SMS or Short Messaging Service is about to hit the US. Ericsson has a small device called a "chatboard" which has been the rage in Europe. So much so that they haven't been able to manufacture enough of the devices for entry into the US. They will be used on TDMA and CDMA phones. The keyboard dimensions are 4 inches by 3 inches and are super thin. It will plug into a system connector located on the base of the phone. The expected price range is in the neighborhood of $50 to $100 for the device.
And AOL was well aware of this new market which is why they acquired a company called Tegic Communications. A company that also manufacturers text entry devices. A technology already licensed by most cellular phone manufacturers and available on ten mobile phones in the US.
Motorola is coming up to par in this part of the industry arena. With having a developed iTAP software. Which will allow for input via handwriting and soon to follow will be speech recognition. Motorola is already pushing this software in the Asian markets. But it is Tegic who is the leader in artificial intelligence of text entry. At some point down the road, we will see speech to text being offered as a service with cellular phones.
Based on our own experience, we can tell you that speech recognition alone has a ways to go. The computer boards used for speech recognition still have a tendency to mistake words and letters. So in using "intelligent" comparisons, the speech recognized word, letter, or number may not even be close to what you said.
On the other hand. The keyboards currently available in the USA are said to be clumsy and not necessarily user friendly in terms of navigation. The other drawback is that they do not interact with email. Remember, it is a SMS. Short Messaging Service. Which is exactly what they said it was.
CORRECTION NOTICE:
We would like to mention a correction to an article we wrote in our last newsletter. The company that is offering the free software download mentioned to us that they had a typo in the URL for the free download. The correct URL is as follows: http://www.compuquestinc.com/spmsgl.html
Again, the free download does not expire. You can use it as long as you would like.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS AT EARTHVISION CELLULAR
[Cellular Phone User Forums]
We are working out the details for creating a cellular phone user forum. It will be set up for you to exchange questions and answers among one another. The best part is that it will be moderated which means no spam will be allowed in the forums. If it even remotely resembles spam, it will be deleted from the board. The forums will include Nokia Users, Motorola Users, Sprint PCS users, AT&T Wireless Users, General Topic, and WAP. We invite all of you to come on in as soon as we have it opened. We would appreciate your assistance on getting the word out about these "clean" forums when we get it up and running.
[Wireless Classified Ads Site]
Since we have so much going on right now. We decided that we will probably need to build a classifieds section as well. We wanted to offer our customers the most robust selection of products and services of any wireless site on the internet. And there will be no charge for placing a classified ad on our new site either. More news of our building an auction site exclusively for wireless products will be forthcoming in our next issue of this newsletter. The classified ads site is still in the planning and design stage.
[Other Corporate Developments]
Well, the company is definitely growing. Enough that we have picked up some fairly big name business customers at EarthVision Cellular over the past couple of months. You may know the names of a few and others you may not. But we are very pleased to have earned such recognition and confidence in the industry. We even... humm....mmm... were contacted by a Motorola plant asking if we could assist in locating cellular phone parts. And yes, we are too generous in selling some of our products to our competitors. Why? Because we have such a large selection of products to offer. We felt it was our duty to supply customers with our high quality products even if it meant doing so in the background.
But something is going on because we have built up our network of vendors and manufacturers of various products. We have almost doubled our capacity in that area. Which means good things are about to come for the patrons and surfers of EarthVision Cellular. Review of the product lines about to come will probably create a good deal of excitement for our subscribers, visitors, and customers.
ASK JEEVES. NOT. ASK WILLIAM AT EXPERT CENTRAL
Finally, recognition for our resident cellular phone guru, William. Some of you may have spoken with him in the past. For those of you who were too shy, you can now contact him at www.expertcentral.com and ask any and all the questions you may have about cellular phones. Actually, he is listed as a guru for IVR platforms too. You know, all those dreaded computer system menus that you have to navigate just to find out if you are broke or not when calling the bank.
And get this one. He is allowed to charge [businesses] for his advice. People looking for answers for personal use will not be charged. It is more likely that most businesses will not be charged either unless it is leaning towards consultant work rather than a general question. Officially, he is now a guru, expert, and consultant in our field. And he is definitely feeling lonely over there. This site is fairly new and at last count, he only had 3 questions asked of him. He was complaining [as usual] that another expert had 96 questions. So give him some excitement and ask him some questions. His ranking is based on the number of questions asked of him and the rating he is given by the people asking the question.
By the way, Expert Central is a cool place for a guru to be. They just merged with about.com and are now the 9th largest website on the internet. And make it a point to visit and ask William a question while you are there!
SPECIALS OFFERED TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS ONE AND ALL
For those of you who have been waiting on the price of these hands free kits to come down. We are going to make you an offer that you will know is the best in town. We are going to lower our pricing on the hands free kits (these are NOT navigators) with speaker phones and built in chargers to $38.95 each and will include shipping until May 31st, 2000. This will apply to our Canadian neighbors as well. These are not the cheap ones you will find but very good ones that come with a 3 year warranty against manufacturer defects. These are the kind you find being sold for $100 in most retail units.
And for those of you who want a cradle, we offer the universal windshield attachment type that adheres with suction cups to your windshield. We can get you a universal 2.5 mm jack ear piece if necessary.
We do this in the interest of your safety and that of those that may be affected by your having invested into this device. We do not want you or anyone else to become the next statistic. Before you ask if we are looking to make money on other people's tragedy. At the price we are selling them, we may or may not break even. Take advantage of this offer while you can. We are doing our part, will you be doing yours?
ANOTHER RAT TEST WITH CELLULAR PHONES!
Here we go again. Another rat study being conducted on cellular phone use. This time it is being conducted in Sweden. Another publicity stunt? Well, we cannot say much about that since we did get our study published. [And we may get a listing published with Phone + Magazine too!] But what we can say is what we said before. History has a tendency to repeat itself in our newsletter. Rats are not humans. We are not even remotely close to one another.
We use Nutrasweet and we love it. Rats eat it and get cancer when ingested in super large volumes over a period of time. Which tells you why the FDA allowed Nutrasweet on the market. We are not rats and are not prone to the same reactions.
This specific study is being conducted to determine if the use of cellular phones will cause Alzheimer's disease. The people conducting it did say that although no studies so far have offered consistent results that they still couldn't rule out the possibility of such an infliction from using a cellular phone.
It was also pointed out that a study conducted on humans and not rats gave the impression that cellular phone use actually improved the memory of the test subjects. Alzheimer's is a disease which causes memory loss. As far as we know, no rebuttal was given to that point.
PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND ASSOCIATES ABOUT OUR NEWSLETTER. WE APPRECIATE YOUR SUPPORT AND ASSISTANCE IN MAKING OUR NEWSLETTER A SUCCESS.
If you want your name to vanish from our list because our newsletter is just too boring or someone else signed you up, let us know. We will reluctantly take you off of our newsletter list. And we still reserve the right to make faces at you when you aren't looking.
Go to www.earthvisioncellular.com/newsletter to take your name off or to add your name to our newsletter.
EarthVision Communications Inc.
"Taking Cellular to Mach II Speed"
www.earthvisioncellular.com
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