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EarthVision Newsletter Archive
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2000 9:07 AM
Subject: EarthVision Cellular Consumer News!Another 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 Bi-Monthly on Wednesday.]
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EARTHVISION CELLULAR WELCOMES OUR NEW AMBASSADOR TO CHICAGO
HERE IT COMES AGAIN - ADVERTISING ON OUR CELLULAR PHONES
FAST BECOMING THE KING OF PREPAID CELLULAR SERVICE
CELLULAR PHONE TOWERS PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK
CAR JACKER WITH INTENT TO KILL IS FOILED BY CELLULAR PHONE
AIRTOUCH GETS NAILED BY CALIFORNIA AND OHIO WITH LAWSUIT
DISPOSABLE PREPAID CELLULAR IS HERE [BUT IT IS MLM?]
UPDATE ON THE STATE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE HEARING
RECOGNITION OF TELECOM DIRECTOR FOR XACT TELESOLUTIONS
CURRENT SPECIAL OFFER TO EARTHVISION CELLULAR SUBSCRIBERS
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EarthVision Cellular Consumer News Issue #5 Volume 2
EARTHVISION CELLULAR WELCOMES OUR NEW AMBASSADOR TO CHICAGO
We are pleased to announce an addition to our staff. Our newest employee is Maureen Black. She has been hired as our Sales Ambassador to Chicago. She came to us with experience in telecommunications, programming, recruiting, and other areas of technical expertise.
Her background credentials include consulting for the Department of Defense (DOD), Public Relations Agencies, and many others seeking her expertise which would take up the entire newsletter to list. Not to mention she is one of the rarest of breeds. A true Wireless Access Protocol programmer! Needless to say that we were very impressed with her. And we are honored to have someone like Maureen grace us with her presence. It only goes to support our belief that we are on the right path since we are able to attract such quality talent to our corporation.
So much that we decided to register in yet another state. The great state of Illinois will be another state in which we are registered as a corporation. Bringing us to the level of now being registered in 3 states. If we continue growing at this rate, we may have no choice but to take the company public so our subscribers will have the opportunity to become stockholders as well as patrons of such a GREAT company.
Maureen is on the fast track, she is being groomed for a management position with the company. As soon as she is brought up to par, she will be leading a team of sales ambassadors for EarthVision Cellular. We are open to suggestions as to what title we should give to a manager of sales ambassadors. One suggestion we were given was Regent of Midwestern Sales.
As many of you already know, we roll out the red carpet to all of our customers. This is another avenue in which we hope to personalize our service even more. You can rest assured that each of our ambassadors will represent EarthVision Cellular with the utmost integrity and ethics. And with people like Maureen in charge of the team, we can expect to see fantastic service.
HERE IT COMES AGAIN - ADVERTISING ON OUR CELLULAR PHONES
Some of you may have heard about this and some of you may not have. There was a time when a couple of companies attempted to offer long distance service for free in exchange for listening to advertising messages. A serious flop in and of itself. Lasted about 6 months before it was pulled off the market.
Now they are going to try the very same thing on cellular phones. Now I don't know about you, but we here at EarthVision Cellular see and hear enough advertising on TV, bill boards, the radio and everywhere on the internet. So why would we want to compromise the sanctuary of our cellular phones to advertising. With the monthly cellular service rates dropping so fast, who is really going to go for free airtime for advertising? On the surface it sounds good. But wait till you find out just how many ads you have to hear before you gain a substantial enough amount of time to make it worth your while.
And to figure out if it is worth your time. Look at it like this issue as if you are a consultant. If someone asked you for your advice, how much would you charge them by the hour for your time. Well, these advertisers are buying your time. You decide if they are really paying you what you are worth for your time.
FAST BECOMING THE KING OF PREPAID CELLULAR SERVICE
As it turns out, we are collecting a very large customer base of prepaid cellular phone users both in the consumer and commercial markets. Even people in Alaska and Hawaii have been in to visit with us about our prepaid cellular service. More changes are coming to the packages too. We intend to really make it interesting for folks seeking a prepaid cellular phone package. A bit of a twist that will raise the ire of our competitors once again. They will make a worthwhile gift and you will see why very soon.
We recently found out that we are catching up very fast to our larger competitors in attracting people to our company for service. We were told that we are becoming a major distributor for prepaid cellular phone service. Slowly but surely, we will become the leader in prepaid cellular service.
It is a given that we have the lowest prices offered by any distributor on our packages for prepaid cellular service. [And the fact that we DON'T charge a shipping & handling fee on our package probably helps too.] But we like to think that it is the personal service that we offer which makes the biggest difference between us and our competitors.
We have always said that we will not sacrifice quality over price. And to that end, we have been true and will continue to do so. Some of you may have been lured into the "bargain price" trap only to find that the bargain wasn't really a bargain after all. We promise to offer you a bargain but on a quality product with guaranteed customer service.
On a final note. We know that many of our competitors are following our lead in offering packages that are similar to ours. It is nice to know that we are having such an impact on the industry not only in the pricing being offered to consumers but what is being offered as well. Many of you that were looking at this service in the past already know how expensive the service was prior to EarthVision Cellular entering the arena. Eventually, they would have come down in pricing. We just helped accelerate the process.
CELLULAR PHONE TOWERS PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK
We use our cellular phones everyday and we probably don't even think about where the towers are located that are picking up and handing off our cellular phone signals. Some towers are just too god awful ugly to even have sitting in our neighborhoods. Eyesores to say the least.
So, as a community, we would naturally oppose a tower being placed in our neighborhood. When you have gone to the sports stadium,. have you ever thought about how your phone signal is penetrating all that concrete and steel and actually making a connection with just about everyone else placing calls too? Well, here is a hint. Let there be light! If you guessed the lighting towers were actually concealing antennas and mounts, then you got it right.
And when you are driving home, everything is in its place. Never mind that you didn't notice that fully grown pine tree there 6 weeks ago. About the only thing you may find unusual about it is that there aren't any pine cones on it nor any sap. Why? Because it is actually a cellular phone tower that is covered with fake bark and made out of steel.
Then you drive to school to pick up the kids. You break out the phone to call the wife or husband to find out if you need to pick up anything on the way home. You probably never noticed that the signal strength on your phone was at five bars. You can chalk that up to the American pride and patriotism. The flag pole that we find to be so common outside of school buildings and government offices may actually be a cellular phone tower.
If you ever find yourself getting bored, you now have a game of hide and seek to play. Some of you may be interested to know that tower space is at a premium for carriers. A rooftop-mounted antenna on your building could net your business a little more rent to pocket each month.
CAR JACKER WITH INTENT TO KILL IS FOILED BY CELLULAR PHONE
A young medical student was car jacked in the parking lot outside of her apartment. And though there may be calls for drivers not to have cellular phones available, this is one incident that saved this young lady's life. She was car jacked and forced into the trunk of her car.
Her assailant failed to notice that she had her cellular phone inside her pocket. She dialed 911 and they continued to track her location through the cellular vectors and she was able to give a description of her vehicle and assailant. Within 15 minutes of an APB being put out, the car was spotted by a state trooper. To think that we would have one less doctor in the world because some idiot was out to serve his own greed even at the cost of a human life.
Past history tells us that when these criminals jack a car, the victim is usually killed while trapped in the trunk of the vehicle and then the auto is set afire to destroy any evidence of the crime. You would be shocked to find out just how common this is becoming and the criminals are getting away with it.
In a number of cases, the criminal was caught because the victim owned a cellular phone. On a related note, we can only hope that manufacturers will get the geolocation units into cars pretty soon. It would be nice to know that you can call the police and have them track your location based on the satellite tracking instead of trying to use the cellular phone. God forbid if your battery power was low or you didn't have a spare battery nearby.
Solution: Although these criminals are clever, they are not necessarily intelligent. If your carrier offers two phones and one line, Get it! And keep it in the trunk of your car. [Without the battery of course because the battery is affected by the environment's temperature.] Keeping a spare battery that was fully charged wouldn't be a bad idea either. Put it in a pocket or somewhere where it isn't uncomfortable and can be easily hidden. Then if you are thrown into the trunk of your car, you still have a cellular phone with a fully charged battery to call 911 in an emergency.
AIRTOUCH GETS NAILED BY CALIFORNIA AND OHIO WITH LAWSUIT
Boy did we get surprised by this one. Airtouch was rated as being the best carrier by consumers based on a consumer survey conducted by JD Powers. A consumer surveying company that is well recognized in the business world. However, we admit that we did recommend them as a carrier since they were an incumbent in California and based on our own research supported by the JD Powers survey results showed them as being a good company. We certainly got caught with our pants down and this caught us completely off guard. So here is the gist of it.
The California Attorney General filed suit against Airtouch Cellular and Tandy Corporation. The suit stated the two companies engaged in false advertising and unfair business practices in marketing their cellular phone services to subscribers. In addition, sales people were unlawfully enforcing oral contracts of up to two years and imposing early cancellation fees that were not allowed. We might mention that Radio Shack is a subsidiary of Airtouch and are authorized resellers of the services. [We might add that although we sell to Radio Shack franchises and other retail outlets, we only sell our cellular phone products and have nothing to do with services.]
Customers were mislead in the ability to change pricing plans, phone numbers, and in replacing defective phones unless they extended their service agreement. Subscribers were also charged an early cancellation fee for terminating service due to poor quality service. The suit is seeking $2500 per incident as a penalty and civil penalties of no less than 10 million dollars. They also have a class action suit against them in Ohio for different but similar violations.
We need to mention that most of the carriers in California have had complaints lodged against them but they appear to have escaped these charges for the time being. From our own experience on how the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) works, they will usually look at the company with the most complaints. Airtouch is the incumbent and probably has the largest subscriber base of all the customers. So it would appear as if they have the most complaints but in reality, the other companies probably have the same percentage of complaints if it were to be calculated on the size of their customer base.
When you evaluate this situation, you will want to consider all of these factors. Although Airtouch may be in the spotlight, others will work very fast to ensure that they are not caught in the same situation. That is not to say that we are justifying the actions of Airtouch and Tandy Corporation. Simply that there are other fish to be fried too.
DISPOSABLE PREPAID CELLULAR IS HERE [BUT IT IS MLM?]
We know it is out there but we don't have much information on it yet. From what we have been able to find out, the disposable prepaid phone costs $39.95 and is being manufactured by Mitsubishi. We mentioned before that an entrepreneur was looking to make this phone into a reality. Supposedly the current one is rechargeable too.
One of our first questions would be if this is in violation of a patent or not. And how much time is being offered for this amount of money? We found an individual who claimed to have exclusive rights to the product although they were using a free website which threw up the red flags. Plus it was being promoted as a Multi Level Marketing (MLM) Scheme.
We have contacted a company that is supposed to be offering them requesting more information. We were informed there are two companies doing business under the name of TelAmerica with no relation to one another. One has been established for 20 years which isn't offering the disposable prepaid cellular phones. But they seem to have a pretty good variety of services available in the prepaid telecom market. They too are well known in the telecom industry for their specific market.
To be honest, we were extremely suspicious over the disposable prepaid cellular service in the way it was being presented and promoted. We were unable to locate the smaller company. For the time being, we would advise our subscribers to approach this product offering very cautiously.
UPDATE ON THE STATE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE HEARING
[As presented by William Evans - EarthVision Cellular Guru]
Only in Nebraska will you find the Capitol halls filled with Senators that are dressed up so conservatively in neckties tight enough to deprive their brains of blood, to other senators who were dressed in T-shirts and jeans. And I was floored when I saw this one. 3 senators (or staff) were dressed in gym clothing and were running the halls for exercise!
The other thing I noticed was that there were only four single doors on each face of the building. The place looked a lot like a fortress. But if I were a terrorist, I would only need to block the doors and I would have a whole building of influential prisoners. And security? What security! I was worried that someone was going to walk in and leave a bomb. Then yours truly would have definitely been on the news tomorrow. All over it. Literally.
Well on to the news of the day. However, I thought you may have an interest into this one.
A senator had introduced a bill that would make it so that if a person were in an accident, they would have the burden of proof to show that the cellular phone did not contribute to the accident. Not that it caused the accident but contributed to the accident. A very unique proposition considering most states are simply looking at a ban of cellular phone use while driving.
The Nebraska state legislature currently has a bill up for review. Implementing what is called "rebuttable presumption" of negligence into the bill should it become law. Drivers who are talking on cellular phones and are involved in traffic accidents would have an extra legal burden to bear should they be sued. Drivers would bear the burden of proving that they did not contribute to an accident due to using a cellular phone while driving.
Now before you send a lynch mob after me, read on very carefully and it will become clearer as you go on with reading this update.
I went to argue my "expert testimony" in favor of the bill. Why? I think that most cellular phone users out there are responsible people. Most of us use hands free kits and pay attention to the road ahead of us. And I thought that if I were to argue in favor of this bill, it would diminish the chances of a bill being introduced that banned cellular phones in vehicles outright. At the very least it would give cellular phone users the option to purchase a hands free kit and continue being responsible people watching the road rather than having a ban jammed down their throats. It gave cellular phone users an option so to speak.
In addition, the bill being offered said that if you were "seen" using a cellular phone then it would be considered something to be investigated as a contribution to the accident. It was not clear as to if a cellular phone happened to be in the car or not. But I heard the senator who introduced the bill state that he would make amendments to the bill to clarify various points.
I don't know if you follow the governmental process for enacting laws or not. I follow it to a limited extent. One thing I do know is that states will make comparisons of one another's current laws in effect that may relate to a bill in consideration. It was the same in this case too. They will often look at points of interest and adopt them into their own bills for possible enactment into law.
My goal was to help set a precedent that would allow states an opportunity to enact less restrictive laws and would put the burden on the offenders rather than law abiding people. Most of us use speed dial, memory location, and hands free devices.
And of course there were two opponents to the bill. They were looking at the short term loss of revenue of minutes used if this law were enacted. People might shy away from using it as much. What they failed to see was that if a complete ban were enacted, they would lose the entire revenue rather than a part of it.
The opponents were AT&T Wireless and Alltel.
And I may have just pitted EarthVision Cellular against two powerful companies. Not to mention that I have just made EarthVision a maverick in the industry for rocking the boat. And when I got up to leave at about 6:47 PM the reporters were chasing me for my business cards. But I did what I thought was in the best interest of cellular phone users, cellular phone companies, and the general public. A happy medium if you will. As a businessman, I understand the need for compromise. And the media will report it as they will. But I wanted you to have a clear understanding as to what I was trying to accomplish in testifying in favor of the bill. I know you will at least have an objective perspective on it.
At first, I said "Yeah, ban cellular phones while driving." Then I began on the track of thinking about the people who would oppose any cellular phone bill because of civil rights. Yes, cellular phone users have civil rights. And so do their victims should they harm them due to inattention. When I drive, I use a hands free kit and pay attention to the road. I would have to compare it with someone sitting next to me in the car having a conversation.
After I considered this in my hour long drive to the capitol, I realized then that I would need to make a further compromise. Banning cellular phones outright isn't going to change the fact that accidents will occur. Again, I looked at it from both sides of the coin. I myself have seen people run red lights just daydreaming. I tried to warn a driver once by blowing my horn when I realized he wasn't going to stop but I was too late. I have seen pedestrians literally walk into the way of a moving car!
The chairman of the committee asked me if I was aware that this bill didn't take into consideration that hands free devices may dilute the risk of causing an accident. At least AT&T, Alltel and EarthVision were in agreement that hands free devices would be more appropriate in reducing the risk substantially of having an accident. I said I did but I wanted to put my 2 cents worth into the meeting to go on record that I would support the exemption in a bill with using a hands free kit.
I also know that bills rarely if ever make it through the legislative process without amendments and revisions. So my official stand on the issue. I support the use of hands free kits and even legislation that would make an offender responsible for their actions. However, I and, by association, EarthVision Cellular cannot support the complete ban on cellular phones while driving. Cellular phone users as a whole shouldn't be punished, offenders should be punished.
In summary, I could not advocate a complete ban on cellular phones while driving even if I may have suggested that I would in the past for the reasons noted above. Not only for the above reasons but because I for one am not too keen on more government control. I would have to say that being in front of a judiciary committee of the State Senate will definitely help with allowing you to put things into perspective once you see first hand how things work. And I give credit to the committee for playing the devil's advocate and asking very intelligent questions and providing scenarios for review. I walked out of there with a whole new perspective on the subject.
RECOGNITION OF TELECOM DIRECTOR FOR XACT TELESOLUTIONS
First, we would like to give an honorable mention to the National Director of Telecommunications for Xact Telesolutions. We were informed by an executive within the company that he is a hard man to convince that a company is providing quality services and products. To earn his endorsement is even more difficult.
We learned of his endorsement of our company to the entire employee base of his company. And from what we have been able to determine, he has referred our company to about 30+ other industry professionals outside of his company. To that, all we can say is WOW! We appreciate the vote of confidence in our products and services. As our way of saying thanks, we decided to put this mention in here for their company. It was the least we could do.
For those of you who may not be familiar with this company: They are a national inbound call center for businesses both large and small. And if you are a home-based business, you might be surprised at what they can offer to you in the way of services. They are considered a leader in the industry. For those of you who may have an interest, you can visit them at this website: http://www.xactservices.com
CURRENT SPECIAL OFFER TO EARTHVISION CELLULAR SUBSCRIBERS
This special will run until March 31st, 2000. For those of you with a Nokia 5100/6100 series phone, we have something special for you. Right now you can purchase a SLIM VIBRATING Lithium Ion battery. This one is different because it has a whopping 1200 MAH capacity. Double the current MAH capacity for the current slim batteries available for this model of phone.
If you are a subscriber of this newsletter and wish to purchase, we will give it to you for only $39.95 each. It isn't on our website yet but will be in the next couple of weeks. If you would like to get one, order any Nokia 5100/6100 Battery that is listed at $39.95 and type in the box for "brand of phone" at the bottom of the secure ordering page the following note: "slim lithium Ion battery $39.95" and we will take care of it. Also type in "subscriber" in the next box called "model of phone" so you get it at that discounted price.
You are being given the change to purchase these batteries before anyone else. So if you want one, you will have to buy it now because once it is officially listed on the site, the pricing will be higher.
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.
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