EarthVision Newsletter Archive
Back to Archive Home PageSent: Wednesday, August 2, 2000
Subject: EarthVision Cellular Consumer News! Issue #15 Vol. 2Another 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!
[Note: This newsletter is delivered Bi Weekly on Wednesday.]
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EARTHVISION CELLULAR PRODUCTS TO BE ON PRIMETIME TV?
EAVESDROPPING ON CELLULAR PHONES (ARTICLE FROM A CONTROVERSIAL SITE)
CHALLENGES OF CELLULAR PHONE COVERAGE IN THE US
POLICE OFFICER NAILED FOR CELLULAR PHONE DISTRACTION ACCIDENT
HATE MAIL FROM OUR COMPETITORS IN THE WIRELESS INDUSTRY?
HISTORY HAS BEEN MADE AGAIN THANKS TO CELLULAR PHONE USERS
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EarthVision Cellular Consumer News Issue # 15 Volume 2
EARTHVISION CELLULAR PRODUCTS TO BE ON PRIMETIME TV?
We were recently approached by a TV broadcasting company about airing our product offerings nationwide. The chance to have our products aired on primetime on over 500 TV stations reaching nearly 80 million households. Wow!
It is a quick way to become a household name to be sure. As I understand it, we are still in the "discussion" phase and no decision has been made as of yet. It is good to know that we are standing out so far ahead of our competitors to be made such an offer.
I forgot to mention the offer. Airing our products would cost us nothing for the advertising costs. The TV company believes that our products and company would bring value to their station and to their viewers. Why would the TV company make such an offer. Well, it boils down to creating strategic alliances with an innovative company like EarthVision Cellular.
We refer to this practice as boosting. Basically, an established company in a specific market segment comes in and hands a boost to another company in an entirely different but complimentary market. The goal is to boost the company into a financial standing that will create a mutually beneficial and long term relationship.
Why we share this with you. We have been getting comments from visitors stating that they heard about us from someone else that has visited our website. The traffic to our website continues to grow at a very solid and steady pace each week. We simply want to thank you once again!
How this affects you. If we decide to go forward with this project, we have a little something to offer in return. If you see our ad on TV and place an order, you can email us back telling us that you did so and we will refund half the cost of the item. You must be a current subscriber to take advantage of our offer though.
EAVESDROPPING ON CELLULAR PHONES (ARTICLE FROM A CONTROVERSIAL SITE)
This is a topic we have not really touched upon in our past issues of this newsletter. Another of those FYI type articles here. We will forewarn you that this website is a bit controversial based on what they offer to the public. However, they have information that we feel is important to our subscribers so we decided to create a strategic partnership with them. Controversial or not, they do bring value to the table for some of our subscribers. The real value is that they give you the truth with a no holds barred approach. For the record, the opinions of the author are his own and are not necessarily endorsed by EarthVision Cellular.
We reviewed an article posted on www.crbbooks.com written about the issue of eavesdropping on cellular phones. Yes, both analog and digital phones can be heard by eavesdroppers. The article mentioned the privacy of cellular phone users isn't what it appears to be.
We go about our business talking on our phones thinking that nobody is listening outside of our immediate environment. You should know that your assumption is far from correct. This website is all about surveillance and eavesdropping. You will find books on the subject of eavesdropping on cellular phones, cordless phones, and other radio transmitters.
A law was passed to ban eavesdropping on cellular phones and cordless phones in 1986. The question is if the law really works. The answer in no it doesn't. The Justice Department seems to take the position that not only is the law of low priority, they have other issues to deal with that are of much higher importance.
Who is listening to your conversations. More people than you may think and they are called radio communication hobbyists. They have scanners manufactured prior to 1994 that can pick up all the various radio frequencies including those from cellular phones. Another piece of legislation was passed stating all scanners manufactured after 1994 must eliminate the scanning mode for cellular phone frequencies. But scanners manufactured after 1994 can still be modified by the hobbyist to pick up those frequencies as well.
If you are using your cellular phone for your business, you may want to reconsider what you say using your wireless phone even if it is a digital mode phone. The encryption used for digital phones only make it harder to clone, not eavesdrop on your conversations. You can visit them at www.crbbooks.com if you are interested in buying their book on eavesdropping on telephones.
CHALLENGES OF CELLULAR PHONE COVERAGE IN THE US
Contributed by our CAAB Member Aaron Osgood from www.lightship.net
We finally discovered why cellular phone coverage in the US is such a challenge. It also explains why it is taking so long for digital cellular service to cover enough geographic area to reduce all the subscriber complaints. Wasn't it AT&T Wireless who had or has a class action suit pending against them? In any case, the Yankee group created a report which found the following information when comparing five countries: The US, UK, Finland, Japan, and Germany.
67% of U.S. subscribers would be "interested" in changing service providers for better coverage.
Among the key factors explaining our coverage challenges are:
* Large Geography.
The huge U.S. land mass and major-city spread has led to a low cell-site density of 2.3 sites per 100 square miles, compared to 3.8 in Finland, 9.4 in Japan, 20 in the UK, and 35 in Germany.
* Low Population Density.
The U.S. population density is 75 per square mile - about 1/9 that of the UK or Germany. However, Finland, which has half the U.S. population density, has more than 3 times the number of cell sites per 10,000 people, indicating a more comprehensive investment in wireless infrastructure.
* Low Urbanization, Travel Patterns, and Suburban Sprawl.
Only 41% of the U.S. population lives in an urban area compared to 78% in Japan, 87% in Germany, and 76% in the UK. Combined with suburban sprawl, and our love affair with the automobile, U.S. citizens travel an average of over 14,000 miles per year, more than twice that of UK citizens and five times that of Japan citizens. We used this data to calculate the area that a wireless user in each country would need to adequately fulfill coverage requirements. Our conclusion: The average U.S. user requires a coverage area of 1330 square miles, which is 14 times what a user in Japan would need, 5
times in Germany, and 3.5 times in the UK and Finland.
* Industry and Technology Fragmentation.
The 80,000+ cell sites in the United States are spread across 10 major carriers, using different air interfaces and incompatible networks, resulting in a misallocation of resources. The structure of the upcoming auctions could exacerbate the problem.
Hopefully this will help explain why we must suffer all the dropped calls while we are in the midst of a cellular phone call. The problem of dropped calls on cellular phones in the US that radio stations are now using the message stating you are out of the service area as a rub on digital wireless carriers.
POLICE OFFICER NAILED FOR CELLULAR PHONE DISTRACTION ACCIDENT
A young lady and her friend were killed when they crashed with a police cruiser driven by an officer who was talking on his cellular phone. This was the story presented to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The lobbying efforts of wireless carriers may come to naught due to the sheer number of stories coming out with the dangers of driving while talking. The NHTSA Deputy Administrator publicly announced her recommendation that drivers refrain from using cellular phones while driving.
The hands free kit was a non issue because the warning wasn't in reference to distraction with dialing numbers or playing with the handset. Rather the warning was related to the distracting intensity of a conversation being held while using a cellular phone and driving.
Her statement is expected to give additional ammunition to activists in the state legislatures to pass new laws banning cellular phones while driving. This will probably affect the newest technology advances of putting telematics (integrated wireless devices) in luxury vehicles as well.
NHTSA stated that 25% of the 6.3 million accidents in the US involved a inattentive or distracted driver. It was not clear if they were referring to the use of cellular phones as the reason but it is very doubtful.
Let us hope that the various state laws and local ordinances that are passed banning cellular phones while driving are very clear to newcomers to the areas that enact these laws. Just a little something else to tie up the courts for a while longer when the laws and ordinances are challenged as not being clearly identified or maybe construed as being ambiguous.
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HATE MAIL FROM OUR COMPETITORS IN THE WIRELESS INDUSTRY
We have to say that we are very pleased to be getting such messages from our competitors. We print them off and place them in a beautiful picture frame and then put them up on the wall as trophies for all to see. One of them actually posted a comment in our guestbook which was quickly rebutted by another visitor. We were going to leave it but we didn't want people to get confused by it so we had it removed. Two more email messages followed within the matter of 24 hours.
What would be the reason for people to be sending us hate mail? Our guess is that we do our best to provide our customers with the best deals we can offer in the wireless industry. The specific area of which we have been attacked is on our prepaid cellular packages. These useless verbal attacks only confirm that we are definitely doing something right.
We are truly shameless in boasting about our prepaid cellular packages though. We decided that if we were going to do something, we were going to do it right the first time. When we entered the prepaid cellular market, we did so with both of our six shooters blazing. A big surprise for many of our competitors out there who just aren't willing or able to match our deals on prepaid cellular packages.
This has only inspired us to go a step further with our prepaid cellular packages. Now we are going to go from offering 12 prepaid packages to offering 19 prepaid cell phone packages. We are confident that this will delight not only our future prepaid customers but also those who have found it necessary to be so intolerant of our generous business practices.
So that we do not look like we are being pushed around by bullies. We will make it a point to inform our competitors that we literally get thousands of hits to our prepaid cellular phone page each month. Not only that but the number of page views of our website has doubled every quarter since we first came online. The reason for our fast growth is because we prefer to spend our time servicing our customers rather than wasting time by sending out negative email messages to competitors.
HISTORY HAS BEEN MADE AGAIN THANKS TO CELLULAR PHONE USERS
Amazing that we have now reached 100 million cellular phone subscribers in the US! The wireless phone carriers are adding a wireless subscriber every 1.3 seconds. That comes out to around 5 million subscribers a day worldwide that are going mobile. That may not look right because we are referring to subscribers rather than people.
36% of the US now has a cellular phone. It won't take long before half of the US has gone wireless. Maybe another 10 years at best based on the rate we are taking up cellular phone use. Japan has us beat with being in the area of over 90% of people there are wired for sound.
Speaking of sound. The speed of sound is 344 meters per second if transmitted through the air. Other mediums may speed up or slow down the speed of sound too. Humans can hear in the 20 Hz to the 20,000 Hz range. Dogs can hear at much higher frequencies.
Historically speaking. It took 17 years from the onset of the first cellular phone being offered for 100 million subscribers to become a reality in the wireless industry. It took traditional phone service 91 years to reach that level and television took 54 years to reach that number of subscribers.
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