EarthVision Newsletter Archive
Back to Archive Home PageAnother issue of the EarthVision Cellular News Digest. This digest is for the soon to be educated cellular phone user community. If you know of anyone else that may have an interest in our digest, make sure to forward them a copy. Now we move forward at Mach II speed!
[Note: This digest is delivered Bi Weekly on Wednesday.]
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THE LATEST SURVEYS ON CELL PHONE SERVICES AND PRODUCTS
CELLULAR PHONE COMPONENTS SHORTAGE STARTING TO AFFECT THE MARKET
DOCTOR SUES VERIZON AND MOTOROLA DUE TO BRAIN CANCER
WAP SEARCH ENGINES STEP ASIDE FOR THE GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE
UNKNOWN COMPANY WILL COMPETE AGAINST VERIZON WIRELESS
CORPORATE TRAINING VIA CELLULAR PHONES NOW A REALITY
PART TIME WORK AT EARTHVISION CELLULAR AND EBOOK ONLINE
SPECIAL OFFER AND EDITORIAL COMMENTS
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EarthVision Cellular Consumer News Issue # 15 Volume 2
THE LATEST SURVEYS ON CELL PHONE SERVICES AND PRODUCTS
Want to know if the wireless carriers and manufacturers are getting the message? If this recent survey has any truth to it then it appears so. Here is what cellular phone users find to be most important to them when using wireless service. We will rank them in the order with the most important to the least important as to what determines a cellular phone user's satisfaction with the service. The number of respondents is listed next to each one.
Customer Service 1025 Coverage 1009 Pricing Plan Flexibility 720 Low Pricing 450 Ease of Billing 410 Voice Quality 90 Dropped Calls 80 Sprint PCS and AT&T Wireless should be reviewing this survey since they are pushing voice quality when most users of their service complain about the customer service and lack of coverage area. Is it any wonder why digital service is being criticized by wireless users?
Next, we will shed some light on the cellular phone batteries. We are sure it will come up in the future but we wanted to make sure you were aware of what to expect.
Around 12% of the population still use phones that have Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd) Batteries, 38% are using (Ni-Mh) Nickel Metal Hydride, and the remaining 50% are using (Li-Ion) Lithium Ion. If you notice that (Li-Poly) Lithium Polymer isn't on the list although it is out there. The reason is because it has attracted less than 1% of the population.The marketing hype for Li-Poly is yet to come but it will come. And the difference between Li-ion and Li-Poly batteries? To the user the differences are minor. With the exception that Li-Poly can be molded and designed and cost about 35% more than Li-Ion batteries there isn't any difference. Outside of the design of Li-Poly batteries, there is no significant value to the consumer.
CELLULAR PHONE COMPONENTS SHORTAGE STARTING TO AFFECT THE MARKET
Motorola remains the king of the wireless manufacturers. In previous articles, we have stated that there would be a component shortage and it looks like our prediction is starting to come to light. Motorola has claimed that they will meet their target goal of 85 million cellular phones. Will they still be able to do it again next year is the question. Ericsson on the other hand isn't going to make its goal of 15% of the market share. In fact, they won't be able to sell the 45 to 50 million cell phones that they had anticipated. No word on Nokia nor the smaller manufacturers yet.
The rumor circulating around here is that some manufacturers are purchasing used handsets and stripping them of the usable components to put out more factory refurbished handsets on the market to help stem the tide. Earlier, we said it would be about ten years before the shortage reached a critical status of being a major problem. We would now like to retract that
statement and revise it to say five to seven years instead. With a new wireless subscriber signing up every 2 or 3 seconds, we have no choice but to revise our estimate.
DOCTOR SUES VERIZON AND MOTOROLA DUE TO BRAIN CANCER
Verizon is just having the worst luck this past month. First they had to deal with a worker strike, they are being forced to sell off wireless assets in Chicago and Cincinnati (affecting nearly 400,000 subscribers) and now this lawsuit.A neurologist is suing Verizon, Motorola, and some other companies for 800 million dollars. It is broken down into 100 million as compensation and 700 million as punitive damages. His claim is that his brain cancer stemmed from having to use his cellular phone several times a day for six years. Specifically between the years of 1992 to 1998.
The only problem that the doctor may have is that there are no proven studies that conclude that cellular phones cause cancer and there may not be a conclusive report for at least another five years. The other problem that may arise is why there were no cellular phone users who have been using cell phones since they first came out in 1985 claiming to have contracted brain cancer from using cellular phones.
Speculation continues as to whether an anti-cellular phone use organization in Washington, D.C., may have had some influence in encouraging the good doctor to file suit on his brain cancer since he is located in Baltimore, Maryland. We would like to believe that no organization would utilize such disgusting tactics to promote their own agenda at the expense of someone who is obviously suffering.
WAP SEARCH ENGINES STEP ASIDE FOR THE GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE
Now this is a very interesting topic. Especially if you are involved in e-commerce of any kind or if your company has a website online. Nextel has signed an agreement with the Internet search engine Google to provide users with Internet surfing information.
Yahoo offers their service to Sprint, and Lycos and MSN expect to jump on board soon. So what will make Google stand out among its competitors. Yahoo offers a limited selection of editor approved websites that are written in WAP format to Sprint PCS users, something that is so unusual that it will probably rock the industry.
Google can convert any website into the WAP format even if it isn't written with WAP programming language. No need for smaller websites to worry that they are locked out of the market and left to think that only companies like Amazon will get to take advantage of this new technology. Google has just leveled the playing field and opened the doors to the small business.
Nextel caters to the business market and offers the Internet service on its Plus phones which are on the higher end of the spectrum for cellular phones. This provides websites with a potential audience of 2 million business professionals that have subscribed to Nextel service.
We have to give a salute to Google for their innovation. We have wondered when a search engine would see the light and invest in a technology of this type and take advantage of the potential subscriber viewership. It may very well be the saving grace for WAP cellular phones. If we are lucky, then Alta Vista search engine will do the same since they base their searches on the content of the website instead of on link popularity as used in Google and editor selected websites as used in Yahoo. The two drawbacks to using Google and Yahoo is that you may not get a relevant search and have to switch to Alta Vista to find what you are really looking for in a search.
UNKNOWN COMPANY WILL COMPETE AGAINST VERIZON WIRELESS
More bad news for Verizon. SBC & Bellsouth are coming out with a new company to compete with Verizon Wireless. Before now they had only to worry about Voicestream as a competitor. The company will be coming out in 34 states and looking to provide service to 17.4 million subscribers to start. Once they get rolling they will be reaching out to nearly 175 million subscribers. Verizon has reason to worry since their market has 232 million wireless subscribers. A big piece of their market share has just been targeted for a takeover.
The name of the company is not yet known and won't be until they have officially launched the company. Good news for wireless users though because another company is going to be out there trying to earn your business. Word has it that the new company is going to be very aggressive in trying to lure you to their service too. The president of the new company has said that subscribers should get ready. The service will be available on TDMA and GSM technologies.Some markets in California will be used as a testing ground. It is obvious that carriers just love California as a test market. Nearly every test done by a carrier we have heard about is tested in the notorious state of California before being rolled out across the nation. They should change the state motto to read, "The home of the pioneer people".
CORPORATE TRAINING VIA CELLULAR PHONES NOW A REALITY
A company called Mobile Quest has designed WAP enabled training and testing. Well at least for the corporate world anyhow. Sorry kids but it is back to school for you. A very interesting concept that allows for employees to see which training modules they have completed, receive pop quizzes about the material they just reviewed, and get instant feedback on the test results.AT&T Wireless has already tried the system out on 1100 field employees. At some point, the company will roll out video and sound clips. This means that employees will actually be able to watch training videos via their cellular phone.
The service is actually called Knowledge Anywhere by Mobile Quest. The service isn't limited to just cellular phones either. It will be available for use on Palm devices and Pocket PCs. Just might be another reason to keep WAP around for a while longer.
Allow us a moment of vanity to claim that the big wigs read our newsletter article about WAP going out the door unless it evolved into something more than what it is today. We admit that such a claim is outrageous and we may be a few degrees to the left for even making such a statement. We have to blame it on our shock at just how many people have subscribed to our newsletter.
PART TIME WORK AT EARTHVISION CELLULAR AND EBOOK ONLINE
As of Today, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 100 agents (sales ambassadors) offering EarthVision Cellular products around the country and growing. Establishing an agent network in the wireless industry was very difficult to do especially with the constant amount of training that was required. An extremely labor intensive exercise to say the least.
Well, we have recently created a new group of sales ambassadors. This has just been rolled out as a new program. This time the program revolves solely around our prepaid cellular phone packages. We have designed a program that allows agents to make a commission on each package sold and on renewal airtime cards sold. Fairly basic considering that all the training info is online and readily accessible to agents 24 hours a day. We should clarify that it isn't an online affiliate program but an actual offline agent program. We eliminated the online program since we already had a lion's share of the online traffic for prepaid and didn't want to directly compete with our agents.
If you should know of anyone who is looking for some part-time work and would like to sell our prepaid packages, have them contact us about the program. It would be a much more flexible option as opposed to picking up a second job. The only requirement we have is that the agent must sell at least five packages a month to be considered an active agent.
Now. About our ebook on the wireless industry. The ebook is titled "Cellular Phones And You". It does borrow some content from our website but the ebook is far larger than anything on our website or that available on many other websites. The current estimate is that it will contain about 20 pages of content to be listed on our website. Had it been formatted as a book, it would have been around 113 pages.
The material is copyrighted; however, you are welcome to place hyperlinks pointing to the material from your website. You must also make note that the material is provided by EarthVision Cellular. We pulled it from the publishing company to make it available to the general public. We anticipate that we will have it up for viewing by the end of this month. If you are really interested in the material, you will want to check back at least once a week because we may have it up sooner.
This ebook was in the making for over 3 years while we researched our material. Some of the segments were released for review early on and were then copied by other unethical parties who later found that the acquisition of the material was much more expensive than they had bargained for when it was found out they infringed on our copyright material. We hope that you will find the ebook to be an invaluable resource and we will continue to revise it on a periodic basis as needed. Much of the material we have presented in the ebook is original in concept and you will not find it on other websites. William lived in California for eight years. The ebook is a result of the pioneer bug that must have bit him while he lived there is my guess. Enjoy!
P.S. If you would like to have the ebook on CD-ROM, we can deliver it for a nominal fee. They would make great gifts for employees or just about anyone else who owns a cellular phone. $1 of every ebook CD-ROM sold will go to charity.
SPECIAL OFFER AND EDITORIAL COMMENTS
Note: The September 9th issue will be late. We can't release the newsletter without approval from William, and he will be in Las Vegas during that time. We should get it out on Thursday or Friday instead.SPECIAL OFFER: Current Prepaid Cellular customers take note. When you activate a 100 unit or 260 unit card between August 15th and Sept 4th, you are going to be given a special deal. Your cards will be extended as being valid for as long as 120 days for the 100 unit cards and 180 days for the 260 unit cards. The 30 unit cards are not eligible for this special offer. This gives you until the end of next week to make a decision. The manufacturer may or may not extend the offer. We have no idea which way it will go. They will make a decision based on the response from customers.
If any of you live in Cameron, Missouri, then be sure to visit a retail store called "This & That" which will now be carrying our prepaid cellular packages. We are aggressively pursuing various distribution channels to make our prepaid cell packages available both online and offline in as many areas as possible.We would be curious if anyone has found another newsletter like ours out there. So far we have been unable to locate any. By the way starting in the year 2001, we will have archive pages of the archived material. Where has the time gone? Soon we will be sending out our 3rd volume!
DO NOT BUY OUR CELLULAR PHONE MANUALS: Not that there is anything wrong with the manuals but we no longer carry them. You can now obtain the manuals for your cell phones by contacting the manufacturer of your phone directly and they can ship you one free of charge.One more thing. William resigned from Expert Central on August 4th, 2000, and gave up his gold shield. This company was acquired by about.com nearly six months ago. Shortly after the acquisition, William was solicited for his services as an expert by About.com, and he declined the offer. He resigned from Expert Central and declined About.com because he felt they needed to review their policies and other practices. He wasn't the only expert getting hot under the collar either. The strangest part was that businesses wanted his advice for free and private parties were willing to pay. Huh? Is this twisted or what? Of course he refused payment from consumers. We just recently learned that quite a few of Expert Central's full time staff took off running for the hills too. Not too sure what that is all about. Expert Central and About.com by association have appeared to have lost a ton of credibility with many of the experts out there.
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. 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.