RoW International Short Takes

Cell phone #1 cause of accidents, according to studyA new study by the California Highway Patrol says that talking on a cell phone while driving is the number one cause of driver-distracted accidents. The study focused exclusively on the connection between cell phone use and accidents in the state. The study revealed that 18% of 9,000 accidents in 2001 were the result of inattention. Cell phone was cited in 891 crashes or approximately 10%. If the results of the study are found to be accurate, it would seem to debunk other studies that have reported cell phone related accidents to be below the 5% range. U.S. operators plan to share network buildSprint PCS and AT&T Wireless have decided to team up to build and share cell phone towers, a move some analysts believe will likely to be replicated by other U.S. wireless operators. Announced late last month, the scope of the agreement goes well beyond anything considered before and will see the two companies share information about where current and future towers exist. This should be a boon to rural communities in the United States, which have less-than-stellar PCS coverage. Rolling out in the hinterlands is extremely expensive and an agreement of this sort should help mitigate some of the costs associated with deployment. Sharing tower infrastructure has gained momentum in Europe. IEEE conference to explore pervasive communicationsThe Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers will explore the "dawn of pervasive communication" at its Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC 2003) in New Orleans next month. The conference, to take place from March 16 to 20, will be co-located with the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association’s Wireless 2003 trade show and conference. Business applications topics to be explored at WCNC 2003 will range from local wireless roaming and wireless network security to opportunities for customers, carriers, and applications and infrastructure providers. On the technical side, tutorials will explore mobile commerce, traffic engineering for 3G/WLAN networks, wireless mobile Internet, smart antennas, mobile VPN and the basics of wireless and mobile systems. Other technical sessions will look at software-defined radio, from 3G to 4G, communications regulation, security and privacy implications, spectrum management for future mobile technologies and enterprise wireless LAN architectures. NTT DoCoMo’s president and CEO Keiji Tachikawa will give a keynote on The Future of Mobile Communications and Richard Gitlin, VP of NEC Labs America, will talk about Wireless Networking: Opportunities and Challenges. Supreme Court rules against FCC in NextWave caseThe U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that said the Federal Communications Commission had violated bankruptcy laws when it repossessed spectrum licences purchased by NextWave Telecom in a 1996 auction. The decision ends six years of legal battles that has left valuable spectrum covering major centres across the United States unused. NextWave, which paid the FCC only US$500 million of the US$4.7 billion bill, can now either build out a network or sell its spectrum to other carriers. Wi-Fi to grow significantly The North American public Wi-Fi market will grow substantially over the next five years and generate more than US$1.6 billion in service revenue, according to the Yankee Group. The Boston-based firm also notes that business users will account for the vast majority (86%) of the 5.36 million users. The Yankee Group indicates that this market is significantly bolstered by the involvement of AT&T, Intel and IBM in creating Cometa Networks. Where previous attempts at large scale Wi-Fi deployments have failed due to high customer acquisition costs, low revenue and an inability to establish a large footprint, the Yankee Group says Cometa’s wholesale strategy may be successful. Among the many factors, Cometa’s success depends on service providers’ willingness to share the same network architecture and leverage AT&T’s backhaul.

RoW International Short Takes

News | 02/04/2003 5:00 am EST

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