By TAKAMITSU SAWA
It looks as though Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is determined to push through postal privatization as the ultimate goal of his structural reform efforts.
It is generally agreed that government enterprise should not threaten private business and that privatization is desirable without qualification. Few doubt that the privatizations of Japanese National Railways and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corp. in the 1980s were successful.
When it was privatized, JNR was split into six regional passenger railway companies and a freight railway company, all of the JR group. Although residents of remote, sparsely populated areas were inconvenienced by the abolition of deficit-ridden lines, most Japanese greatly benefited from JNR’s privatization, as it improved passenger service and cut train fares. High-speed Shinkansen trains, however, still charge high fares, with little competition from higher-cost airlines and inexpensive but slower buses.
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ATLANTA,
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ BellSouth Corporation (NYSE:BLS) today announced that Mark Feidler has been named chief operating officer, effective Jan. 1, 2005. Also effective Jan. 1, Dick Anderson, currently
president-Customer Markets, has been named vice
chairman-planning and administration, and Isaiah (Ike) Harris, has been named president- BellSouth Advertising & Publishing Group. Feidler, Anderson, Harris, Ron Dykes, chief financial officer, and Marc Gary, general counsel, will report directly to Duane Ackerman, chairman and chief executive officer.
"BellSouth has long been recognized as having one of the strongest management teams in the telecom industry," said Ackerman. "By giving our senior executives broad experience in all areas of our business, we continue to develop their leadership abilities and management skills, to the benefit of our customers, shareholders and employees."
Feidler Named Chief Operating Officer.
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New Chip Offers the Industry’s Best Sensitivity Values for Long Distance Coverage
HEILBRONN, Germany, Nov. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Atmel(R) Corporation
(Nasdaq: ATML), a global leader in the development and fabrication of advanced
semiconductor solutions, announced today the availability of its new 2.4-GHz
transceiver IC ATR2806 manufactured using Atmel’s advanced SiGe BiCMOS
process. The new ATR2806 is especially designed for digital cordless telephone
applications, but can also be used for wireless data applications such as
wireless Internet access, headsets, games and home entertainment. This new
low-IF device provides several unique features such as multiple handset
operation and long distance coverage due to its excellent sensitivity (-93 dBm
at full data transmit bit rate of 1.152 Mbit/s).
The ATR2806 is a highly integrated transceiver, which includes in the
receive path a low-noise amplifier, image rejection mixer, low-IF filter,
demodulator, RSSI and RX data as digital signal. It also includes a fully
integrated VCO and PLL with an integrated Gaussian filter. Due to the high
integration, only a few components are needed to design the RF section of a
cordless telephone. SAW filtering, matching components, IF tank circuitry, and
demodulator tank are not needed. The circuit also provides a digital receive
signal, thus eliminating the need for any external data slicer.
The IC has a flexible interface to the baseband, so any standard DCT
baseband IC can be used. Various data transmit bit rates are supported (1.152
Mbit/s and 576 Kbit/s).
Another main benefit is the IC’s outstandingly high sensitivity of -99
dBm. This is a value not reached by any competing product; standard values are
usually up to -94 dBm. This allows coverage of longer distances (about 300 m).
The new architecture also enables longer talk and standby time compared to
conventional concepts. Thanks to the ATR2806’s fast-settling PLL, the base
station can support up to 10 handsets (multiple handset function), whereas
competitive products, using fixed data transmit rates, can only handle up to a
maximum of 4 handsets.
To support design-in, demo boards with documentation, test results,
schematics and Gerber files are also available.
Samples of the low-IF transceiver IC ATR2806 in QFN32 packages are
available now. Pricing starts at 4.00 US$ (10 k).
Footnote
IF = Intermediate Frequency
PLL = Phase Locked Loop
RSSI = Receive Signal Strength Indicator
VCO = Voltage Controlled Oscillator
About Atmel
Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of
microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio
frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry’s broadest
intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the
electronics industry with complete system solutions. Focused on consumer,
industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets, Atmel
ICs can be found Everywhere You Are(SM).
NOTE: Atmel(R), logo and combinations thereof, are registered trademarks,
and Everywhere You Are(SM) is the trademark of Atmel Corporation or its
subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.
Information:
Atmel’s 2.4-GHz transceiver IC ATR2806 product information may be
retrieved at: [ >>>
]
Press Contacts:
Dr. Susanne van Clewe, Marcom Manager Communications and Automotive
Products
Phone: +49 7131 67–2081, Email: susanne.van-clewe@hno.atmel.com Clive Over, Director of Press Relations — USA and Asia
Phone: +1 408 451 2855, Email: cliveover@atmel.com
Veronique Sablereau, Corporate Communications Manager — Europe
Phone: +33 1 30 60 70 68, Fax: + 49 7131 67–2423, Email:
veronique.sablereau@atmel.com
By Hadar Horesh
«Dry run» launches of products and services that are inaccessible to the consumer have become de rigueur in the communications sector. Cellcom announced «Third Generation Services» that would enable video communications between subscribers, but didn’t really tell us that the infrastructure covered only a small area of the country, the devices were expensive and hard to come by, and the last thing the cellular service provider really wanted was mass demand for this nonexistent service.
Internet service provider Netvision entered the
international long distance calls market with a ploy that offered service only to subscribers with a huge number of calls to North America. That may not have actually constituted long distance service, but it made the company look like it was competing in the international calls market a few weeks earlier than it actually had service for all.
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In one of the largest hosted VoIP deals yet, Notre Dame tries to keep ahead of trends from cell phones to the potential of
Wi-Fi over IP.
By Paul Travis
When the University of Notre Dame began making plans for a new
voice-communications system to replace its Centrex system, a hosted voice service from SBC Communications it’s been using since 1992, school officials had to take into account big changes in the way people communicate. Cell phones with cheap
long-distance rates are making
in-room long-distance services less important. So are
E-mail and instant messaging; at Notre Dame, as at many universities, people can access any location on campus through a wireless data system. And the growing use of
voice-over-IP technology promises more changes in the future.
But a few things haven’t changed: Notre Dame likes having the 631 dialing exchange exclusive to the school. It also isn’t eager to run its own phone system. And it wants technology flexible enough to adapt to new services and applications.
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