Wireless Communications

The Justice Department signed settlements Tuesday with three wireless communications firms, including one in Newport Beach, that were accused of rigging bids during government auctions of radio spectrum licenses. The consent decrees, stemming from suits filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, settle allegations that 21st Century Telesis Corp. of Newport Beach, Omnipoint of Bethesda, Md., and Mercury PCS II LLC of Jacksonville, Miss.

Making its first major push into the growing market for wireless communications, Microsoft Corp. has teamed with wireless phone maker Qualcomm Inc. in a broad venture aimed at marrying the features of mobile phones and computers. The two companies said Tuesday that they will be equal partners in a separate company, WirelessKnowledge, which will be based in Qualcomm's hometown of San Diego and will be run by executives from Qualcomm.

The home is the last frontier of computer networking. Miles of network cables hidden beneath floors or above ceiling tiles have become the norm in office buildings, but the idea of installing another mass of wires to connect PCs in the home has not enchanted most consumers. In the past year, companies such as Intelogis Inc., Tut Systems Inc. and Epigram Inc. have announced networking systems that solve some of the problems by using a home's existing electrical and telephone wires.

Pool? Room service? How about wireless Internet access? Beverly Hills-based Hilton Hotels Corp. will begin offering wireless Internet access early next year. A guest will be able to insert an Ethernet local-area-network card into a laptop computer, and the card will transmit data to access points in the hotel's meeting rooms and ballrooms at speeds 10 to 50 times faster than a typical modem.

Shaking up a decade-old cellular phone venture, AT&T Corp. and BellSouth Corp. on Friday agreed to hand each other more control of two key markets for mobile phone service they now share. AT&T, the nation's largest long-distance phone company, and BellSouth, the No. 4 U.S. local phone company, said they would form a new company to operate wireless businesses in Los Angeles and the Houston-Galveston region in Texas.

Orange County likes to toot its horn as a major technology center. Adding volume to the symphony, a major telecommunications technology trade group has opened a new office in Costa Mesa. The CDMA Development Group, with eight employees under the direction of digital wireless guru Perry LaForge, represents the interests of companies like AirTouch Cellular in Irvine and Qualcomm Corp. in San Diego, which rely on CDMA technology.

The wireless phone, like the pager before it, has spent years as a gadget for the elite, the mobile and the image-conscious. But just as the pager gradually made its way to the waistbands of teenagers, new competitors and lower traveling fees are steadily chipping away at the cost of going wireless and slowly putting mobile phones in the hands of more consumers. The latest market shift--led by AT&T Wireless--is the elimination of special "roaming" fees.

Fearful that a new generation of high-speed cable and wireless networks will relegate them to the towpath of the information highway, America Online Inc. and other Internet service providers are lobbying government and industry officials for access to those networks. In papers filed last week with the Federal Communications Commission and in talks with AT&T Corp.

Meeting a federal mandate that requires cellular carriers to beef up their 911 services is proving complicated for the wireless industry. It took a year to prepare a 63-square-mile test site in the San Gabriel Valley so emergency dispatchers would be able to identify the approximate location and phone number of cellular users who make 911 calls there.

In the business world, few things can come between busy executives and their wireless phones. At a trade show packed with wireless industry companies and managers, it takes a hurricane. At least, that's what AT&T Wireless customers found out when they tried to use their mobile phones while attending last week's Personal Communications Showcase '98 in Orlando, a four-day trade show sponsored by the Personal Communications Industry Assn.