Q. I have an obscure telephone technology question. Nothing on the net. Now what?

A. You must do hardcopy research. That research can begin on the net but it will not finish there. No technology historian, writer, or researcher relies exclusively on the net, it is impossible and will continue to be until every paper document is digitized and put on line. Due to manpower, technological, and copyright constraints, this will not happen in our lifetimes. But you can at least start with the net, even with the most difficult questions.

Many people ask about cell phone interfaces: the way a keypad and the buttons on the phone are arranged. If you can't find cell phone design resources on the net then get good with patent searching. A patent will describe not only itself but also the background of its field. You'll often find good bibliographies and links to other related patents which in turn have more information.

Spend at least a day or two looking through the USPTO on-line to get familiar with this valuable resource. If you can't find the magazine articles and trade brochures listed in a bibliography you can order a copy of the entire patent file which will then give you copies of those documents. Ordinary patents are fairly easy to search, if difficult to read, but design patents are more hard to research.

Here's a good way then to browse design patents. Put in what you want to look for and then add the important phrase: ornamental design. Select the quick search option at the patent office:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-bool.html (external link),

and you'll see this form:

Put in what you are looking for, say, the words ornamental design, and then your date range. Only patents from 1976 on can be searched this way. The patents before then haven't yet been made keyword searchable. Try as many different keywords as you can think of.

After the net, it's back to the library, the largest technical library you can find. More later . . .

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The first fixed wireless radio-telephone service for individual customers began in 1946 near Cheyenne Wells, Colorado. While radio-telephony wasn't new to the Bell System, this was the first time subscribers had radio-telephones installed at their premises. It was the first local wireless loop in the country, possibly the world. And it was a party line, too, since only one frequency was available and all customers had to share. Click here to read a very entertaining interview with the people and customers involved. (464K in .pdf) By the way, do you collect salt and pepper shakers?

Full URL:
http://www.privateline.com/Ling/ hexagons used to represent cells in planning a cellular system? Why not triangles or rhomboids?

A. (From Mark van der Hoek) The answer has to do with frequency planning and vehicle traffic. . . . Click on the link above to go to this discussion.

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I've set up a preliminary page for Dr. Richard Ling, an industrial sociologist for Telenor. He writes about the uses and social impact of the mobile telephone. He has a new book coming out in April that should interest anyone working in wireless. On his page is an internal link to a well researched paper on teenagers, their parents, and how wireless is changing the relation between them. Good reading with many keen insights.

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Q. How do I learn about repairing mobile telephones?

A. Get hired by a company that makes them. They're the only ones that do the work. Today's mobile phones use surface mount technology, which means that individual components cannot be easily removed or replaced. What's more, any repair work done by you would invalidate or void the warranty of the phone. There may be factory authorized repair shops but I am unaware of a single operation.

I am sure the factory itself does not try to repair most defective phones, rather, they would simply replace the entire unit. New models come out frequently and I am sure there is little economic sense or reason to repair a mobile that will be out of date in three or four months. Some of the new, very expensive camera phones may be refurbished or repaired, along with satellite phones, but I do not know about this. Again, this would be work done at the factory.

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Telephone to find out conditions at your favorite off shore and Great Lake Buoy. Check out this web page first:

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/dial.shtml

Dial (228) 688-1948 and enter your buoy number, such as 46013 for Bodega Bay, California. Or enter the longitude and latitude you're interested in and the service will give you a report from the nearest buoy. That includes air temperature, wave height, water temperature, and so on. Even a forecast. Dial when a really big storm hits. A reporter might not go twenty miles out to sea in a gale, but this automated system will patiently report back conditions.

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What did you think about on Valentine's Day? Telephones, I hope. On February 14, 1876, Anthony Pollok and Marcellus Bailey, two Washington D.C. lawyers, filed Alexander Graham Bell's original telephone patent application. They did so under direction of Gardiner Hubbard, Bell's chief promoter. At the time Bell did not know what Gardiner had ordered; A.G. was waiting for foreign patents on the telephone to be taken out first, what he thought was necessary before filing in the United States. Gardiner had tired of waiting and a good thing his impatience was, that application resulted in the most valuable patent ever issued. For more on telephone history click here.

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Q. I keep e-mailing the Right People for permission to reproduce an article or an image without success. They never reply. Any suggestions?

A. After your third polite e-mail has been ignored, try language like this:

"Dear So and So,

I've e-mailed you several times regarding permissions but have received no reply. Unless you answer this e-mail I will consider your silence as permission to reproduce the material since you have raised no objection."

That should get you a response but if not I would use the information or graphics as you wanted to, providing all proper credits to the copyright holders. Link to their site if they have one or if you can. Keep a record of your e-mails to show good faith. Then let them contact you if they want the file or picture pulled.

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Excellent, easy to read series on RFID or Radio Frequency IDentification devices. They're those tiny, autonomous tags that WalMart is thinking of using to electronically track its inventory and possibly for checking out. You'd take your shopping cart to a RFID enabled register and it would scan by radio each product's tag. The whole cart at one time! Put your credit card in the register and off you go. This same technology lets cars zoom by toll booths without stopping. A RFID device communicates between your car and the electronic toll booth. When you pass by the toll gets taken out of your account. Neat stuff:

http://www.mobilein.com/RFID/RFID-1.htm (external link)

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Nice article here (external link to SF Gate) on current experiences with voice over internet protocol or VOIP. Audio quality varies tremendously, between that of a shortwave radio transmission to a fairly good cell phone call. It's all about moving bits; as such I've written around VOIP's edges quite a bit: bits, packets and switching, TC/IP, and digital principles.

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The Telecommunication Industry Association or TIA (external link) (internal link) predicts total wireless spending will increase by 7.6% in 2004. Much greater for WiFi, slightly less for infrastructure. Subscriber growth will be in the single digits. This prediction is consistent with what I've heard since fall: wireless in 2004 will fall somewhere between the highs and lows of its recent boom and bust years. Telecom is a cyclical business, but perhaps less violent swings of its pendulum are on the way.

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Fixed the modulation page; it is now working again. I write a little on that page about ultra wideband modulation, a very difficult to learn topic. A recent, clearly written article on that subject is here. Don't blame me if they pull this link:

http://www.eet.com/story/OEG20020911S0072

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Q. Which country led cellular radio development around the globe?

A. No one country did. The United States, the Scandinavian countries, and Japan all contributed. Although America now leads because of Qualcomm and CDMA technology, the Nordic countries and Japan contributed as much if not more to establishing cellular.

Adept at producing high quality communications equipment, Scandinavia and Japan did not have domestic markets large enough to justify research, development, and production costs. From the beginning they meant to sell products world wide. And although Motorola sold its AMPS like systems wherever they could, they found stiff competition from Nokia, Ericsson, and Oki.

The wildly successful all digital, Smart Chip based, GSM system was a totally non-American technology. It was so successful that it even spread into and across the United States, renamed for us under the name PCS. Japan, Scandinavia, and for some time now Canada, because of Nortel, produce handsets and cellular networking equipment that matches anything American companies produce. It is this competition between equally competent companies and countries that led to cellular radio's quick spread around the world.

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"Beginning January 29, 2004, telemarketers must transmit Caller ID information in order to comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). This information will help consumers choose which sales calls they want to take."

"The FTC, the nation’s consumer protection agency, amended the TSR by creating the National Do Not Call Registry. The Registry protects consumers’ privacy by giving them a choice about whether they want to receive most telemarketing calls."

"Telemarketers are required to transmit their telephone number, and if possible, their name, to consumers’ Caller ID services. While it is technologically possible to transmit callers’ numbers nearly everywhere, transmitting callers’ names may not be available everywhere yet."

continues here (external link to the FTC)

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