SUBSCRIBER GROWTH: HISTORY AND BARRIERS APPROACH Each public service provider has a different philosophy on reporting subscribers. Not unexpectedly the most successful, OmniTRACS, is also the most forthright about both customer names and device shipments, though one must take care to discriminate between . and worldwide totals. ARDIS is good at overall subscriber counts, a bit more guarded on customer names and their specific active devices. .or years RAM was very guarded in both respects, but in 1996 it began to reveal gross subscriber count summaries. User names, and especially quantities for those users, were more difficult to obtain | The Wireless Data Haadbaak Fourth Edition. James F. DeRose Copyright 1999 John Wiley Sons Inc. ISBNs 0-471-31651-2 Hardback 0-471-22458-8 Electronic 9 SUBSCRIBER GROWTH HISTORY AND BARRIERS APPROACH Each public service provider has a different philosophy on reporting subscribers. Not unexpectedly the most successful OmniTRACS is also the most forthright about both customer names and device shipments though one must take care to discriminate between . and worldwide totals. ARDIS is good at overall subscriber counts a bit more guarded on customer names and their specific active devices. For years RAM was very guarded in both respects but in 1996 it began to reveal gross subscriber count summaries. User names and especially quantities for those users were more difficult to obtain. With the acquisition of RAM BSWD reverted to the prior policy of blocking subscriber CDPD users are also fairly difficult to determine especially with the closing of the original CDPD Forum Web site. SMRS data users and their circuit switched counterparts data-over-cellular broadband PCS and Enhanced SMR ESMR are the most difficult of all. Through 1992 a valuable source of information for packet systems was the FCC loading records. While this was only a register of licenses not subscribers it provided a useful sanity check. After that date the FCC requirement to record the license of all new users was dropped a valuable piece of market research information dropped with it. For the next five years the information gap could be partially filled by NewsNet. However the growth of the Web put NewsNet out of business. The information must now be obtained by tedious Web searches examination of annual reports interviews with and presentations from service providers and other traditional labor-intensive techniques. 112 PUBLIC PACKET SWITCHED NETWORKS 113 PUBLIC PACKET SWITCHED NETWORKS Cross-Network Applications E-mail In the 1992 words of the pundits E-mail will provide
