ASCNET, Application Specific Cellular Network, Inc. was a startup company that targeted the low end of the cellular telephone market. Many people buy cellular phones for peace of mind and personal security reasons, primarily to summon help should their vehicle breakdown. Unlike "road warriors", these customers purchase inexpensive cellular phones and make limited use of the service. They can be very profitable for cellular service providers because they pay regular monthly fees for a service they rarely use.
ASCNET sold an inexpensive cellular telephone, the RoadPhone ™, with three buttons: 911, the customer's road service provider such as AAA, and an operator able to place calls to any number in the United States. ASCNET made arrangements with cellular service providers (e.g. Cellular One) to provide a cheaper service since the ASCNET phone, the RoadPhone, would be used only to place, not receive, calls.
In addition, ASCNET bypassed the retail dealer network through which virtually all cellular phones were sold in 1993/1994. ASCNET took orders by telephone and shipped the RoadPhones directly to the customer by UPS or Federal Express. Each cellular phone that is sold must be programmed with unique information such as the telephone number used by the cellular phone. The purchaser must be associated with the telephone number of his new cellular phone for billing purposes. The retail cellular telephone dealers perform this mundane but critical function.
ASCNET took orders for cellular phones by telephone. Telephone sales representatives recorded the order information including customer name, shipping address, billing address, and credit card numbers in a Sybase database running on IBM RS/6000s. The database then assigned telephone numbers provided by the cellular service provider to the customers. The final step in processing orders was to program the cellular phones and ship them directly to the customers.
The phone programming was done by a station called the MPP, Multi Position Phone Programmer. The MPP consisted of a PC computer, a laser barcode scanner that shared the keyboard input port with the standard keyboard port, a barcode label printer attached to COM1, a custom made telephone programming fixture attached to COM2, and a bus mouse (since the barcode printer was using the COM1 serial port). The MPP was run by a program written in Borland C/C++ using the Windows 3.1 C language API. I evaluated and selected equipment for the station and designed and wrote the MPP software.
The MPP software imported data records exported by the main order database. Data was exchanged using a simple tab delimited ASCII file. Virtually all databases, including Sybase, FoxPro, and Microsoft Access, all of which were used at ASCNET, can import and export files in this format. The MPP programmed the unique information such as telephone number into an EEPROM in the cellular phone through an RS-232 serial connection and printed a packing slip, an internal tracking document, and a shipping label using a barcode printer. The station operator used a barcode scanner to scan the UPS (or FedEx) tracking barcode and an identifying barcode on each cellular phone. The MPP software exported data records containing the scanned barcodes.
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The MPP Software uses the terminal emulation and serial communication library in Timothy S. Monk's excellent book Windows Programmer's Guide to Serial Communication . The dynamic link libraries MODEM.DLL and TSMCOMM.DLL are examples from this book.
Timothy S. Monk is the President of The Software Mission, a custom software development and PC consulting firm. He has extensive experience in all areas of PC software development and communications.
© 1995 by John F. McGowan