Hot Sheet

New Year's Resolution Let's resolve to be a kinder and more polite industry by observing a few simple wireless phone manners. Put your phone on low ring tone or vibrate when in a meeting or conference (even a wireless one). If you must talk on your wireless device while motoring, don't continue to drive like Mario Andretti. And for goodness sake, when calling from a convention center, don't hog the space near the windows.

K.I.S.S. >From Madison Avenue comes this sage but time-dishonored advice: Keep it simple for consumers. Some wireless carriers are heeding the advice; while a few insist on making their messages clear as mud. The seven deadly messages? Anything that mentions CDMA, TDMA, GSM, digital, dual-mode, multimode or roaming.

Seven Times the Airtime The Iowa septuplets are overrun with offers from consumer-products companies trying to capitalize on a once-in-seven lifetimes' marketing opportunity: Gerber offered baby food; Sony delivered electronic equipment; Toys "R" Us donated cribs and car seats; Mott's made good on apple sauce; Procter & Gamble cleaned up with Pampers; and Maytag spun into action with appliances. However, the wireless industry didn't come calling. Why, the airtime alone for all of the children to talk to Grandma and Grandpa over the holidays could be crippling.

Princely Investment Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Saudi Arabian investor, recently purchased 1% of Motorola for $300 million as well as other communications and technology stocks. With an average monthly phone bill of $80,000, why not have stock in industries you heavily support?

Santa Claus Came to Town Operational wireless carriers' wishes came true for a phenomenal holiday selling season. Unfortunately, the bearded big guy couldn't help those C blockers that have been looking everywhere for financing, even pennies on the sidewalk.

Brand Blitz Sprint negotiated a deal with the NFL to place its logo on coaches' telecommunications headsets. The only better branding mechanism during the games might be if someone superimposes a company logo over the mouths of coaches and players shouting lip-readable profanities.

Hear Me Roar IBM and the National Foundation for Woman Business Owners report that female business owners are more likely than men to subscribe to an on-line service and to have a business home page. At least marketers have been forewarned, unlike those in cellular who took a while to figure out that women were dominant cellular phone users.

Bonus Checks MCI is doling out juicy bonuses to entice top-level executives to stay put following the WorldCom deal. MCI promised to pay the equivalent of 50% of their salaries at the end of 1997 and the other 50% at the end of 1998. Will that be enough to keep the typically renegade managers in place?