SKYTEL COMMUNICATIONS INC history

In 1965, Palmer purchased a local telephone answering service that served 300 customers and gave him a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license to operate a primitive radio paging service.

By 1973, Palmer had acquired nine more paging companies and won FCC licenses to operate paging services within and surrounding a three-state territory comprising Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.

In 1978, Palmer began lobbying the FCC to set aside frequencies for nationwide paging networks, pleading his case at a time when local paging services were still in their infancy.

By the time Palmer took Mobile Communications public in 1981, he was keenly aware of the value of telecommunications licenses.

Research In Motion has been based in Waterloo, Ontario, in Canada since the company was founded in 1984.

In 1985, he sold 50 percent interest in Mobile Communication’s cellular properties to BellSouth, marking the beginning of a business relationship that three years later engendered the formation of MTel.

In February 1988, Palmer agreed to merge Mobile Communications into BellSouth in exchange for stock worth $710 million.

In 1989, Palmer endeavored to expand MTel’s customers’ ability to reach one another, not only nationally but internationally as well.

In July 1992, the FCC awarded MTel a nationwide license to operate a two-way, wireless messaging system, granting it “pioneer preference,” the first time the FCC awarded the preference to a commercial project.

While work was underway to launch two-way messaging service by mid-1995, SkyTel was growing by leaps and bounds, controlling 75 percent of the national market.

In 1998 the co-CEOs of Research In Motion, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, put together a team to create a device known as the BlackBerry.

The first pager from RIM, the BlackBerry 850, was released in 1999, offering a calendar, paging services, corporate data access, wireless Internet and integration with existing Enterprise email accounts -- all powered by two AA batteries.

The first BlackBerry mobile phone was released in 2002, when the 5810 brought the BlackBerry operating system to the world, with push email and the ability to make phone calls with a special headset.

Founded in 2006, Skytel provides enterprise-grade hosted VoIP and unified communications to businesses and institutions.

For RIM, 2011 brought lackluster sales of its first tablet, dismal stock performance, job cuts, service outages, handset delays and criticism of its co-CEOs.