PCS Development Corp. is confident in the opportunities for early players in the market for stored voice paging in narrowband PCS. The company just last week announced it signed a memorandum of understanding with Metairie, La.-based Radiofone Inc., a wireless messaging provider with a strong subscriber base in the southeastern United States. The agreement allows Radiofone to offer PCSD’s advanced two-way messaging services to its wireless messaging subscribers, PCSD said.
“This is not just a niche market,” said Harry Latham III, senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Greenville, S.C.-based firm. “We believe the demand exists for the pocket answering machine.”
The private company bought five regional NPCS licenses at auction, all on the same frequency. PCSD intends to build and deploy nationwide roaming service by early 1998.
The first step toward that goal is constructing test systems in Atlanta and Boston, using equipment by Motorola Inc. and Glenayre Technologies Inc. The networks will transport wireless voice using Motorola’s high-speed InFLEXion technology; tests should be completed during the first half of this year. By the first quarter of 1997, PCSD hopes to have launched service covering more than 25 percent of the U.S. population, Latham said.
PCSD has more than seven contracts to resell its messaging services to one-way paging companies, giving the young firm a “built-in distribution” boost, he said.
PCSD President William deKay said they expect demand to be high, and resale distribution is the fastest way to get the service to subscribers.
“We believe in a short period of time, a majority of paging users will prefer this and will switch over. Paging carriers have been very receptive to us because they know their customers want the product,” deKay said.
The service will be priced competitively so that the dollar margin per customer will be equal to or greater than the margin carriers are making on their own network, he said.
“Most of today’s one-way carriers don’t have the 50/50 narrowband PCS channel capable of doing inFLEXion. And we’ve positioned our company to be a better partner than other options because we won’t cannibalize their customer base,” deKay said.
PCSD was created in October of 1994 by several one-way paging companies interested in offering PCS, including Arch Communications Group Inc. and A+ Communications; remaining ownership is held by private investors.
PCSD’s management is top-heavy with experienced industry players. deKay and the company’s chief executive Cecil Duffie both hail from Dial Page Inc., the South Carolina paging operator recently divvied up and sold to MobileMedia Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc. Jerry Leonard, senior vice president of engineering and network operations, spent 10 years running global paging for Motorola Inc., and had a total of 33 years with the Illinois manufacturer.
