“Plain vanilla” value-added services won’t help new wireless operators distinguish themselves from established carriers, said Sandra Goeken Martis, former chairwoman of In-Flight Phone International.
Goeken Martis resigned from the air-to-ground wireless operation a year ago to create Wireless Works Inc. under the Goeken Group Corp. umbrella.
For the last year, Wireless Works has been forming joint ventures with technology companies that own products that have a potential wireless use.
“With each venture, we get a type of technology and numerous products from each. We find a new application for it,” Goekin Martis said. “We are offering things that are too expensive to be developed” in-house.
Common value-added services available in today’s U.S. market include call waiting, call forwarding and voice mail. The services are incremental revenue generators for carriers.
In 1994, the U.S. government began licensing new spectrum at 1900 MHz so new operators could offer personal communications services. That means new carriers will be entering markets where two cellular operators already have 10-year-old systems. Today, the new PCS carriers are focused on building their networks. Goeken Martis said once they begin to penetrate, they will have to be innovative. One way to do that is to offer a specialty service designed for a particular region.
“For instance, in Chicago there are 21,000 physicians and you might target something for the medical industry. Every little geographic pocket has a specialty profile,” she said. “In New York, for example, the target may be the financial community.”
More opportunity is available immediately overseas, she said, where PCS already has been launched and companies are “more aggressively going after competitive things.”
The Naperville, Ill.-based Goeken Group recently opened an office in the Netherlands. Three other companies under the group include Global Med-Net, which offers a medical record retrieval and storage service; Global Guardian, with a handheld unit that can summon police or road assistance; and Personal Safetyware, providing shock resistant, battery-operated vests, belts and armbands.
Goeken said although she resigned as chairwoman of In-Flight Phone International, she still owns 20 percent of the company and has an option to buy. The Goeken family created In-Flight Phone Corp. in 1989, and sold its interests (except in the international division) nearly two years ago. In-Flight provides telephone service on airplanes.
