Paging Network Inc. of Dallas is introducing a paging service that allows its customers to receive unlimited pages with no monthly fees.
What’s the catch? Value Page is a caller pays paging service.
The motivation behind Value Page is much like that of caller pays in the cellular industry, said Scott Baradell, manager of corporate communications for PageNet. The company expects Value Page will attract customers who want or need a pager, but have yet to make a purchase and are turned off by the long-term investment and monthly fees required for traditional paging service.
PageNet and Ameritech Corp. began commercially testing Value Page in Ameritech’s Chicago market six months ago and are scheduled to launch testing today in Indianapolis and Detroit. The company hopes to determine how many customers exist for Value Page service and how to reach them, said Don Shirley, director of product line marketing for PageNet’s Paging Products & Services division.
With the new service, PageNet buys from Ameritech specific caller-pays phone numbers in blocks of 10,000, which are assigned to Value Page pagers. A new customer pays a one-time charge of about $75 for a numeric pager and activation.
Callers are charged a flat rate per call to a Value Page pager and Ameritech bills the callers through their landline phone bill, freeing PageNet from billing hassles.
Once Ameritech collects the Value Page per-call fees from its customers, half the money is returned to PageNet.
As such, caller pays paging provides a new revenue sharing opportunity for paging carriers that does not exist in the current structure of paging, said Ann Lynch, an analyst for the Yankee Group, Boston. In traditional one-way paging, a carrier “leases lines from and is paying the LEC [local exchange carrier] to put calls through on its own paging system.
“It’s a new and interesting service for paging carriers to offer,” said Lynch. She expects the service will be popular in the retail channel and believes the primary user of caller pays paging service will be at “the far edge of the consumer market; the person most concerned about cost.”
However, added Lynch, “I’m always concerned with a carrier cutting its ties with its subscribers.” Caller pays paging “doesn’t allow [carriers] to sell any other services*…*It leaves the door open for that subscriber to just stop using it,” explained Lynch.
She doesn’t expect the market will be impressive long-term.
To determine who Value Page customers are, how many exist and how to reach them, PageNet has varied its market approaches among the three test markets. The per-call charge is 25 cents in Chicago and 35 cents in Detroit and Indianapolis. In Chicago, PageNet has not advertised Value Page, and in the other two markets, Value Page is being advertised on the radio, billboards and through mailings to resellers.
