Amid the sagging stocks and belt-tightening that characterizes today’s paging industry, one private company maintains rapid growth and is venturing into new markets.
New York-based Affordable Message Center, a wholesaler of alphanumeric paging services and an operator for alphanumeric dispatch services, plans to offer Internet, computer and telephony services under its new parent company, Next Century Communications Inc.
Affordable will remain a subsidiary of Next Century, which is owned by five management partners.
Since late 1995, the company has been quietly assembling infrastructure to provide a host of switch-based wireline and wireless services, said Alexander Ott, president of Affordable and Next Century. The switch comes from an outside vendor, but Next Century created its own open system architecture and software interface to support various telecom services, said Ott, whose background is engineering.
“We have the latest technology and infrastructure for reselling paging, long distance, debit calling and any type of telephony interconnect, be it wireline or wireless,” noted Ott. “We are very much structured like a carrier, without a frequency.”
Next Century is in discussions with a number of companies about providing bundled packages of switch-based services. Target clients include carriers, Internet service providers and other telecom resellers. Ott said it is too early to elaborate on Next Century’s planned Internet service, but noted “the service will make it easier for end users to communicate”-away from a desktop personal computer-and provide an option for wireless access.
Affordable started as an answering service more than a decade ago. Today the company employs 115 people and does business with 25 paging carriers including the major paging players-be it reselling airtime, providing dispatch or both. The company currently offers alphanumeric dispatch in every state and in parts of Canada and South America. Affordable also has its own billing and customer support for its reseller customers.
Affordable has experienced 1,500 percent growth during the last 24 months, 600 percent growth in the past 12 months and expects 1997 to show 100 to 200 percent growth. Ott attributes the company’s dramatic growth a few years ago to the initial take off of alphanumeric paging.
Another success driver for Affordable is its position in the industry, according to Next Century Executive Vice President Robert Garbarino. “We protect our resellers because we are a reseller,” he said. As such Affordable relieves hassles for paging carriers and has vast experience answering the needs of resellers.
Any plans for going public?
“Forming this corporation was the first step in doing it,” said Ott. “How our revenue is growing and the company (is growing) and the new ventures we’re getting into, it’s a good possibility in the next two to five years.”
Separately, Affordable announced its new Simplicity Personal Page Service is available to reseller clients nationwide. After callers dial up and enter a Simplicity user’s personal identification number, they will reach a recording of the user’s voice. The service eliminates the need for an operator to personally answer incoming calls. A user’s PIN will appear on a dispatch screen and the operator then will prompt the caller for a message. On both ends, the service is designed to save time.
