Only two innovative paging systems have been launched since new licenses were granted for narrowband personal communications services in 1994.
SkyTel Corp. operates a two-way paging system aimed at elite users. Subscriber numbers have been low and the monthly price is well above other paging services.
Paging Network Inc. has just launched its NPCS service, VoiceNow, which offers a pocket answering machine. VoiceNow service is priced competitively, as is PageNet’s style, said John Zahurancik, paging analyst for The Strategis Group, Washington, D.C.
Because the SkyTel and PageNet systems target different customers, they are not actually competing against each other for customers.
“It will take another or two more carriers to force some competition that will stimulate the market,” Zahurancik said. “SkyTel is the leader by default, but possibly not in the future. This next year for SkyTel will be critical,” he said. “They’ve solved their in-house problems and have come up with a more flexible device, but they’re not necessarily responding to competitive pressure. The service just hasn’t taken off as well as they thought it would.”
SkyTel experienced software and transmitter coverage problems when service was launched in September of 1995, but the difficulties have since been resolved.
All other NPCS licensees are either in test phase or are doing traditional one-way numeric and alphanumeric paging.
ABout 42 million people are paging customers in the United States. Approximately 85 percent of those are one-way numeric users, according to Strategis. About 12 percent of those people use alphanumeric paging service, but Strategis estimates that figure would be greater if alpha had received more carrier support.
Alpha transmissions are not as spectrally efficient as numeric, and until carriers recently converted their systems to digital, alpha was not heavily promoted.
Two of the older forms of paging still exist. About 1 percent of users have tone-only pagers. Tone-only devices beep and the user calls a particular phone number to pick up a message.
About 2 percent of users have analog voice devices. Voice messages are transmitted to the device, where a speaker in the device blurts out the personal message. Not privacy-efficient, analysts said.
SkyTel’s 30,000 or so units don’t comprise a measurable market share at this time, Zahurancik said.
Two-way paging is fundamentally a different service from one-way paging, said David Abraham, telecom consultant in Westport, Conn.
The focus of personal communications services is wireless voice, but messaging, notification and paging-type functions can be conducted through the phone.
PCS is not expected to compete with one-way paging, but it could possibly have the strategic advantage of price, quality and functionality over two-way paging.
“We live in a world of increasing specialization. Is two-way paging sufficiently different from cellular or PCS to achieve a market niche? The jury is still out,” Abraham said.
Abraham said PageNet seems to have the advantage with VoiceNow, which is offering a new product for a reasonable price.
