SINGAPORE-Given that Singapore’s paging market is close to saturation with a 43-percent penetration rate, it comes as no surprise that paging operators in the market constantly are on the lookout for innovative ways to serve up new offerings to their customers. The latest dish on the menu is voice paging.
Voice paging is a service enabling customers to listen to voice messages-left for them by the calling party-directly on their voice pagers, which can receive, store and play back messages in the caller’s own voice. With this service, there would no longer be a need for third-party operators, as is the case with alphanumeric paging.
SingTel Paging, one of the four paging operators in the country, has embarked on an internal trial with Motorola Inc. and Glenayre Technologies Inc. to assess the technical and commercial viability of such a service.
The trial will be followed by a six-month free service trial involving 200 SingTel Paging customers using Motorola’s LS950v voice pagers. Covering only Singapore’s central business district, the trial will be based on a narrowband Personal Communications System (NPCS) supplied by Glenayre.
“We would like to be the first paging operator in Singapore to introduce such an innovative service to our customers and add on to our existing offering of many numeric and message paging services,” said Lum Hon Fye, SingTel Paging’s chief executive officer. “We believe voice paging has good potential as it offers a convenient way of sending and receiving messages.”
Fernando Gomez, vice president and general manager for Motorola’s Asia Pacific Paging Subscriber Division, said voice paging provided customers with “added value.”
“It’s been a hit for people on the move in the United States, especially for those who don’t want to be bothered with the hassle and cost of using a phone to call into a mailbox to check messages,” said Gomez. “We believe Singapore is the perfect place to hold this trial in Asia as it’s the leader when it comes to paging and messaging services.”
Analysts say that given the fact that Singapore has the world’s highest paging penetration, the country will serve as an excellent test-bed for the service.
Cheong Hon Kee, Glenayre’s group vice president and managing director, agreed, saying the project was an “exciting first step for [NPCS] systems in Asia.
“Glenayre’s investment in creating NPCS solutions specifically for Asia represents our confidence in the future of voice messaging and other NPCS services in the region,” he said.
The system relies on Glenayre’s GL3000 Wireless Messaging Switch and the GL-T9521 280 MHz Linear Transmitter. Introduced in January, the transmitter is part of a new paging base station designed specifically to support NPCS system requirements of the Asian market. The infrastructure also supports Motorola’s two-way ReFLEX data messaging protocol.
