AT&T Corp.’s announced acquisition of Vanguard Cellular Systems Inc. has raised some questions as to what AT&T plans to do with Vanguard’s paging operations.
Many analysts expect AT&T to sell off the business unit, just as it did its own paging business-AT&T Wireless Inc.’s Advanced Messaging Division-to Metrocall Inc. That deal closed last week.
Should AT&T dispense with Vanguard’s paging business, Metrocall would be the likely buyer. With an 18-percent stake in Metrocall, AT&T is the company’s largest shareholder.
According to Mike Scanlon, Metrocall senior vice president of sales and marketing, the company would have the right of first refusal if AT&T sold the paging unit. “We’d get first crack at it,” he said. “My guess is that if AT&T wants to talk about that (selling the paging unit), we’d be more than pleased.”
Additionally, Metrocall has a fairly extensive relationship with Vanguard. In August, the company signed a multiyear strategic partnership with Vanguard, under which Vanguard may purchase and install transmitters on Metrocall’s nationwide network in Vanguard’s Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New England markets. The deal expands Metrocall’s footprint in those regions as well as extends nationwide paging service to Vanguard customers at discounted airtime. The new paging transmitters, maintained by Vanguard during the duration of the deal, were to become Metrocall’s property at the end of the initial term of the agreement.
“At this stage, there’s no effect, although there may be something in the future,” Scanlon said about that agreement.
Vanguard became a regional paging player after it acquired NationPage Inc. in August, a paging operator with footprint in Pennsylvania and New York.
Vanguard’s paging operations remain rather small in the grand scheme of the paging industry today with about 100,000 paging subscribers.
