The paging industry last week experienced a flurry of major resale deals involving several large carriers.
BellSouth Corp. followed paging carriers Metrocall Inc., AirTouch Paging and Arch Communications Group Inc. in reselling airtime on PageMart Wireless Inc.’s ReFLEX 25 advanced messaging network.
BellSouth announced it is marketing local and national numeric, alphanumeric and guaranteed messaging paging services to its residential phone customers.
The company plans to offer three pagers, ranging in price from $50 for a basic numeric pager to $180 for a guaranteed messaging pager. BellSouth also said it will offer four personal paging service plans ranging from $10 to $22 a month, depending on messaging and coverage options. Toll-free service can be added to any of the packages for an extra $6 a month.
AirTouch Paging announced the commercial launch of a nationwide guaranteed messaging service, called AirTouch Nationwide Assured Messaging, through a strategic alliance with PageMart. The launch is the first phase of the alliance, under which AirTouch will resell services on PageMart’s ReFLEX 25 two-way network. Phase II will involve the two sharing an inbound channel once AirTouch begins building its own ReFLEX network.
The AirTouch service will use the PF1500 pager from Motorola Inc. and the AccessMate from Glenayre Technologies Inc.’s Wireless Access Group, the company said. The service is the first of a family of advanced messaging services AirTouch said it plans to roll out throughout the year, marketed as AirTouch PCS-The AirTouch Way.
Metrocall announced a strategic relationship with MessageLink Inc., a company working to acquire and consolidate paging carriers and resellers in second-tier markets. Under terms of the three-year agreement, MessageLink will resell Metrocall’s paging services locally and nationally.
“We believe Metrocall offers the best coverage in secondary markets that are currently dominated by resellers,” said Don Buzzelli, chief executive officer of MessageLink.
