The spirit of collaboration among leaders in the paging industry continues to grow as paging carriers and manufacturers have joined in several marketing and technological efforts designed to increase the awareness and robustness of paging technology.
The Personal Communications Industry Association’s Y2K Task Force said the paging industry has all but completed its Y2K readiness efforts, ensuring a smooth transition into the new year.
No one can accurately predict what will happen to computer systems that have not been fixed to read “00” as 2000 instead of 1900. According to CIO magazine, which recently conducted a poll on Y2K readiness, 32 percent of companies polled reported their Y2K readiness efforts were complete. Another 56 percent said they are more than 90-percent finished.
With December here, the issue of Y2K readiness is a pressing concern. PCIA said paging carriers and manufacturers have conducted regular conference calls to discuss the issue. Task-force members include Arch Communications Inc., Metrocall Inc., WebLink Wireless Inc., Paging Network Inc., SkyTel Communications Inc., TSR Wireless L.L.C., Glenayre Technologies Group Inc., Motorola Inc. and RTS Wireless Inc., as well as PCIA staffers.
Each company has set up special pages on their respective Web sites informing customers of their efforts to date, and they have established ways to answer subscribers’ questions. The sites provide information on testing procedures and results, answers to frequently asked questions, contingency planning, risk assessment and other Y2K-related concerns.
The companies also have shared with each other the names and phone numbers of the personnel who will be positioned in their individual command centers so they may communicate in the hours preceding and following the stroke of midnight, 2000, as necessary.
“The paging industry has really stepped up to the plate in order to be ready for Y2K,” said Eddie Gleason, PCIA director of government relations and staff director for the Y2K Task Force. “It’s been a time-consuming process, but the effort will be well worth it.”
This Y2K teamwork is indicative of a newfound spirit of cooperation within the paging industry, which traditionally has been characterized as a fiercely competitive space. The battling between paging carriers in the past is largely considered responsible for the poor financial shape of the industry today, as increasing pricing pressure between players drove down the value of their businesses.
While the industry will remain a competitive one, carriers today are busy working together to define a new playing field, agreeing on new technologies, marketing efforts and equipment necessities.
Last month PCIA’s Paging Technical Committee announced the adoption of the Wireless Communications Transport Protocol, designed to allow access by computer and network application developers to the advanced features of the growing two-way paging networks.
“WCTP is intended to provide a clean interface between handheld wireless messaging devices and the Internet,” said Jay Moskowitz, chief technology officer of RTS Wireless. “A developer with access to common (eXtensible Markup Language) development tools can easily implement a sophisticated interactive wireless application using WCTP.”
The committee also agreed to support and adopt the upcoming Push Access Protocol developed by the Wireless Application Protocol Forum, expected to allow Internet content developers to deliver services to pagers and mobile handsets using a single interface.
