Editor:
Further to your request, I am sending a list of the countries in Europe, which have paging operations and the estimated number of users. Because the operators in Britain are members of both the U.K. Wireless Messaging Association and the European Mobile Messaging Association I have also included their data.
You will notice that the introduction of calling party pays (CPP) at the end of 1993 boosted that number in subsequent years and generated an impressive growth-from 1.7 million in 1993 to 10.5 million at the end of 1998.
In mid-1998, the European Commission commissioned (for still obscure to us reasons) a small market search firm, totally unknown to our industry, the production of a report on the future of paging. In spite of the positive feedback given by the European and U.K. paging operators and industry bodies, the report concluded that paging would decline sharply and, in the pessimistic scenario, it would completely disappear by 2001. In the optimistic scenario, the report forecast 1.7 million users by the same timeframe.
Despite the lack of credibility of the authors, this report gave a signal for retreat and was skillfully used by mobile operators (which, in most cases, also had large paging operations), some national administrations (which froze the two-way paging frequency harmonization process that was about to be completed), and certain manufacturers, which used it as a strategic argument to get out of European paging. Thus, the conclusion of the report became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Nevertheless, after a strong and painful bleeding, the industry has found its way in the new environment and the number of users (now all paying a subscription fee) has stabilized at around 2.5 million. Of course, there has been consolidation in major markets-the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal-and some operators have either ceased to exist or, those involved in other mobile communications services, have transferred their paging customers to their GSM activity. This has been particularly the case in Eastern Europe, where paging started practically at the same time as mobile telephony. (Prior to 1990, wireless communications in those countries were reserved to military and security services.)
To compensate for the loss of revenues from CPP users, most paging operators enhanced the use of other existing capabilities, such as their call centers and know-how in dealing with emergency services and government agencies. And to rationalize their costs they scrapped advertising, with some exceptions in the United Kingdom. Consequently, paging has moved from a consumer-oriented industry to a niche subsector of telecommunications, pretty much as it was before 1993, but with the experience acquired since and with admittedly higher credibility among its customers.
Paging in Europe does not face a threat of extinction because of lack of users. In addition to the consumer figures, there are approximately 700,000 devices in service for man-machine applications (wireless commands to remote sites, telemetry, etc.), and many of our members report a small but regular return of professional users from short message service (SMS) to paging. The industry’s biggest concern at this stage is the lack of manufacturers of network infrastructure and pagers in Europe and the United States. Between the two continents, there is one producer of each left!
Sincerely,
Jacques N. Couvas
Chairman of the Board
European Mobile Messaging Association
