Bell Industries buys into paging with purchase of SkyTel from Verizon

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.-Verizon Communications Inc. is selling off a paging and wireless telemetry unit that it acquired when it purchased the former MCI Inc. earlier this year.
Bell Industries Inc. agreed to purchase Verizon Communications’ subsidiary SkyTel Corp., which provides paging, telemetry, two-way messaging and e-mail to business and government customers. SkyTel, which is based in Clinton, Miss., earned revenues of more than $100 million during the past 12 months.
Terms of the deal, which still requires regulatory approval, were not disclosed. The companies expect the transaction to close within the next few months.
“This transaction is in keeping with our objective of providing additional growth vehicles for Bell and expanding our reach beyond technology management and support services to wireless solutions,” said John Fellows, Bell Industries’ chief executive officer. “SkyTel has a long and very distinct history of product innovation and market leadership.”
Ron McMurtrie, group president for specialized services for Verizon Business, said that the company agreed to sell SkyTel in order to “even more closely focus on our core businesses of global (Internet Protocol) services and next-generation services for large business and government customers, including advanced wireless services provided through Verizon Wireless.”
SkyTel was one of the nation’s largest paging companies during the height of the paging industry, which peaked in the late 1990s with around 40 million total users. The paging industry has been on the decline since the rise of the cell phone.