MELBOURNE, Australia-In a bid to revive Australia’s flagging paging market, Hutchison Telecom has launched a new data broadcasting network using the VHF band and Motorola’s FLEX protocol.
The new system will be used to broadcast a range of information services, including financial exchange data and finance news from Reuters, Bridge and the Sydney Futures Exchange. Hutchison is also expected to broadcast general news as well as sports news and sports-betting information, but negotiations with content providers are continuing.
Hutchison is yet to reveal the name of its new service.
“It’s the only place we see life in the Australian (paging) market,” said Hutchison Telecom’s information services manager Justin Nelson. “There’s nothing in normal messaging. The FLEX network is creating a new market.”
The decline in the Australian paging market mirrors a worldwide trend, due in part to the impact of digital mobile telephony’s short message services.
Hutchison’s new FLEX network will duplicate the coverage footprint of the company’s existing POCSAG system. While FLEX can carry message traffic, Hutchison is unlikely to promote its system for this use.
Nelson said the advantage of FLEX over its POCSAG system is speed. Where FLEX offers 6400 bits per second throughput, POCSAG has throughput of just 2400 bps. FLEX also has a pixil format rather than being character-based.
This means the new paging network is able to send bit-map images that can be represented as charts, logos or, as is being done in the United States, advertisements.
The service will also keep users continually up to date with “live” information. Hutchison’s existing POCSAG newspager is updated only three times a day.
Hutchison says subscribers will pay between A$100 (US$66) and A$200 (US$132) a month for the financial services. Rates for other services are still being finalized.
Hutchison said it has between 90,000 and 100,000 subscribers in Australia, but is reluctant to reveal subscriber targets for FLEX. Nelson did say, however, that Hutchison hopes to triple the size of its existing content paging market.
Telecom research firm The Strategis Group indicated in a report last year that many operators of POCSAG would upgrade to FLEX. Motorola upgraded Telecom New Zealand’s paging network to FLEX last year.
