The paging industry in North America is making moves that are changing the way the public thinks about paging. It is impacting the way people communicate, and it is opening an entirely new arena for the development and expansion of wireless messaging.
The move is to two-way paging. And the jump to two-way communications from traditional paging is such a radical leap that the term “paging” as it is used today will practically become obsolete.
The reason? The world of traditional paging is one where subscribers see a phone number on their paging device and then find a phone to return the call. In recent years, the world of paging has expanded to add word messaging, allowing subscribers to receive actual text messages in addition to a phone number. But to respond, a phone is still necessary.
The inherent problem with one-way paging, though, is the uncertainty of whether the message reaches the device.
Because of the inherent technology of narrowband PCS, a two-way network knows the geographic area of every device operating in its frequency. The network also can recognize if the device is turned off or out of coverage range. It can tell whether or not a message was garbled in transmission.
The ultimate idea of two-way wireless messaging and the technology behind it, though, is to provide the subscriber with a communications tool that allows them to respond to messages received by the paging device. The creation of “wireless chat” is a development that consumers have been asking for since the early 1990s.
In addition to wireless chat, the development of narrowband PCS networks make telemetry, or machine-to-machine communications, a significant opportunity for two-way networks.
Rumors of the paging industry’s death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, for every reason given for the demise of paging, two more surface for its vitality.
Two U.S. companies have already completed construction of their nationwide narrowband PCS networks and are offering service on those networks-PageMart Wireless and SkyTel, a company recently acquired by MCI/WorldCom.
Ten companies in the industry that support the use of the Motorola-developed two-way paging protocol known as ReFLEX have formed the Personal Communicator Wireless Alliance. The goal of the alliance is to work with manufacturers of personal digital assistants, or PDAs, to develop devices embedded with ReFLEX chipsets.
This unified goal was born of the vision of a two-device future-one for voice and one for data. In fact, The Yankee Group research indicated 51 percent of cellular subscribers of less than one year also use paging devices. That vision, and research, was the impetus for development of the Synapse Pager Card, the first time paging was integrated with the PalmPilot.
With the introduction of broadband PCS and digital cellular, a wave of concern arose over paging’s future because of the allure of new offerings such as short messaging services, better known as SMS. The concept of smart phones with short messaging service combines the functionality of a cellular phone with a wireless data device. However, the networks built by paging companies are optimized for SMS because they were designed for in-building coverage, wide geographic coverage, and devices that are on for a month without changing batteries.
As a result, the paging industry’s advanced messaging systems will become an integral part of SMS as people send data messages from phones to pagers and vice versa. The paging industry is well-positioned for the coming explosion of device-to-device communications in the United States.
The role of paging inside an organization is changing dramatically. And the creation of two-way networks has breathed life into an industry that is determined to re-invent itself and provide important services for decades to come.
John D. Beletic is chairman of the the Personal Communicator Wireless Alliance, and is chairman and CEO of U.S.-based PageMart Wireless Inc.
