Voice paging service will get another chance at success as Conxus Communications Inc. launches Pocketalk in the nation’s capital and South Florida.
Conxus said it launched service last week in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Fla., and in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore metropolitan area, including nearby areas of Virginia.
The network uses Motorola Inc.’s InFLEXion technology with infrastructure provided by Glenayre Technologies Inc.
Conxus is the first company to launch a voice paging network using the InFLEXion voice protocol in the United States since Paging Network Inc. introduced its VoiceNow service. PageNet enjoyed exclusive rights to the technology in the United States through Sept. 1. However, PageNet’s rollout of the service has been disappointing. Amtel, a paging provider in Puerto Rico, operates an InFLEXion network there.
Paging carriers and Conxus investors Metrocall Inc. and Arch Communications Group Inc. will sell Pocketalk service, as well as several resellers. Conxus estimates service will cost an average of $20 a month, with the Motorola Tenor unit selling for between $150 and $180.
Marketed as an “answering machine for your pocket,” Pocketalk users can receive unlimited 30-second voice messages, three minutes of which may be saved in the unit while an unlimited number can be stored in the system’s voice-mail network backup.
Julie Greene, Conxus marketing director, said Conxus feels resellers will “do better with this product than with a regular, one-way product.”
Greene said the company will remain focused on its initial markets through the end of the year, fully training the sales force and ensuring its distribution system works. Conxus chose the South Florida and Washington markets because they are relatively close to the company’s home office in Greenville, S.C. Also, Greene noted Washington is considered a public-relations hot spot, since it is both the nation’s capital and a wireless-savvy area. Greene said Conxus was attracted to the South Florida because of its large Hispanic community, which is considered a lucrative market for voice-based paging services.
The company plans to continue the Pocketalk rollout on a city-by-city basis throughout next year. Conxus is marketing the new service with help from Motorola, which has produced television and radio advertising spots that the service providers can tag themselves.
Motorola and Conxus have been working together to develop marketing strategies, train the sales force and conduct various network tests, said Ellen Foreman, Motorola’s director of marketing, paging products group.
“We have learned from experience the importance of a reliable, high-quality network,” said Cecil Duffie, chief executive officer of Conxus. “Our engineering team has designed and built a system that offers consistent in-building penetration throughout a sizable coverage footprint. Each market was then thoroughly grid-tested with literally thousands of pages to ensure that rigorous system performance standards were met.”
The grid testing involved some 20 engineers testing each market for latency and voice quality.
