A Federal Express drop-box pages a route driver letting him know that it received no packages that day and that a stop is not necessary. A beer distributor sends an alphanumeric page to the 100 digital display signs he has in different liquor stores, changing that week’s sales special. A commuter pages her VCR to begin taping the show she will likely miss while stuck in traffic. A working mom pages her house for it to unlock the door as her kids are arriving home from school.
These are just some of the uses of paging technology that several in the industry are heralding as its future. Called “off-the-hip” paging applications, this market has the potential to either revolutionize the way the world views paging, or be just another highly touted flop.
Facing ever-growing subscriber numbers and revenue erosion, carriers are looking for ways to escape the “cheap beep” stigma. The idea is to create entirely new uses of existing paging technology so dissimilar from traditional applications that the word “page” hardly applies.
At the forefront of this idea is Motorola Inc.’s FLEX Architecture Solutions Division, formerly called the Derivative Technology Division. The group has spent some four years developing such uses for its FLEX family of paging technology.
“We are very market-focused today,” said Henry Pujol, vice president and director of the FASD. “We are concentrating on five key markets,” which include computers, automotive, utility, consumer products and vending machines. “Any one of these markets have a common thread. All have a basic need to access information and data [wirelessly].”
Paging’s ability to transmit short bursts of data, he said, makes it the perfect medium to do this and that carriers with existing one- or two-way FLEX networks can benefit from this. “They can use existing infrastructure to create new sources of revenue,” he said. “The reason Motorola is being so bullish on this is that we believe there are a lot more things out there than people, and that interface can really expand this market to a whole new world.”
Carriers interested in the idea agree. “The next thing you’ll see as a mass market for paging won’t be people, but things,” said Jeff Owens, chief technology officer for ProNet Inc. “It’s a different vertical market, but so much more in the way of volume potential. So many people want to have an effective way of controlling things, the cheapest way is with a wireless device.”
The potential benefit to carriers is enormous. Because most off-the-hip applications require broadcast signaling (one message sent to many different receivers), it uses very little capacity. “This is a very efficient utilization of spectrum,” Owens said. “It’s astronomically more cost effective,” when compared to the cost per message of individual pages.
These applications also might prove more essential to certain businesses than traditional paging uses. For example, Owens said that New York City loses millions in parking ticket and meter revenue because parking meters can only collect a finite amount of coins. When full, parking becomes free. If equipped with the proper transmitter, an individual parking meter can page the meter collector when its coin limit is approaching. The possibilities are limitless.
“I think when you look at what happened to paging … it’s become more of a commodity,” Owens said. However, using paging technology in these off-the-hip ways, “it becomes part of what it takes to do business. It’s a tool. People don’t view that as a pager.”
However, neither do some paging carriers. To be able to provide these off-the-hip applications, carriers need to develop an ancillary systems solutions device that can make sense of the different types of pages sent over the network. This takes a little investment and a group that does not have traditional paging on their minds.
“Most carriers in the industry today are focused on the traditional use of paging on people’s belt,” said Owens. “This is more of a systems solution approach. It requires a different kind of thinking.”
Products and applications currently available in this realm include those in the automotive and utility markets. For instance, the Toro lawn care company uses this type of application for its remote sprinkler activation system. When it’s raining, the company merely sends a broadcast page to all its sprinklers to shut off, saving water costs. The digital display traffic signs on some cities’ highways are nothing more than large alphanumeric pagers. In the automotive sector, alarm companies such as Clifford, PageStart and TelAlarm have products that allow a car to page its owner if it is stolen, and allow the owner to return a page to shut off the car’s ignition. Users also can start their car via a page and unlock the doors if the keys were left inside.
Eventually, FASD hopes to create paging devices for consumer products like VCRs, microwaves and hot tubs that can be activated remotely through paging. The FASD expects to announce in November agreements it has with computer manufacturers for new products in that field that will allow users to page their laptop computers with a command to shut down if they are discovered lost or stolen. Pujol said he expects an entrance into the vending machine business soon, so vending machines can page inventory and malfunction information. Some companies already monitor vending machines via wireless technology.
The idea of off-the-hip paging is still in its infancy and as such has no record of success or failure. But this is an industry that considers talk cheap. Two-way messaging was supposed to revolutionize the market, as was voice paging, but to date neither has lived up to the expectations placed upon them. Whether off-the-hip paging applications live up to the hype they’ve been given remains to be seen, but Pujol believes the baby steps have begun.
“We have to start from a specific base and expand from there,” he said.
