NEW YORK-Omnipoint Communications Inc. opened for business Nov. 14, but a full-scale promotional campaign for its first personal communications services network-in the New York City metropolitan area-won’t start for another week or so.
By then, roaming will be possible in portions of Southern California, the District of Columbia area and the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, George Schmitt, president, said. The rest of California, the Carolinas and areas like Kansas City, Mo., and Pittsburgh should be hooked up for roaming by year-end. Roaming in Canada should be possible later this month. With carriers in 30 European and Asian nations, execution of roaming services awaits resolution of data transfer and currency exchange issues.
Gary Cuccio, Omnipoint’s vice president, said the rollout outside of New York and eastern New Jersey will proceed this way: major Connecticut cities will go live in the first quarter of next year; the rest of Connecticut, downstate New York counties nearest New York City as well as Philadelphia and the Delaware cities of Dover and Wilmington will be commercially operating by early summer; service will begin in late summer in Wichita, Kan., and Amarillo, Texas, while Thanksgiving 1997 will mark the launch date of Omnipoint service in western Massachusetts and Vermont.
At a Nov. 14 press conference at one of its new company stores, on Madison Avenue, Schmitt said he wanted to be sure he could drive around the entire island of Manhattan and make and get a PCS call without problems before television and radio ads are aired in the New York City metropolitan area.
Advertising will stress the Omnipoint brand rather than PCS technology, services offered and pricing simplicity. It is offering three, no-contract monthly price plans: $20, $30 and $40. All packages include $5 of usage, interconnection fees and network charges.
The basic package includes a built-in answering machine, numeric paging, call forwarding, call waiting and also will offer short e-mail service. However, e-mail won’t be available for another month or two, until fire walls are built to prevent customers from receiving unwanted messages.
Asked about AT&T Corp.’s newly branded Digital PCS, Schmitt said, “It’s the old AT&T in a new kimono with the same old U.S. TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) system. It’s messaging is one-way.”
He added, however, that he doesn’t want to “belittle AT&T.” Schmitt also said he believes that New York City is under-penetrated at 12 percent, so that PCS offerings will enlarge the market for all wireless players.
Omnipoint’s peak period rate within the immediate environs of New York City is 49 cents per minute, with an off-peak rate of 25 cents. All long-distance calls within Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands will cost 69 cents per minute; the rate to Western Europe and major Asian nations is 99 cents; the rate anywhere else in the world is $1.99.
There are matching rates for calls back to the United States. And there are discounts of 5 percent to 25 percent for customers whose usage is greater than $50 per month. No long-distance call surcharges will be added to these rates.
The New York City area rollout has been delayed by Nynex Corp., which has dragged its feet on installing T-1 lines needed to operate base stations. By Nov. 13, Nynex had connected “a good hunk” of sites, Schmitt said, although he didn’t know the exact number. Ten days earlier, 70 of the 140 needed for initial launch were in, and a total of 150 to 250 should be installed by year-end, he added. In the early part of next year, the number of cell sites deployed should top 500.
Meanwhile, two Omnipoint company stores are open for business in Manhattan and another in Queens, with a company store on Staten Island being prepared for opening. The Queens and Manhattan stores are open, and anyone walking in to buy will be able to do so, although they will be warned of problem areas, Schmitt said. Nobody Beats the Wiz, a large electronics retailer, is preparing its characteristically boisterous advertising for Omnipoint kiosks inside its stores.
Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples The Office Superstore and Sears Roebuck and Co. also will be retailing Omnipoint’s PCS, said James Robertiello, senior director of sales. A direct sales force of about 40 is targeting “Fortune 5000 companies, what we call `multiple line operations’,” he said. A staff of telemarketers is in place in the company’s Bethlehem, Pa., customer service center, which also will activate all new customers, who must dial “611” on their new handsets.
Omnipoint is selling Ericsson Inc.’s 337 for $199, the Ericsson Flip Phone for $209, Motorola Inc.’s Spirit 1500 for $229 and Nokia Corp.’s 2190 for $249. Anyone moving into the area who already owns a Global System for Mobile communications PCS phone can use their existing handset once it is equipped with an Omnipoint SIM (subscriber identity modules) card, Schmitt said.
Mark Caron, senior director of marketing development, said he expects at least five other manufacturers to offer American-style GSM PCS handsets next year: Alcatel Telecom, Mitsubishi Wireless Telecommunications Inc., Northern Telecom Ltd., Siemens Corp. and Sagem SA.
Sagem also is working on prototypes for Omnipoint’s Interim Standard 661 network, but the handsets are too bulky and heavy, so IS-661 is a year or two away from commercial deployment.
“Philips (Wireless Group) says they will build us a phone, but you never know with them whether they’re in the business until you sign a contract,” Schmitt said. “Audiovox (Cellular Communications) also said they’d build us a phone, and we’d be interested in doing business with them.”
Ericsson and Northern Telecom Ltd. supplied Omnipoint’s infrastructure. “Motorola has indicated it may build a base station, and a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies (Inc.) said it will build one,” said Harry Plonskier, vice president of finance.
