The option to pay in advance for wireless service is booming in the cellular industry. The same trend may soon spread in paging.
Grab ‘n Go is a prepaid beeper package unveiled by SkyTel Corp. and Sony Wireless Telecommunications Co. at PCS ’96 earlier this month. Customers pay one price for a pager and a set quantity of numeric pages. There are no monthly bills and no fees.
Concurrently, Sony has introduced two numeric pagers, the MP-1000 and MP-2000, flagging its entrance into the consumer paging market.
Whereas prepaid cellular’s main target is people with poor or no credit or those who are on a budget, SkyTel and Sony’s intention with Grab n’ Go is to make its mark among infrequent users concerned about cost.
“There is a large segment of the consumer market who would like to use a pager on occasion for safety and convenience purposes, but do not feel that their call volume would justify the ongoing monthly cost,” said Sanford Weisman, vice president and general manager of SkyTel’s consumer products group.
A Grab n’ Go purchase includes the MP-1000 pager and 50 pages for a suggested retail price of $100. Grab n’ Go will be marketed through Sony’s retail channels and also can be purchased directly from SkyTel.
Pager in hand, new customers need only call a toll-free number to immediately enable the device to receive pages. Subscribers can purchase further packages of pages in quantities of 25 or 100.
“Retailers can stock and sell paging just like they would any other consumer product,” added Weisman.
After a subscriber issues a page, the pager’s screen shows how many pages remain. Once the remaining number of pages drops below 10, the user is reminded to buy more. Customers have a year to use the prepaid pages.
While SkyTel is the first paging carrier to announce a prepaid paging plan, Paging Network Inc. introduced its Value Page caller pays paging service a few months ago, for a similar reason: cost.
Analyst Ian Gillott of IDC/Link Resources, in Austin, Texas, said that while local monthly service is still very cheap, “that is still a barrier for a lot of people.”
The Grab n’ Go or Value Page user likely doesn’t expect to use paging service for business, but for personal and safety reasons and infrequently enough that current monthly service fees still seem too high and signing a contract is not worth the effort.
“You can go and buy a teenager a pager as a cool and trendy present without incurring any monthly charges,” said Gillott referring to Value Page. “It becomes a pretty good gift as opposed to a liability and I think that’s where it’s going to pay off.”
“It becomes a safety item if you like,” continued Gillott.
Value Page currently is being tested and PageNet expects to market the service at about $75, for pager and activation. Callers will likely be charged a flat per page rate.
Sony and SkyTel said Grab n’ Go will be available is stores Nov. 1. Sony and SkyTel said they hope Grab n’ Go will become a popular holiday gift.
In Sony’s and SkyTel’s arrangement, the companies agreed Sony will distribute SkyTel’s numeric SkyPage and alphanumeric SkyWord products through its authorized dealers, including electronics and computer superstores, consumer electronics retailers and mass merchandisers. Through Sony, SkyTel has anchored its broadest retail consumer distribution channel to date.
Sony Wireless Telecommunications, a division of Sony Electronics Inc., supports paging, analog and digital cellular products.
