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August 1-15, 1996 |
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Pagers Come of Age
By Jon Pepper
Reprinted by permission from Home Office Computing, January 1996
If you want to be accessible to all your clients all the time without being tied to a specific location,
you need a pager. Pagers are probably the only piece of electronic equipment both schoolchildren
and CEOs find equally useful, and unless you've been living under a rock, you know that they've
undergone a tremendous surge in popularity over the past two years. In fact, pagers have become
so ubiquitous that they are now commodity items. The devices that used to be the exclusive domain
of doctors and emergency workers now come in a dazzling array of designer colors as well as
embedded in watches and pens. For less than the cost of basic cable service, today you can buy
24-hour nationwide accessibility.
But ubiquitous as they are, pagers are still an evolving technology. A steady stream of innovation
keeps basic paging standards on a permanent upward curve. Alphanumeric pagers are becoming
increasingly common -- several software packages are available that allow senders to use their PCs
to transmit text messages directly to compatible pagers, and many companies now offer the ability
to send e-mail directly to your hip. Pagers are well on their way to overtaking cellular phones as the
remote communications tool of choice for business. Their convenience, along with their
noninvasiveness (meaning, you don't have to talk to someone to receive or respond to a message),
has already proved a winning combination; further functionality should only cement their popularity.
And as we found in researching this article, there's no shortage of new pager functionality.
A two-way street
Perhaps the most exciting development is in the nascent area of two-way paging. As the name
implies, two-way paging allows you to not only receive a message from someone but also to
respond directly from your paging unit. Based on new radio frequencies recently auctioned off by
the FCC, two-way paging is expected to grab as much as one-third of the 100 million strong one-
way paging market. Just as one-way paging extended the reach of the workplace, two-way paging
closes the communication loop and promises to transform how and where business takes place.
The first company to offer nationwide two-way paging is SkyTel (800-759-8737), though others
are sure to join the market in short order. The SkyTel system consists of a 5.5-ounce pager with a
four- line, 20-character LCD display. It can receive text messages of up to 500 characters, and
functions as a basic numeric and alphanumeric pager as well as a two-way solution. When you
receive a message, you can respond immediately to the sender by choosing from a list of responses
they've composed for you (for example, "Where would you like to meet? 1. John's office 2. Rick's
office") or by using any of 16 responses preloaded with the pager (including, "Will call later," "OK,"
or "On my way"). In addition, you can compose original responses of up to 95 characters using a
cable connection to a Hewlett-Packard palmtop, then zap them off into the ether. You can also
take advantage of SkyTel's presence on the MSN, the Microsoft® Network. This enables you to send and receive messages directly from MSN, using messaging software that SkyTel has developed.
The cost of two-way paging is, of course, higher than for standard service -- $15 a month to lease
a pager, plus $24.95 a month for basic local service with 100 free messages. If you want
nationwide coverage, the cost nearly triples to $74.95 a month, but includes 200 free messages.
The vocal minority
The next landmark on the pager horizon is voice capability. A service called VoiceNow provided
by PageNet (800-724-3638) offers what amounts to a portable answering machine/pager
combination. Callers use an 800 number to leave a voice message, which PageNet then transmits
to a paging unit. Rather than alphanumeric text, VoiceNow stores up to four minutes of voice
messages that you can play back just as if you had dialed in to your voice-mail system. Local
VoiceNow service is expected to cost around $20 a month.
But the voice innovations don't stop there. BellSouth MobileComm (800-234-6542), the other of
the big three nationwide carriers (along with Mtel and PageNet), is poised to offer ReadyTalk, a
system that combines two-way and voice paging. This system allows you to reply to voice
messages directly, by speaking into the paging unit. The company estimates this service will cost
under $30 a month, plus $10 a month for the lease of the ReadyTalk pager unit. Unlike the other
two pagers we previously discussed, however, which use the freshly minted personal
communications services frequencies, the ReadyTalk unit uses the existing cellular network. This
means the system might not work as smoothly as the other two in certain circumstances -- if the
network is very busy, for example. However, the actual loss in productivity won't matter to most
users. Congestion would only mean a message takes 15 minutes to deliver rather than five or less.
Its in the cards
If you already have a notebook PC, there's a new hybrid breed of pagers that take advantage of
your notebook's power. This new evolution of the pager combines page reception with a PC Card
that interfaces directly with your notebook. That means you can receive not only alphanumeric
pages but binary files as well, just as if you were doing a file transfer over the Internet or online
services. However, there are still some drawbacks to PC Card pagers and messaging software.
First, PC Card pagers are far more expensive than basic or even two-way pagers. Second,
transferring a large file will eat up untold numbers of message units, driving subscription costs
through the roof if you plan to use it a lot. If you're interested in extensive wireless file transfers, you
probably want to do price comparisons with available radio and cellular services. Until messaging
prices come down, this method may be prohibitively expensive.
A soft spot for paging
On the software side, several companies are creating innovative solutions for sending alphanumeric
pages, some of which are proprietary, some of which can send to a variety of pagers. When you
sign up for service with a particular company, they'll let you know exactly what software you need.
One of the most innovative developments in pager software is Ex Machina's Reach Me! service
(800-238-4738). When you sign up for this service, you'll receive a box of disks with your
business information printed on each. The disks contain Ex Machina's paging software
preconfigured to send your pager an alphanumeric message. All your clients (or potential clients)
have to do is pop in the disk, run the software, type in a message, and bingo, they've reached you.
The "neato" factor associated with this method may well garner you a call-back or two you might
not have otherwise gotten.
The pager is one of the simplest business communications tools around and one of the most
powerful. Pagers are moving from being passive devices to active ones, and their attendant
functionality is moving to a level that can make a big difference for small businesses. If you already
have a pager, the advantages of these new options will be immediately apparent. If you haven't
moved to a pager yet, then these new technologies might be just the thing that leads you to take that
step.
Jon Pepper is a Massachusetts-based writer who covers technology for The New York Times,
Nation's Business, and numerous international publications.
Copyright 1996 Home Office Computing
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