Paging Technology

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Here is a recent article I came across:

Feature (Full-Length)

Niche markets give paging a brighter future

By Glenn Bischoff

July 31, 2006

Once devices such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants gained mass-market penetration and their prices plummeted, it seemed only a matter of time before paging joined Betamax, LPs and 8-tracks on the evolutionary scrap heap. However, niche opportunities in the enterprise sector not only are giving paging a new lease on life, they are creating a scenario in which the ancient--at least in technology terms--platform will thrive for many years to come.

According to Jay Lemmons, owner of Technology at Work, a consultancy based in Sacramento, Calif., paging in the consumer marketplace experienced a serious regression--"Ten years ago, it was hot, now it's not"--but has seen healthy activity in the enterprise space because it offers the only means of delivering a message immediately to a large number of recipients. "A hospital isn't going to send a 'code red' out to staff using cell phones," he said.

One factor that makes pagers attractive to enterprise communications managers is that they generally are less costly than mobile phones and PDAs -- which is particularly important for companies that employ hundreds of thousands of people. They also can take much more physical abuse than their more sophisticated cousins, which makes pagers the device of choice in rugged industries such as construction. Also, many pagers are rated intrinsically safe--unlike cell phones and PDAs, which almost universally are not--making them an attractive option in hazardous environments, Lemmons said.

While messaging applications undeniably have become more sophisticated, particularly over the past two years with the advent of text-to-voice and voice-to-text conversions, such technology advances become irrelevant when users are in situations where they don't have time or opportunity to look at the display screen, said Jerry Wanger, CEO of paging equipment vendor Connect Systems, who added, "people are still buying paging systems."

Don Klabunde, vice president of vendor DX Radio Systems, agreed, pointing to the medical profession as a prime example. "Most doctors want pagers because they don't want to have to answer the phone," he said. "Only in emergencies do they want to talk to a device. Consequently, just about every hospital has a paging system, and they're being upgraded in huge numbers."

Regarding the concept of next-generation technology, Klabunde suggested that paging vendors would be wise to push what is still a comparatively unsophisticated platform that hasn't changed much since its inception to the next level. "We have to devise ways to use paging systems to more benefit than just paging," he said, adding that a good first step would be to develop ways for pagers to interact with other devices. For example, pagers in the future could be used to manage heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems across an enterprise campus.

A precursor for such a scenario can be found in the public utility sector, which already is embracing paging in a major way, and not just for pushing out alerts to field personnel, according to Klabunde. Increasingly, power companies are engaging in the practice of load shedding -- the tactic of cutting current to certain lines when demand exceeds supply -- and are using paging systems to read meters and send signals to switches. "It saves a truck roll," Klabunde said.

Another key factor behind paging's continued popularity in the enterprise sector is that the cost of deploying and operating a two-tone paging system is considerably less than operating a text-messaging system, Wanger said. This is particularly important because many of the firms that provided paging services went out of business when the consumer marketplace dried up. As a result, more and more businesses are deploying, maintaining and operating their own systems.

"Two-tone utilizes simple algorithms, so it doesn't take up a lot of processing power. More sophisticated systems require a lot more resources. Any time you have more computations, you use more power," he said, adding that more sophisticated systems "are also more difficult to figure out how they work." Consequently, paging systems are good choices for companies that may not have the resources to keep RF technicians on staff.

Factor in the amortization cycles for legacy systems and the cost-prohibitive nature of forklift replacements, and it's easy to see why many entities in the enterprise sector are choosing to stay with their paging systems even when next-generation systems capable of accomplishing much more are available.

"People can't afford to buy new radios just because [vendors] have better technology," Wanger said.

This is particularly true for the hundreds of volunteer fire departments that dot America, according to Chuck Soulliard, owner of vendor Midian Electronics. "They need a cheap form of communication they can stick on their belts. They get the message immediately, so they can respond more quickly," he said, noting that there "seemed to be more interest" in paging at IWCE 2006, which was held in Las Vegas in May.

While Midian is working on a next-generation paging system it hopes to launch by the end of 2006 that will add a voice component, Soulliard said basic analog systems would continue to be relevant for quite some time. "It works and doesn't require a device on every street corner to make sure it works," he said.

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Q&A (Full-Length)

Increasingly, first responders are getting the message

By Donny Jackson

July 31, 2006

Public-safety entities are using various forms of messaging services to communicate information as efficiently as possible. MRT Senior Writer Donny Jackson recently spoke with Charles Werner, chief of the Charlottesville (Va.) Fire Department, to discuss trends he sees in the industry.

How does your department use messaging services?

Our [computer-aided dispatch system] is tied into a third-party software platform. In one sense, we're able to take a simple alphanumeric pager, put it on all the fire trucks and create what you might call a poor man's mobile data computer. They get all the calls specific to their unit on the pager in addition to the voice [communication] that comes out--so you have a duplicate automatic-dispatch service.

It's a good way to get information ... and it's relatively inexpensive to put in place. The pagers are about $20 per month, and the software for the CAD interface is about $3000.

You mentioned messaging as a duplicate service. Are some departments using messaging as the primary means of communication?

Some fire departments are using dispatch for calls solely. They're using the two-way paging capability so that, when the page goes out, they can press their button and also indicate that they're responding. So the dispatcher gets information back about which of the people are responding to the call.

What are the advantages of communicating via messaging?

Text gives us the information in a written form that we can look at and read. It's particularly important if you've got a large volume of calls being dispatched and the radio traffic is too heavy or you can't hear. Obviously, you're getting your calls right to your pager, so you don't need to call back to dispatch [to repeat the message], so it cuts out a lot of unnecessary voice communications.

We're reducing the amount of communications by voice that we have to do because of data. I think that's why you're seeing data coming up pretty quick in terms of the level of importance. Data becomes more important because you can get things taken care of more quickly.

Are there times when you'd rather use messaging than voice?

In a police situation, they may need information like that without any noise. For us, it's more of a convenience thing--when you're in meetings, you don't want to be interruptive. For police, it could be more of a sensitive issue.

The pagers are also used to send sensitive medical information, where you can't violate [privacy laws] and you don't want information of a personal nature to get out. The message is going out specifically to that pager, so it's not going out over the general voice network to multiple people. You don't want to broadcast that to volumes of people who don't necessarily need to know that information ... or someone with a scanner to pick it up.

What do you see in the future?

If the coverage were in place, I think that pagers, cell phones, broadband and that type of stuff could be wrapped up in one nice neat little package and, potentially, reduce the amount of redundant equipment that I need to carry. Right now, I carry a BlackBerry, cell phone and pager all the time ... and an LMR radio at an incident scene. If the coverage was really good, I could probably go with one device, like a PDA.