ORLANDO, Fla.-In an effort to move from a provider of mere product to that of end-to-end solutions, Glenayre Technologies Inc. announced at PCS ’98 an enhanced services platform designed to help paging carriers offer higher-cost services to customers.
Lee Ellison, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing, said Glenayre recognizes paging carriers are under pressure from investors to become profitable and free cash flow positive. The company believes wireless e-mail and two-way messaging are the paradigms for future growth that could achieve this goal, Ellison said.
Therefore, Glenayre has introduced what it believes will be revenue-generating enhanced services: Call Out, Personal Conference and the Rating Engine. The new solutions will be delivered directly from Glenayre’s GL3000 wireless messaging switch via software upgrades, said the company.
Call Out allows subscribers to check for voice messages and dial out to make local or long-distance calls without leaving their voice mailbox, in turn allowing paging carriers to take advantage of the local and long-distance calling market, the company said. Personal Conference gives users the ability to connect to paging subscribers by sending a page notifying them a caller is on hold, identified by either phone number or name.
Rating Engine is the billing package that allows carriers to generate income from these added services. It enables per-second billing for both and includes a flat-rate or distance-based rating, least-cost call routing and account balance inquiry and notification. It also allows carriers to bill subscribers based on the number and size of alphanumeric messages.
Additionally, Glenayre announced new services for its existing Internet Gateway, including Mailbox Copy, Single Identity and Mail Forwarding Detection.
Mailbox Copy lets subscribers store e-mails in the desktop mailbox, sending an additional copy of all wireless-originated e-mail to the desktop for a historical thread of communication. Single Identity makes pager-originated e-mail look like it was sent from the desktop; so instead of the pager’s personal identification number, those receiving pages can identify the sender based on his or her personalized e-mail address.
Mail Forwarding Detection gives the Internet Gateway the ability to detect e-mail messages that automatically have been forwarded to a pager, so users can choose when to turn the e-mail forwarding option on or off.
Finally, Glenayre’s Wireless Access Group announced its new AccessLink II two-way pager is available for carriers transmitting on the ReFLEX 25 protocol. The first incarnation of the pager, introduced in June, was available only to ReFLEX 50 carriers.
SkyTel Communications Inc. is the only carrier making the device available. PageMart Wireless Inc. is in the process of rolling out a ReFLEX 25 network across the country, with service currently available in more than 100 cities. Conxus Communication Inc., Paging Network Inc. and MobileMedia Corp. also are building out ReFLEX 25 systems.
