Analysts have long criticized operator-assisted dispatch as the weak link in the alphanumeric paging chain, citing its inherent lack of privacy and potential for misinterpreted messages.
But users have accepted these faults because there was no other way to get text messages to alphanumeric subscribers. The rising convergence of wireless networks with the Internet, however, is providing an alternative. Users can send text pages to friends and colleagues via e-mail, from Internet paging sites and from two-way pagers, and soon, from personal digital assistants.
But companies providing operator-assisted dispatching services insist these new technologies are not cutting them out of the messaging loop, saying operator-assisted dispatch remains the easiest way to send a text message, and therefore will always play a role.
Kim Haneke, director of marketing at San Diego-based National Dispatch Center Inc., said as the means to send text messages become more diversified, more people will adopt text messaging over numeric paging. Rather than replacing operator-assisted dispatch, she said, these new text messaging paths are helping grow the entire alphanumeric market.
“There’s still a growing need for operator-assisted dispatch,” Haneke said. “We’re seeing our numbers grow.”
“It’s opened up the knowledge of sending messages to alpha pagers,” agreed Ann Cairn, the company’s director of sales.
As two-way paging services evolve, Haneke said dispatch services will be in demand even more, connecting one-way paging customers to two-way users.
“They count on us even more to help bridge the gap,” Haneke said. The company already is doing so with BellSouth Wireless Data L.P.’s two-way Inter@ctive Paging service. The company assigns a phone number to pagers so customers without a two-way pager can send messages to those who have them. The operator can then transcribe the return two-way text message back to voice.
NDC is the largest provider of dispatch services in the country, with customers like Paging Network Inc., PageMart Wireless Inc. and Metrocall Inc.
Another smaller dispatch center, American Alpha Dispatch Services Inc. of New York, also sees little threat to the new technologies.
“That’s only a novelty. That’s not a tool,” said company President Sid Mandel regarding Internet-originated messaging. “Sure it’s cool, but if I want to send you a message by the Internet, I have to know who your carrier is and the carrier’s Web site. With operator-assisted dispatch, I only need to know the number.”
He admitted some fleet dispatching companies prefer Internet-based dispatching, but said fleet companies represent only a small piece of the total alphanumeric market.
Some analysts, however, believe these new technologies, and the move to two-way service, could put smaller dispatch centers out of business in three to four years.
Other storms
Dispatch centers have braved such storms before. The largest potential threat to dispatch centers in recent memory was a Federal Communications Commission decision to grant pay-phone operators compensation on a per-call basis for all toll-free numbers placed from their phones.
The pay-phone compensation ruling placed a 28.4 cent surcharge on each toll-free call originating from a pay phone to be paid by the owner of the number, usually a long-distance phone company. Dispatch centers buy large bulks of 800/888 toll-free numbers from long-distance companies to provide customers with personalized numbers for their nationwide alphanumeric paging service.
Because long-distance carriers mark up the surcharge to as much as 35 cents a call, dispatch centers expected to record thousands of dollars a month in extra charges with no added revenue coming in. Many paging carriers responded by blocking any toll-free number pages originating from pay phones, which dispatch centers felt reduced the value of their services.
Almost two years later, NDC says the ruling has had little effect.
“We haven’t seen an impact at all,” Haneke said.
Dispatch centers merely rolled the per-toll charge over to the paging carrier, which then either absorbed the cost or passed it on to the end user, while others blocked toll-free number calls altogether.
The initial opposition to the ruling “was due to not knowing what it might lead to,” Haneke said.
But American Alpha’s Mandel said he felt passing on toll-free charges to consumers has had serious ramifications, and in essence altered the nature of his business.
“By adding that fee they removed a low cost form of telecommunications,” he said. “It stagnated that form of communications and opened up room for something else to step in, that being (personal communications services).”
Still, dispatch centers have rolled with the punches. They began providing operator-assisted text messaging dispatch to PCS operators as well.
“We shifted focus,” he said. “The prices eroded to keep pace with the low cost of the markets. To survive, we now do PCS messaging. We found other markets to go into.”
