The desire of European paging carriers to migrate to a two-way paging paradigm has opened the paging market there-once dominated by the ERMES transmission standard-to FLEX-based paging systems.
Although prepaid paging plans have resulted in explosive growth in the European paging market during the last two years, carriers there now face declining subscriber additions and lower service revenues. Their plan for survival-migrate to two-way paging and achieve pan-European roaming.
Jacques Couvas, chairman of the European Public Paging Association, called for a unified European paging market, reasoning that a unified paging protocol and frequency would allow European operators to claim all of Europe as their customer base, rather than a base fragmented by national borders.
“It is vital that the European paging industry achieves a common protocol and common frequency for one- and two-way paging as soon as possible,” he said. “If we want the paging industry to survive and grow … we need to have a big market to address. We can do that by achieving roaming throughout the EU and beyond, to attract investors and application developers. We can’t do that today … We need a unified market of 350 million.”
The idea of a pan-European paging network-one that would allow paging customers to receive service in any European country on the same pager-was central to the European Commission’s decision to name ERMES its paging standard. Since 1991, all paging operators building one-way networks were required to use ERMES.
But a Europe-wide ERMES network never took shape, as operators there rebelled against the protocol, demanding they be given free rein to implement the technology they liked.
ERMES is designed for high-speed transmission in urban areas. The protocol has a fixed baud rate of 6250, and is not considered optimized for rural environments.
More importantly, it is a one-way protocol with no current two-way migration path. ERMES carriers are working with Nexus Telocation Systems Ltd., an Israel-based firm, to add a return channel to ERMES networks using a frequency hopping broadband technology.
This lack of a two-way solution gives FLEX an opportunity to penetrate a market denied it until just two years ago. FLEX has a set migration path to two-way services, based on narrowband transmission. It has no fixed baud rate and is considered better designed for rural areas. Also, FLEX networks are cheaper to build than ERMES, and there are more pager manufacturers making FLEX-based devices. Only three manufacturers build ERMES pagers.
Motorola Inc.’s technology was introduced to Western Europe by German operator Deutsch Funkfuf Gesellschaft, which launched a FLEX paging network in September of 1997. Less than four months later, the International Telecommunication Union approved the FLEX protocol as an international paging standard. Since then, paging operators in France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have adopted FLEX-based systems, some in conjunction with ERMES networks.
Perhaps the most significant sign of the European paging industry’s desire to be technologically neutral was when the ERMES MoU, an organization promoting the use of ERMES, merged into the technologically agnostic EPPA.
“The message is that the industry wants to focus on services and not on technology,” Couvas said. “Operators want to work together regardless of technology and develop applications.”
This is all FLEX manufacturers ask, according to Pat Koons, vice president and general manager of Motorola’s European and Middle East Advanced Paging Systems Division. After Germany introduced the first FLEX paging system in Western Europe last year, Koons said: “We think that there should be freedom of choice. What we like to do is offer FLEX and whatever is the most economical, they will pick. The market always decides.”
Couvas said he believes the European market can sustain both protocols, pointing out that several of the European carriers offering FLEX also operate ERMES networks.
“Both protocols can be supported, especially in the two way-model,” he said, going as far as to call for a pager that transmits and receives on both protocols at once.
The licensing committee of the EU has set a harmonized frequency for ERMES, meaning the protocol can be available on any frequency across the continent. The group also has set frequencies for ReFLEX transmission. It has yet to assign frequencies for ERMES’ two-way solution.
Couvas said the need for a two-way solution far outweighs any protocol standard, and that reality will drive the use of any protocol that can deliver a two-way paging solution.
“People in Europe are spoiled by (Global System for Mobile communications),” he said. “People want interactive services. One-way is limited in that effort … This is a transition year, paging growth is slowing down. We are changing the vision of the industry. We expect to see two-way systems next year and expect growth to go up again next year.”
