Motorola Inc.’s Messaging Systems Products Group announced that the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union approved its FLEX paging protocol as an international paging standard.
The Geneva-based organization’s ITU-R Recommendation M.584-3 on Codes and Formats for Radio Paging included the high-speed paging protocol on its list of acceptable paging technologies. ITU, established in 1865, is the telecommunications arm of the United Nations and is the primary standards body for international telecommunications networks and services.
The protocol was first presented to the ITU by the Japanese government, which has adopted FLEX as its national paging standard, and was supported by several other member states throughout the approval process.
The approval by ITU should help Motorola’s efforts to further expand its FLEX operations in Western Europe, by far the most significant major market reluctant to adopt the technology. As yet, only one Western European country, Germany, has a FLEX-based paging system operating. Germany’s Deutsch Funkruf Gesellschaft launched its FLEX network in September.
Motorola said it hopes FLEX’s addition in Germany will act as a foothold for entrance into the rest of the Western European market. Germany leads Europe as the eighth largest international paging market. Other notable European paging markets include the United Kingdom, 11th; France, 14th; the Netherlands; 15th; and Sweden, 20th.
Despite its lucrative wireless telephony market, Europe has relatively poor paging penetration. The European Union adopted a paging technology standard called European Radio Messaging Service, or ERMES, but it has not been well received by operators. Analysts have criticized the protocol, saying it has problems with interference and system robustness.
At the European Public Paging Association annual conference earlier this year in Nice, France, about 74 percent of paging industry delegates said they believed operators should have the option to choose their technology standard. Many of these delegates said they would implement FLEX if regulations permitted, Motorola reported at the time.
A total of 141 FLEX technology-based systems are in commercial operation in 31 countries, representing 92 percent of the world’s paging subscriber base, according to Motorola. The standard has been adopted by 18 of the top 20 U.S. paging carriers, as well as by paging providers in Canada, Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. It is the national paging standard in Japan, Korea, India, Russia and China. As such, the company has worked to get international recognition for some time.
“Since the FLEX communications protocol is the worldwide de facto market standard for high-speed paging, we are very pleased that the ITU has found it appropriate to recommend the FLEX one-way paging protocol,” said John Steadman, vice president and director of Licensing and Strategic Alliances for Motorola’s Messaging Systems Products Group. “FLEX has truly become an international standard as further evidenced by this recognition. We applaud the ITU’s efforts to accomplish this.”
