Inc.’s VoiceNow voice paging service is priced not only to compete, but to undercut industry rates for most numeric, alphanumeric and other advanced paging and messaging services.
The company turned on its voice paging service in Dallas, marketing to both personal and business users, which is reflected in the pricing structure, a broad array of distribution channels, new logo and a $10 million television, radio and newspaper advertising campaign.
VoiceNow is built on Motorola Inc.’s InFLEXion protocol, which operates at a capacity of up to about 112 kilobits per second. The pager allows callers to record a message and users can instantly play back and save messages.
“We try to be consumer friendly in all the (price) plans,” said David Carnevale, vice president of product marketing for VoiceNow.
Local service is priced at $5, $9 or $17 per month, plus the cost of the pager. For nationwide, service, all users pay just $1 more. Toll-free nationwide service costs $6 per month.
This is an innovative pricing structure, said corporate spokesman Scott Baradell. For current numeric and alphanumeric services, nationwide can cost about three times more than local service.
In the $5 package users receive 15 messages, and pay 40 cents for more messages. The $9 package buys 35 messages. Additional messages cost 30 cents each. For $17, users receive 75 messages and additional messages are billed at 25 cents each. In this last plan, extra messages are priced just above the cost per message-22.6 cents-of the packaged rate, so users won’t feel a crunch once the first 75 messages are used, Carnevale said.
Subscribers can lease a pager for $10 per month or purchase the unit for about $230. Comparatively, alphanumeric pagers run between $100 and $250. Two-way advanced messaging units cost between $200 and $400.
How can the carrier afford these lower rates? “Air estate,” responded Carnevale. More spectrum means the company needs fewer antennas to serve the same amount of customers. PageNet has two to four times the spectrum as any of its voice paging competitors, said Carnevale. The company won three nationwide channels at the narrowband personal communications services auction in 1994.
Further, an inherent property of InFLEXion provides network efficiency, and therefore cost efficiency. Traditionally, pages are broadcast over an entire region, which could be nationwide. With InFLEXion, the network sends a “where are you?” signal first in the user’s home region. If the pager is not detected, the signal is sent further. Once located, the network delivers the full voice message only to the transmission tower closest to the user.
Calls to a VoiceNow user are routed from the phone company to a PageNet paging terminal, which sends the message on a frame relay network to a transmitter, and the transmitter delivers the message to the pager.
PageNet said its total investment in VoiceNow exceeds $400 million.
In a month, PageNet plans to launch in another major city, and a month following that launch, the carrier will rollout service en masse. PageNet plans to offer service in 30 metropolitan markets by year’s end.
PageNet’s VoiceNow brand name appears on the pager, which is Motorola’s Tenor product. “We chose a name and a look that speaks to the boldness and high-tech aspects of VoiceNow but that is friendly,” explained Carnevale.
Branding is a new approach for PageNet. The company has never displayed the product name on the product itself. Most often, PageNet’s affiliates and resellers brand pagers with their own names. The PageNet name also appears on the pagers.
“Because we’re first to market with a voice pager and when we had the time and the ability to build brand we decided to do it strongly,” commented Carnevale. “It builds a strong franchise for PageNet,” he noted.
Advertising is in final production and will begin in a week or so, said the company. Carnevale said PageNet wants to make sure everything tested before launch holds in “real world use” before mass marketing the product.
One TV ad has a consumer bent, and the other speaks to business users, said PageNet.
VoiceNow will be marketed across all channels, including PageNet’s direct sales force, dealers, resellers, affiliates and mass electronics retailers.
In each type of outlet, the involvement of salespeople will vary, so PageNet packaged VoiceNow in a way that makes it easy for customers to understand the product and begin using it immediately. VoiceNow is for sale at Communications Expo electronics stores in Dallas.
GTE Mobilnet Inc. is the first PageNet affiliate to sign on with VoiceNow. Carnevale said GTE and other affiliates that market VoiceNow can start service in a market as soon as PageNet turns on the network in that market. GTE will brand VoiceNow using the product name and likely its own name.
VoiceNow is the only InFLEXion-based service that will be available until late this summer, as Motorola granted PageNet six-month exclusivity on its technology. Conxus Communications Inc. of Greenville, S.C., plans to launch the moment that contract expires. Spokeswoman Julie Greene said Conxus will deploy service in a number of markets concurrently. PageMart Wireless Inc. is licensed to use InFLEXion, but currently is focusing on building its ReFLEX 25 network.
Centigram Communications Inc. is supplying PageNet with enhanced services, including an option that allows users to access longer messages in a voice mail box. For instance, when a caller leaves a two-minute message, only the first 20 seconds will go to the pager. The complete message is stored in a voice mail box that users can access at their convenience. This frees up network capacity and allows users to navigate more quickly through new messages, explained Carnevale.
“More and more, people dislike long messages. We’ve heard from people the shorter the better. Twenty seconds seemed effective.”
VoiceNow also provides options for users to retrieve erased messages. Once they listen to and erase a message, subscribers can retrieve the message again from voice mail within 24 hours. PageNet offers this feature automatically. For a small fee, users can have messages stored three, five or 10 days.
