Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 30, 1994 TAG: 9411300048
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It happened twice, and I was in the restroom both times. That's pretty much my personal experience with pager technology.
While I'm fairly electronically literate - I can program a VCR, get into the Internet and make stupid calls from a car phone - the only message I've ever sent to a beeper is my phone number so someone could return my call.
Then in the mail came "Pager Power," ($4.95, 800-841-2665). This itty-bitty book, written by a communications-firm employee who teaches transcendental meditation, outlines a whole new digital language for pager people.
For example, in pager-ese, 611 means "Please call your boyfriend."
Language can be customized, notes author Ted Strauss. The boyfriend could leave a more complete message by plugging in first his custom code, then *21*1152*13*3842.
That means "Bring Cabernet Sauvignon and hurry."
Conversations that can be held with pagers are limited only by imagination, Strauss claims.
There are more than 22 million people running around carrying these little messaging machines in a range of colors, including purple and green.
Among them are lawyers who can get up-to-the-minute info even while they're arguing a case, stockbrokers who want stock prices and financial news instantly, car-repair shops and restaurants that provide customers with pagers so they don't have to sit while waiting for tables, expectant fathers who don't want to miss the delivery, working parents who want to be in touch with baby sitters and even organ recipients waiting for donors.
The beeper industry has a 29 percent annual growth rate, according to Paging Services Council, which promotes the industry from offices in Washington, D.C. Pagers are becoming more sophisticated and can work in tandem with voice mail and faxes.
There are four types of pagers: Numeric, which uses a small screen to display up to 20 digits, is the most widely used; Alphanumeric, which displays complete word messages up to 80 characters long and includes some models that store up to 40 messages; Tone & Voice, which lets you hear caller's voice; and Tone-Only, most of which have two separate tones, each correlated to one of two possible predetermined telephone numbers.
Western Virginia has an estimated 30,000 active paging devices; the Roanoke telephone directory lists 16 companies offering pager services and products.
"We're getting more and more customers every day," said Sandy Averill, service representative with The Beeper Co. of Daleville. That outfit, a subsidiary of the Roanoke & Botetourt Telephone Co., no longer leases beepers, but it sells them for $69 plus $10 a month for service.
Averill noted that it is a felony for a child under 18 to have communications devices at school functions. Because parents and offspring sometimes keep in touch via beepers, the 1992 law is worth remembering.
Family communications are part of the reason that Kelley Dooley, account representative for Metrocall Co., carries a beeper. Her children are in day care and because she has an outside sales job, a beeper is the only way she can be certain she's always reachable.
As an account representative with Metrocall, she carries one of the fancy models, an alpha pager with a message screen. With it, Dooley can look at a text message while she's driving and immediately return customers' calls from her car phone.
Metrocall rents out its beepers for $15.95 per month, with the first three months payable in advance. For that fee, a user gets 250 calls. If a user owns a beeper, available from Metrocall for $79.95 to $169 or so for the alpha model, fees would be $9.90 a month or $71.40 a year (200 monthly calls).
To learn more before you sign up, you can order brochures - "Everything You Want to Know about Paging" and "Electronic Etiquette Guide" - by writing The Paging Services Council, P.O. Box 32229, Washington, D.C. 20007-0529.
by CNB