Personal Communication Without the Computing

Pagers had been around for several years before the notion of a personal communicator became popular. These rather simple devices have made millions of users accessible, though at the cost of a slight delay.

Recently, devices incorporating paging technology have been introduced as low-cost, wireless communication options for mobile computers, include PDAs and other stylus-based devices. While these devices are currently limited to relatively short strings of text, the future looks bright for advanced services to come.

A service that may prove promising has just been announced by two leading companies in the paging industry. Paging Network, Inc. (PageNet), the largest paging company in the U.S., and Motorola, the leading wireless device manufacturer have teamed to create a new type of personal communication device.

The idea is to create a device that combines the most important features of an answering machine and a portable, palm-sized pager. When a person calls the number associated with the device, the voice message is recorded by the system.

Using PageNet’s national paging infrastructure, a short radio signal is transmitted to locate the device. Each device is capable of replying with an acknowledgment enabling the device to be pinpointed. The closest transmitter then transmits the complete digitized voice message to the device.

The system is scheduled to begin operation in 1995, and is based on the Motorola KeyNote pager. Meanwhile, PageNet started testing a prototype of the system in Las Vegas in March 1993 under the name of VoiceNow.

While this service will initially use a stand-alone pager, it is likely that we can expect to see this type of voice integration with PDAs and other mobile computing devices, especially if the service proves to be effective and even easier to use that current paging systems.

Paging Network, Inc.
4965 Preston Park Blvd.,
Suite 600
Plano, TX 75093
(214) 985-4100