Motorola Unveils 2-Way Pager
December 2, 1997
By MARTY KATZ
two-way pager made by Motorola, long the cause of paging industry rumors, was finally released for retail sale on Monday.
The paging industry is in the process of being remade by two-way paging products that send, as well as receive e-mail or acknowledge receipt of a page for guaranteed messaging.
The cost of building two-way networks, with remote radio receivers scattered around cities, is turning out to be much more costly than expected. Defaults and consolidations among the top paging companies have been occurring for the past year. Last week, AT&T's paging unit went up for sale.
The new Motorola pager, which will operate on Skytel's two-way paging system, looks like a tiny, three-and-a-half-inch wide laptop, and generates interest just on the basis of this appearance. Motorola had been showing prototypes privately of the sophisticated pager for about a year. Dubbed "PageWriter" and having a miniature "qwerty" keyboard, working versions had been distributed to press and industry observers for much of this year, prompting intense interest and speculation.Motorola made the first two-way pager, the Tango, that could respond to an e-mail page with 16 canned answers, but users could not originate text, and it was not well received. Over the winter, Skytel began marketing the Skywriter, built by Wireless Access, a Silicon Valley startup with some Motorola engineering alumni on staff. Its ease of use in originating text without a keyboard, and early appearance on the market may have derailed Motorola's plan to bring PageWriter to market earlier. Originally, Motorola was predicting September 1996 delivery, but the unit is just now getting to market.
The PageWriter 2000 is only slightly larger than the current SkyWriter, has a large (2-1/2") graphics-capable screen on a lid (that must be opened to operate or look at messages), has a 3-1/4" real but cramped qwerty keyboard (needing two hands to operate), and requires serious attention to the instruction manual.
PageWriter 2000
The unit uses a proprietary battery requiring a specialized charger, which doubles as a docking station and infrared communicator. The charger is constructed so that the battery and charger do not both fit in at the same time, and the battery, specially constructed for this purpose, is not readily available. Other two-way pagers, such as the existing Skywriter, use common AA batteries, can be operated with one hand, while walking, for instance, and do not require a cover to be opened to read or compose messages.
The service for the unit from Skytel, called Skywriter, is the same as their existing two-way product for the Wireless Access Inc. unit that is currently sold as the Skywriter.
Two pricing packages are offered: $330 for the pager alone, or a deluxe package for $360 that includes PC software and the docking station, which allows PC connectivity and firmware upgrades.
Skywriter service begins at $24.95 a month for 6,000 characters; $48 buys 20,000 characters. Skytel's two-way coverage allows the sending and receiving of e-mail in all large cities and many areas in between, with options like operator processing of messages and robot reading of messages to a user who calls in when out of a coverage area.
Pagewriter and Skywriter users may compose and send messages directly to the Skytel one- or two-way pagers directly from the unit without using a telephone or the Internet.
Since the units are actually miniature e-mail terminals, Internet access from the hand is possible. Applications such as phone number lookup, limited Web browsing, faxing through fax gateways, news, stock, sports, and weather information retrieval are possible.
According to Motorola, corporate intranet applications may be the marketing focus.
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