Getting ‘techie’ with the pager

Grabbing a pager is a lot more exciting these days when subscribers need not torture their minds whose telephone number was on their unit, or what do senders would like to say when they press the keypad on their phones and send mind-boggling digits.

Imagine yourself as a pager subscriber; you were watching a movie when your unit suddenly vibrates or rings and there appear a number that is practically stranger to you.

Would you go out and call the number or would you ignore it? It maybe emergency or it may mean nothing, but who would know?

SaipanCell Communications is shaping the future of mobile telecommunications in the Northern Marianas with its recent launching of Power Paging, a system that allows subscribers to receive electronic mail notifications and alpha-numeric messages in their pagers.

SaipanCell General Manager Hans W. Mickelson says Power Paging, basically a new technology on the islands, offer a variety of services that are sure to give numeric beepers a run for their own money.

The company is aggressively marketing the new
technology in the Northern Marianas. The system allows subscribers, whose Internet Service Provider is Saipan Datacom, to receive e-mail notification and up to the first 230 characters of the electronic message in their beepers.

“We’ve been pushing this service during the last couple of months. These enhanced paging features are being offered to our subscribers at no extra charge,” according to Mr. Mickelson.

At present, only beeper subscribers who use the saipan.com e-mail address can receive an e-mail notification since it came following the forging of a service partnership between SaipanCell and Saipan Datacom.

“The subscriber has to be hooked with Saipan Datacom to get an e-mail notification in his pager. Beepers can accommodate as much as 230 characters of e-mail messages but it depends on the unit,” explains Mr. Mickelson.

Signing up for Power Paging services is very affordable with the first month service fee having been waived, with the succeeding monthly access fee pegged at only $20.

Text messages

The good thing about the system, though, is that Internet surfers can send text messages to their friends who subscribe to Power Paging by logging on to guamcell.net and clicking the “send message” button.

The subscriber will then receive the entire text message in his pager unit provided it does not exceed the 230-character limit of the Motorola Advisor or the Wordline Flex unit.

“The main push here is if someone who has an Internet access wants to send a text message to friend’s Power Paging unit, he will just have to log on to the guamcell.net site, type his message and send it,” Mr. Mickelson adds.

Aside from personal text messages, the system also satisfies the subscribers’ thirst for international updates on politics, business, entertainment and sports through regular transmission of information briefs.

Plans are also now underway for a partnership with the Saipan Tribune to provide local news briefs to the pager subscribers of the telecommunications company.

“We are exploring the possibility of working with the Saipan Tribune to provide us with local news headline everyday, which we will then transmit to the units of our subscribers,” says Mr. Mickelson.

At present, SaipanCell’s parent company in Guam has tied up with K57 which provides the company regular news headlines on the island that are made available to its subscribers.

“We would like to do the same thing here by aligning with the Saipan Tribune in the future for local news,” he adds.

At the same time, SaipanCell subscribers can also sign up for the dispatch service at a reasonable fee of $9 a month, wherein senders can access the 483-3233 hotline and leave a message to the operators who will then type in and send the full word messages to the subscriber.

“Our dispatch number routes to our operators in Guam who take word messages, encode them in the computer and sends the complete text to our subscribers,” the SaipanCell general manager says.

This process eliminates the need to call back, unlike in the exclusively numeric paging systems when subscribers are forced to deal with strange numbers, or take a lifetime figuring out whose number is on their unit.

For a long time, Northern Marianas residents were confined in their pager units that give them nothing more than numbers.

“It’s very uncomfortable to return a call of someone whose number appear on my pager especially if the number comes out the first time. I don’t know what to say to the person on the other line. Most of the time, I introduce myself and ask who paged me,” a numeric beeper subscriber said.