Pagers

Among the pager companies, it was the year of Group Sense Ltd (GSL), a Hongkong-based company. With competitive pricing, the company could become the dear of many service providers. GSL has allowed paging companies to sell its pagers as the latter’s products. So far the pagers used to carry the manufacturer’s and service provider’s name. The company, with its pager features, scored maximum on pricing its products. The average cost of a pager was Rs 2,200.

It was a bad year for Motorola. The company closed down its manufacturing facility in Bangalore, and lost the top-of-the-mind image, though still the leader. Through Pagepoint and some other operators, the Motorola products are still active in the market. The company had already given up the paging infrastructure business in India.

The year also witnessed the breaking away of a manufacturing JV between Casio and Bharti Telecom. Casio pagers, too, witnessed a slide-down in penetration last year.

NEC, too, could not make much impact in the market-place. However, NEC brands were getting a push in the market by EasyCall Group.

Numeric pagers continued to grow last year too. In the beginning, they had a penetration of 30 percent that came down to 20 percent in the second half of the fiscal.

The Impending Issues

The paging industry is still compounded with certain major issues. One, it is yet to get the VSAT connectivity that was promised in 1995. The second issue is its request for revenue sharing with the DoT and MTNL. It is estimated that the industry generates almost 44 million calls a month from the city operations and another 8.5 million from the circles. And, the call completion rate in the case of paging is around 1-1.5 minute. It means the DoT and MTNL generate more money with less traffic congestion. Thus, the industry’s demand for revenue sharing is justified. However, TRAI has declined to take up this issue. Three, there should be a new licence-fee structure for the remaining licence period—the first three year licence fee were decided at the time of bidding. DoT and TRAI have yet to come out on this. Similarly, there should be an arrangement between paging service providers and cell operators for the calls originating from a cellphone user to the paging services.

Forecast for 1999-2000

The stagnation phase will continue till September 1999. There is a strong possibility of the revival of the market after this period. It is expected that the industry will grow 15 percent this year in terms of subscribers.

The Calling Party Pays (CPP) structure in cellular may bring in additional cheers for the paging industry. This may help pagers getting the status of a utility medium that was absent in the Indian market-place so far. Also, there is a hope that many of the defaulters will activate their pagers with the CPP impact on the cellular industry.

RPG Paging may reach breakeven this year. DSS may make profits at the operational level.

The favourable trend for the two-line alphanumeric pagers is likely to continue.

Companies will put on hold all expansion plans like the "Transnet Services" of Mobilink. It is expected that DSS will not opt to extend its connection to 450 cities that was originally planned to be in place by the end of 1999.

The expected revenue sharing arrangement between the DoT and the cellular operators may also open the door for paging companies to get the same facility which is denied to them as of now.

Companies like Eider, Beltron, and Nice may bring out their action plan "clear" this year.

The operational cost of Page Me services will rise in leaps and bounds unless the company brings in effective marketing strategies to increase the subscriber base.

One cannot rule out the possibility of licences being surrendered in cities like

Thiruvananthapuram, Patna, Ernakulam, Varanasi, and Bhopal where the subscriber base are less than 1,700 till 31 May 1999. Thiruvananthapuram has so far attracted 600 subscribers only. In the case of Patna, it is around 1,000.

This year will see companies selling licences to their competitors where the later are strong. There is a good possibility of a group buying the entire operations of another group.