More value-added services from beepers

JAKARTA (JP): With the dramatic increase in cellular mobile phones, pagers and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) use, mobile communications have become an integral part of life for many people, particularly executives and professionals.

Cellular phones have had a dire impact on the beeper industry, just as they have had on all wireless telecommunications services. This is because many people think it is more prestigious to be seen with a pocket phone.

It must be said that it is often nearly impossible to find a public phone that works when you need one. Most public phones in Jakarta and other cities are either broken or can't be used to dial certain numbers due to poor maintenance, technologies or systems.

On the other hand, beepers can provide customers with many more value-added services, making this tool a valuable and mobile information provider.

SkyTel, one of the largest and most innovative paging companies in Indonesia, for example, has launched several new services, promoting the pager as a provider of information.

One good example would be the SkyQuote service, a collaboration between SkyTel and Bridge, which provides the user with important, up-to-date financial information including currency and interest rates, stock, commodities, bonds, news and much more.

As the information is transmitted directly from Bridge and sent to pagers at two-minute intervals, the customer can be assured that the information is accurate and the most up-to-date.

Being wireless, the pager also enables customers the mobility and convenience to monitor the currency and stock market anywhere they travel in Indonesia's major cities.

SkyTel is also about to introduce the Motorola MegaPro pager. This eight-line radio pager, equipped with the InfoFlex protocol, will receive the entire data of the Jakarta Stock Exchange, and users can simply look up the particular stocks in which they are interested.

Other interesting features include Stock Price Alerts, in which the pager beeps when it receives a predetermined stock price, and stock price graphs, a graphic display of the price movements of a stock.

In addition, SkyTel has also linked the pager to its users' e- mail, with the SkyNet service. Now you can receive your e-mails in your e-mail box, and on your pager. This means that when you are out and about, with no access to your PC, you can still read e-mails on your pager.

The cellular phone is a more advanced technology compared to the pager, but in terms of efficiency and costs savings the pager still proves to be a sure winner.

The pager as a tool in wireless data services will also prove to be the most cost-effective means of delivering information from the Internet to subscribers.

There is now also the two-way pager program which permits correspondents to offer users the ability to monitor and manage their business via certain radio pagers.

This kind of service allows users to track the delivery status of messages that have been sent and can organize and sort messages to keep track of communications.

Through Internet-based solution investment professionals, for example, customers will be able to access account information and market data, as well as trade, all via the Internet.

Internet pager also allows easy mobile access to retrieve, create, forward, print and archive e-mail, including attachments from any Web-enabled PC. (I. Christianto)