Future of Pagers: Radiocommunications Agency launches public paging consultation

DTI Press Release - 5 November 1997


Moves to improve the services offered by pagers were unveiled in a consultation document launched today by the Radiocommunications Agency (RA). The development of new services and technologies mean that the spectrum allocated to paging will soon run out unless the RA and industry act now. The RA is keen to hear the views of industry on how the problems facing the paging market should be tackled.

The outcome of this consultative document will help facilitate the further growth in an important sector of the mobile communications
market.

Welcoming the launch of the consultation exercise, Barbara Roche, Minister for Industry said today:

"This consultation exercise will allow UK companies to participate in the determination of proposals that will underpin the current rapid growth in the UK paging market. Engaging in the consultation exercise also demonstrates this Government's commitment to work in partnership with industry to create the best possible business environment, leading to better services and more choice for the consumer."

Earlier this year the RA commissioned a report by an independent consultancy, Analysys, on public mobile communications services. The report considered the future growth in the UK paging industry and translated the forecast pager subscriber growth rates into a corresponding forecast demand for spectrum. This consultation exercise addresses the key issues identified in the Analysys report.

The existing UK paging networks primarily use the POCSAG 1200 protocol which have provided sufficient capability in the past for tone and numeric paging. However, the introduction of new services with the migration from tone and numeric paging to alphanumeric paging is resulting in network capacity problems which, unless tackled, will increasingly impose constraints on the future expansion of the industry.

The purpose of this consultation document is to seek views on several issues relating to the future of public paging services, including the future spectrum requirements for paging, the future use of high speed protocols (e.g. ERMES / FLEX) on new and existing paging services, and the introduction of two way and voice paging services. The document puts forward specific proposals concerning the release of additional spectrum for paging.

Notes for Editors

1. The UK paging market is currently served by six operators delivering service to over 1.2 million subscribers in mid - 1997. This represents a penetration level of about 2 % which, whilst relatively modest when compared with the leading paging markets, an estimated annual growth rate of 39% in 1997, means that the UK paging market is among the most dynamic in Europe. Many in the paging industry believe that the higher market penetration rates achieved in overseas markets could be replicated in the UK and Europe and they take the present low level of penetration as an indicator that the paging market has considerable scope for expansion.

2. The migration to a wider range of paging services is putting increasing pressure on spectrum requirements, as the amount of spectrum per message required by numeric and alphanumeric pagers is, respectively, 5 times and 30 times that required for a tone- pager message. The migration to alphanumeric pagers is accelerating with some estimates that the entire paging market will be entirely alphanumeric by the year 2007.

ERMES (European Radio Messaging System). This is an ETSI standard developed through co-operation of many vendors and operators and is therefore an open standard. Spectrum assignments across Europe for ERMES were designated by the European Conference of Administrations of Postal Services and Telecommunications (CEPT).

FLEX. This is a proprietary technology developed by Motorola, but now licensed to over 50 manufacturers worldwide. FLEX has been widely adopted in the Americas and in the Asia-Pacific region, and the first European FLEX network was launched in Germany in August 1997.

Two-way paging. Work has begun on the specification for two-way paging for ERMES and Motorola has developed a two-way paging protocol, ReFLEX, which is currently being used in the USA. The advent of two-way paging will permit acknowledgement that a message has been received.

Voice paging. This development utilises two-way technology in a manner transparent to the end user and facilitates 'store and forward' and 'guaranteed delivery' etc, which would allow paging to close the functionality gap with cellular/PCN technology.

Copies of the consultation document are available from:

Radiocommunications Agency
Library
New King's Beam House
22 Upper Ground
London
SE1 9SA

A downloadable version of the consultation document is available in Word 6.0 (60 KB)

3. Copies of the Analysys report are available by contacting the RA Library.

A downloadable version of the Analysis report is available in Word 6.0 (2,164 KB) or as a zipped Word 6.0 file (489 KB)


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