Pager Growth Beeping Great 72 Million Users Likely By End Of The Century

The commercial begins with a mother earnestly talking to her young son.

“You know I have to work,” she tells him.

But this isn’t an ad for investment funds or life insurance.

It’s an ad for Motorola pagers.

Although once the domain of doctors and plumbers, beepers are going mainstream. These days they’re used by pregnant women who don’t want the fathers to miss the moment. They’re used by sports fans addicted to minute-by-minute scores, and by travelers worried about a flight change.

They’re used by drug dealers on the go, by the urban poor who can’t afford telephones and by concerned parents who tell their children, as the mother in the ad does, “You need me, you page me.”

Indeed, paging services were one of the top-growth industries last year, according to American Business Information Inc. The estimate of the number of people who carry a beeper has jumped from 27 million in 1994 to more than 40 million today.

“I don’t know if it will be everyone, but I do think that we can get to a point in the year 2000 where 72 million people are using pagers,” said Jeanine Oburchay, associate managing director at Bear Stearns in New York.

The chunks of plastic and circuitry first began emitting their demanding tones in the 1940s. But the boom has come in the past few years. As the industry has grown and consolidated, the pagers have become cheaper, typically costing $60 to $140 for the beeper itself, and as little as $10 or less a month for service.

And, they are easily available.

A four-block stretch of New York features at least five pager retailers. They can be purchased in convenience stores in Cleveland and with beer and smokes in Detroit.

There also have been some technological advancements, and the Federal Communications Commission has auctioned radio spectrum licenses that free up capacity and give the beeper companies the ability to offer new services.

The changes mean companies are determined to gain market share by reaching customers with more than the basic black beeper, and more than the basic service.

“In the past, paging was largely bought on getting the lowest price. What we’re moving toward are lots of neat new services that reach different segments of the market,” said Scott Naradell, a spokesman for Paging Network Inc., or PageNet.

PageNet of Plano, Texas, has introduce VoiceNow, which allows callers to leave a voice message, similar to a portable answering machine.

VoiceNow was introduced at the end of February and the company expects it to be in 50 cities by the end of the year.

“It’s a combination of pager and answering message,” said PageNet spokesman Scott Naradell. “We foresee people forwarding their home answering machines to their VoiceNow pager when they’re not at home.”

Other companies are capitalizing on the alphanumeric pager, which contains a small screen to relay short text messages.

PageNet has been delivering news headlines, stock quotes and sports scores through an arrangement with CNN since September.

The customer can get news and sports, stocks alone, or a combination of the three for prices ranging from $13 to $40 a month for the service. The news is updated every 20 minutes.