Pocketalk Gives Voice to Mobile Messaging Needs

Move over, impersonal numerical pagers, there’s a new black box in town.

Meet the cousin of that small plastic contraption that so rudely summons you from the movies to take care of business: the portable answering machine. Available starting today in Los Angeles, the device, dubbed Pocketalk, is one of a new breed of mobile wireless services that use a piece of the radio spectrum auctioned off by the federal government a few years ago.

A hybrid pager and answering machine, Pocketalk is activated when a caller rings a toll-free number and records a voice message. The message is sent over Conxus’ wireless network to the device, which alerts the owner in the same way a pager does--by vibrating or beeping.

The product differs from alphanumeric pager service, in which a caller’s message is delivered to a message center that transcribes the message and sends it in word form to a pager. Pocketalk allows users to hear the caller’s recorded message.

If a user’s local telephone company has call-forwarding capability, the user can forward messages to the device from his or her home phone number.

Users can play back messages much like they would on an answering machine, by pressing the unit’s play, fast forward, reverse, pause or delete buttons.

The machine will receive messages if it’s turned off. But because of its short battery life, it can’t be left on for long periods.

Motorola, which manufactures the 5 1/2-ounce pocket-sized machine, is targeting consumers who shy away from numerical pagers because they lack the personal touch.

“People really want to receive their messages in voice because they get a complete message,” said Ellen Foreman, director of marketing for Motorola’s paging group. “They get inflection and other meanings of the message. With a numeric message, you don’t sense the urgency of the message.”

The product is meant to appeal to the 80% of Americans who own answering machines, Foreman said.

Conxus, a Greenville, S.C.-based wireless service provider that is building a cross-country network, has partnered with Motorola to sell the device. Conxus plans to have 75% of the U.S. wired for the device by the end of the year.

So far, Conxus, which has signed up about 13,000 subscribers in Washington, D.C., south Florida, Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston since it began offering the service on Nov. 14.

As with digital cell phones, however, the Pocketalk user must be in an area served by Conxus’ network to receive a message immediately after it’s sent. If the user is outside a service area, the message will stay in the network’s memory and be accessible only if the user calls his or her toll-free number or comes back into the service area.

Conxus’ network in Los Angeles extends from Thousand Oaks and the San Fernando Valley in the north to Newport Beach and Irvine to the south and from Santa Monica and Long Beach in the west to Ontario and Riverside to the east. Conxus plans to extend this network from Rancho Cucamonga to Dana Point.

The device will retail in Los Angeles for about $79.95 for the unit. The service requires a $25 activation fee and a $19.95 per-month charge for unlimited messages.

Analysts say Motorola may have a tough time selling the portable answering machine, especially in Los Angeles, where many consumers are already wired to the hilt.

“People can leave a message on my home machine and I can call and access it, or on my voicemail and I can call and access it,” said Naqi Jaffery, a wireless-industry analyst with Dataquest in San Jose. “If people need this capability, they can do it right now.”

But Eric Zimits, an analyst with Hambrecht & Quist in San Francisco, adds that Pocketalk is one of a new generation of devices that will eventually supplant numerical pagers.

“Anyone who carries a numeric pager over the next five years will upgrade to something else,” Zimits said. “My sense is that it will be more toward two-way text paging, but a certain segment could potentially go to one-way voice paging.”