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Pagers go vernacular

Paging companies have many problems to contend with -- high licence fees, an intransigent telecom department, competition from other paging companies and mobile operators. And, correspondingly, its turnover has been indifferent. And one way the industry has of fighting back is through language pagers.

Language pagers, though an old concept, has taken on new meaning in India. Already a Devnagri script is in use with Malayalam also slowly catching on.

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And recently, the market has grown in the south in a big way too.

This month Mobilink launched its Tamil paging service in Madras, getting their pagers from GSL Communications, Hong Kong. Mobilink plans to soon launch its other southern language pagers - in Telugu and Kannada. Mobilink expects 25 per cent of its revenue to come through regional language pagers.

RPG Paging too plans to launch its service in Madras in the near future. This is an apparent attempt to get to lower-end consumers who would prefer the cheaper pagers to mobiles and who would prefer to communicate in their local language rather than in English.

RPG Paging sources said that though initially the prices would be the same as that of English pagers, they would drop as volumes rose.

-Compiled from the Indian media

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