1. COVERAGE AREA

2. RADIO FREQUENCY ALLOCATION

Some popular paging frequencies follow:

Some popular paging link frequencies follow:

A properly designed public paging system requires the assignment of one exclusive paging frequency and one exclusive link frequency in two different radio bands. Please supply the two frequencies to be used when we design your system. If the two frequencies have not yet been assigned by your Secretary of Communications, FCC, PTT, or other government agency, please indicate the range in which you expect them to be assigned.

3. TELEPHONE COMPANY INTERCONNECT

The telephone companies of the world vary considerably in their willingness and ability to provide interconnected services to the operators of public paging services. In countries where telephone interconnect is not possible or disallowed, live operators are successfully used to send the paging traffic to the paging subscribers. Please investigate the availability of selector level interconnect to the telephone company switching equipment. There are many types of trunks available. The most common trunks available in the USA are D.I.D. (or D.D.I.), 2-wire, trunks with dial-pulse signaling. Some have DTMF and some have R-1 signaling. In Europe, Asia and the Middle-East, 6-wire E&M;trunks are often used with MFC-R2 signaling. There are many variations and modifications to the so-called "standards". More recently digital interfaces are being offered. The U.S. standard is T-1, which is a 1.544 Mb/s PCM format with 24 channels, and much of the rest of the world uses the CEPT standard which is 2.048 Mb/s PCM with 30 +2 channels. Motorola has the ability to connect with almost all trunk types. It would also be helpful to know how many installed telephones there are in your country and how many of them are Touch-Tone^TM or DTMF.

Will Interconnect to the telephone company be used for automatic paging?

If so, what kind of interface is required in your city (or cities)?

If direct interface is not possible or practical, how many operators will be required?

4. SYSTEM CAPACITY

An important decision must be made during the design of a paging system: total system capacity. If the system is too small to start with, then in a short time it will be operating at its full capacity and an expansion could be more costly than necessary. On the other hand, if the system is too large the high initial capital investment might never make it a profitable operation.

The type of pager used affects the number of subscribers that can be served on one paging channel. For example the following are some very rough estimates:

(The FLEX™ protocol is not included here. Please refer to my Marketing Plan for an update on this topic.)

Generally speaking, the capacity of the paging system refers to the size of the paging terminal. "Size" refers to the number of inputs, the number of outputs, and the amount of memory (the number of codes supported). Paging terminals come in several different sizes like T-shirts: Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large. Choose a product that will grow gracefully with the size of your business.

You should select a terminal that will meet the needs of your market for the first five years of operation.

What type of Paging Terminals will best meet the needs of your market?

5. TYPE OF PAGER TO BE USED

A pager is obviously a personal communications device. We classify pagers by how they communicate:

TONE ONLY*

First of all the "Tone Only" pager is not only a tone device. This is the common name which is used in the industry. The pager actually does more than beep.

So there are six ways that a "Tone Only" pager can communicate with you, four different beep sounds, a light, and a vibrator.

* There may not be any more new Tone Only pagers available on the market.

TONE and VOICE

Voice paging is still popular in parts of the world. It has been phased out in areas where paging is in great use because of the limited number of subscribers that can be accommodated on one radio channel. A large scale paging system with multiple transmitters would not be economically feasible with voice pagers. The cost of multiple transmitters causes the cost to the subscriber to be so high that on one would be able to afford the service.

NUMERIC DISPLAY

Numeric pagers are sometimes referred to as "digital beepers" by the public. This is a misnomer since there is such a thing as an analog numeric display pager, and a pager is generally not both analog and digital. So let's call them by their right name: Numeric Display Pagers. This is, by far, the most-used pager in the world. The "information content" of the message is fairly high (more than tone), and the channel capacity is much higher than voice paging. System operators in many parts of the world offer this type of pager and its acceptance by the public has been very high. Since many pagers can operate on one radio channel, and almost all numeric systems are totally automatic (no operators), the cost to the user is very low. In other words, the cost is low because the system operator's overhead is low.

There are, however, two important technical considerations which make numeric display paging unusable or unfeasible in many parts of the world. These are: 1) the widespread use of Touch Tone^TM or DTMF telephones, and 2) facilities for direct interconnection to the local telephone network. If the city does not have a very high penetration of tone telephones and the telephone company cannot or will not provide direct interconnect to the paging terminal, numeric display pagers are not a good idea. Anyone going through the trouble and expense of providing live operators to process numeric paging traffic would be well advised to skip this type of paging and go on to full Alphanumeric Display paging.

ALPHANUMERIC DISPLAY

It has often been said that "the good is the enemy of the best". This may be true when comparing numeric display paging with alphanumeric display paging. A numeric display page merely shows a telephone number. If the subscriber does not recognize the number, s/he does not know who the call is coming from, what it is about, or whether or not it is urgent. For example, it is very irritating to receive a numeric page, exit the highway, park your car, find a telephone, get the necessary change or token, and then place the telephone call -- only to find that the message was not important.

A properly sent alphanumeric message tells the subscriber: who called, why, where s/he has to go, when, the address, the time, etc. It is important to note that a return telephone call is not required with an alphanumeric pager. This feature alone can save the subscriber much time and trouble. In areas of the world where public telephones are not readily available (for call back), alpha offers a great advantage over other types of pagers.

Please indicate the type of pagers that you plan to use:

Tone Only *
Tone and Voice
Tone and Voice with Stored Voice
Tone and Voice with Numeric Display
Numeric Display
Alphanumeric Display

* There may not be any more new Tone Only or Tone and Voice with Numeric Display pagers available on the market.