Under a recent agreement, USA Mobility and Onset Technology will provide a customized paging solution for customers using BlackBerry (News - Alert) smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM). USA Mobility intends to begin offering the PageSync service by the first quarter 2008.

 

Using Onset’s METAmessage Paging software USA Mobility (News - Alert) will launch a new paging service, called PageSync that enables a pop-up box on the device’s screen to alert the user that a page has been received.

 

PageSync enables users to receive pages with the same paging experience they had with a pager, including such key features as special pager alerts, reminder alerts until a page is read, as well as confirmation of message delivery. This customized paging solution also allows users to receive pages from multiple sources, identify the source of an incoming page, track message delivery (i.e. dates and times), send longer messages in alternative formats (e.g. rich-text), and receive pages even when email and other communications servers are down.

 

Since PageSync allows customers to provide only their pager number while maintaining the privacy of their phone number and email address, the person sending the message is not aware that they have actually sent a page to a user with a BlackBerry smartphone.

 

The new service therefore offers redundancy to customers by providing the advantages of both a BlackBerry and a pager in a single device and allows users to retain their personal pager number which they may have had for many years.

 

Vincent D. Kelly, president and chief executive officer of USA Mobility expressed his company’s delight to partner with Onset to provide an enhanced paging capability for users of BlackBerry smartphones.

 

Kelly believes that their exclusive agreement with Onset, which combines the expertise of a leading wireless applications developer with the nation’s leading paging carrier, should greatly benefit those customers who want to retain the simplicity and reliability of paging in a single multi-functional wireless device. He emphasized that PageSync will help them meet the growing wireless communications needs of their core customer segments, including healthcare, government services, large enterprise and first responders.

 

According to Avi Koren, chief executive officer at Onset Technology, with 60 percent of the U.S. paging market, USA Mobility presents a great opportunity for them to extend METAmessage Paging technology to growing numbers of BlackBerry smartphone users.

 

 

 

“We are very excited to enable the new PageSync product, and we look forward to a long and productive relationship with the USA Mobility team,” said Koren in a statement.