Conxus Communications Inc

The sole provider of a nationwide voice paging service called Pocketalk will abruptly cease operations Friday, leaving as many as 80,000 subscribers without service and rendering their special Motorola paging units useless. The service provider, privately owned Conxus Communications Inc., gave customers just four days' notice of the shutdown. The bad news was sent to each subscriber on Monday via voice pager messages. Conxus, based in Greenville, S.C.

The sole provider of a nationwide voice paging service called Pocketalk will abruptly cease operations Friday, leaving as many as 80,000 subscribers without service and rendering their special Motorola paging units useless. The service provider, privately owned Conxus Communications Inc., gave customers just four days' notice of the shutdown. The bad news was sent to each subscriber on Monday via voice pager messages. Conxus, based in Greenville, S.C.

Small businesses continue to suffer under phone service deregulation, as shown by the recent bankruptcy declaration of Conxus paging service and a new survey of phone users in the 310 and 925 area codes. Instead of lower costs and better service, deregulation has brought communication chaos. Not only are businesses having to pay thousands of dollars to cope with changing area codes, but their actual livelihood is threatened when phone service companies go out of business or area codes change.