Paging Devices

The Philadelphia School Board voted unanimously to prohibit students from carrying beepers or electronic pagers to school, saying the devices are tools of the drug trade. On an 8-0 vote, board members approved a policy that allows school authorities to confiscate unauthorized beepers and suspend or expel students caught carrying the paging devices without permission.

The Irvine school board ended a ban on student use of cell phones and pagers with a unanimous 5-0 vote Tuesday night. Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation last month allowing districts to permit the use of "electronic signaling devices," banned since 1988 after fears that students would use them to make drug deals. Cell phones are now seen as essential during emergencies--such as the school shootings in Littleton, Colo., and Santee, Calif.

Eleven paging companies serving more than 30 million customers said they agreed to a set of service standards that will allow them to transmit customized Internet-based information to paging devices. Paging companies will be able to provide more specialized packages of information from the World Wide Web to customers' hand-held paging devices.

Like cigarettes, switchblades and gang attire, cell phones were once high on the list of items outlawed at California public schools. No more. School districts throughout the state now are clearing the way for students to carry--and, in limited circumstances, even use--cell phones or pagers on campus. The policy switch comes a month after Gov.

It's a secret language among friends. It may look like a jumble of numbers and asterisks, but it's actually a growing lexicon of the mundane, offbeat and obscene. While the language doesn't have a name, young people across the Southland and the nation rely on it to communicate those little messages that don't warrant a long conversation: "good night," "you're on my mind" or something decidedly less friendly. Welcome to the world of pager-speak.

A closely watched battle over the future of wireless paging is unfolding as providers tout two very different approaches to using the airwaves. In one corner, the nation's largest paging company, Paging Network Inc. of Plano, Texas, has launched a $10- to $15-a-month voice-messaging service called VoiceNow. VoiceNow eschews the interactive capability of its communications network, instead utilizing a pager that operates much like an answering machine.

Radio pagers--commonly called beepers--won't be just for golf-playing doctors in the future. Many businesses will find new uses for radio paging devices in the 1990s. As radio pagers become smaller, less expensive and more powerful, more individuals as well as companies will have beepers. Applications will vary from auto repair shops' notifying customers when their cars are ready to stores' sending product information messages to individual shoppers.

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.

While others agonize over problems at work or home, Michael L. Tenzer uses his connections to get things done. But Tenzer doesn't pull strings or cords. He pushes buttons. Lots and lots of buttons. In addition to cellular phones in both of his cars, the 58-year-old businessman owns a portable fax machine that he's rarely without, a paging unit and an answering machine. Not too surprisingly, his phones all come equipped with call waiting, call forwarding and conference calling capabilities.

When customers arrive at a couple of crowded restaurants in Newport Beach and Century City, they're handed more than excuses these days about the hourlong wait for tables. They're also handed pocket pagers. The new Cheesecake Factory restaurant at the chi-chi Fashion Island shopping center in Newport Beach has purchased 80 high-tech pagers that allow customers to shop while they wait. And at Houston's in Century City, about 60 pagers are available to guests.

Motorola Inc. said Thursday that a court ordered a Pasadena company to stop harassing consumers with false promises of free Motorola pagers. Motorola accused Paging America of "inundating" consumers with unsolicited e-mails offering a free pager. The e-mails misled consumers into thinking Paging America was affiliated with Motorola, and people who responded either got nothing or pagers made by competitors, according to a federal suit Motorola filed a year ago in Chicago.

The Senate voted 38-1 without debate Monday to repeal a 14-year-old law that prohibits children from taking cell phones and pagers to school. The bill, sponsored by government class students at Woodbridge High in Irvine and James Logan High in Union City, would allow local school boards to decide whether the electronic communicators should be allowed on campus and used during school hours. Sen.

Used to notify patrons that their table is ready, restaurant paging systems are run by a desktop transmitter. When the host or hostess pages a customer, he or she enters the code for the pager into the transmitter. The transmitter broadcasts an identification sequence--called the Channel Access Protocol, or CAP, code--specific to that pager. When the pager picks up the signal, it notifies the user by vibrating, flashing lights or playing a recorded announcement.

Research in Motion Ltd. received a U.S. patent for an e-mail technology that may help protect its BlackBerry pager from being duplicated by rivals. The patented system allows BlackBerry users to receive messages on their hand-held devices and on their computers through the same e-mail address, the Waterloo, Canada-based company said. Palm Inc.

California lawmakers on Wednesday passed a bill that could help reduce the public's area code frustrations by assigning new codes to mobile phones, pagers, data lines and other non-voice services that use phone numbers. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), was passed by the Assembly on Tuesday and won final approval in the Senate late Wednesday. Gov. Gray Davis has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill.

Not long ago, the world of pagers and wireless phones was dullsville from a product-design point of view. Although evermore capable, for years the devices came in one color--black--and rarely deviated from a few standard designs. Not so anymore. Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and others now make sure their communications wizardry comes packaged in different shapes and sizes, and with covers sporting a whole range of bright colors and prints.

It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? You would if they had beepers. First it was doctors. Then it was drug dealers. Now it's upwardly mobile high school students--who, despite decent grades, may be failing at parent-child communication. "I once went to a kid's house after school and stayed till 10 p.m. without calling home," says Max, 15, a student at West Los Angeles Emerson Junior High School, where beepers are banned. "My folks had no idea where I was. They were furious."

In what is being labeled a "wake-up call" to anyone using a pager to send messages, federal authorities on Wednesday charged that a news bulletin service for the New York area media was tapping into beeper transmissions by the police, emergency crews and even the mayor's office. "This case gives new meaning to the phrase 'I spy,' " said Manhattan U.S. Atty. Mary Jo White. Three people and the news service, called Breaking News Network of Fort Lee, N.J.

I had just arrived in Madrid for a welcome cocktail party after a long day in Stockholm--a board meeting and a speech, followed by a long flight. And I had spent the night before in a plane from New York to Stockholm. So when Jorge Mata, chief executive of MyAlert.com, offered to do a demo of his wireless portal, my heart sank. You know the drill: Find a quiet place, a power source, open the laptop and power up.

For busy consumers, just finding time to pick up a jug of milk or a bag of cat litter can be a hassle. In North and South Carolina, pager customers will have a chance to test a service this winter that will allow them to order such necessities while they wait for a bus or stand in line at the post office.