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Eirpage discontinues Eirmessage service
Thursday, February 14 2002
by Matthew Clark


Eirpage, the paging focused wing of Eircell-Vodafone, is discontinuing its
Eirmessage e-mail to mobile messaging gateway as of 01 March.





 

In March of 2000 Eirpage, formerly part of Eircom, launched its Eirmessage
service, a range of combined Web, e-mail and call centre messaging services for
people who use pagers and mobile phones.  Through the service, companies were
able to perform a variety of tasks such as e-mail forwarding to SMS and Web-based
text messaging services. 



When the service was launched, Eirmessage said one of the most attractive
features is that it allows subscribers to filter, prioritise and stream their
messages, giving them control over the information they wish to receive.
According to the company, subscribers were able to decide what messages they
wanted to receive, from whom, and when and how they were to be received.

 

In the 18 months prior to its launch, Eirpage spent around IEP1 million (EUR1.27
million) in developing the system, which had core technology, provided by RTS
Wireless and its "Advantage System." According to Steve Lyons of Eirpage, the
decision to discontinue the service was based on RTS' decision to discontinue the
"Advantage System" line of software. The cancellation of the service will not
impact Eirpage's core paging offering. 



Lyons insists that the choice has not resulted in the loss of customers however,
and that Eirmessage will be able to provide its customers with different
platforms that will allow them to perform the same tasks that were available
under Eirpage. "With the RTS system withdrawn, we can no longer guarantee the
availability of the (Eirpage) service, but there are other platforms in the
Vodafone suite that can be used instead," Lyons explained. 



RTS Wireless was in fact acquired last year by the Maryland-based wireless
technology firm, Aether Systems Inc., for USD26 million in cash and approximately
1.3 million shares of Aether stock. That acquisition was set to provide Aether
with solutions it could sell to mobile operators and Internet service providers
with the Wireless Advantage System one of RTS' premier offerings. 



However the last 12 months have been unkind to Aether, like most in the wireless
technology, and in the firm's most recent results reported earlier this week the
company said its net loss for Q4 was over USD118 million on revenues of only
USD25 million.



Excluding charges, Aether reported an operating loss of USD42.1 million, or
USD1.02 a share, compared with an operating loss excluding charges of USD35.2
million, or USD0.90 a share, a year ago. Analysts on average expected Aether to
post a loss excluding charges of USD0.94 a share, with individual estimates
ranging from USD0.80 a share to USD1.02, according to research firm Thomson
Financial/First Call.