Easycall to close paging operations in Nov

After nearly 10 years of paging operations, Easycall Communications Philippines Inc. (ECPI) will finally bid goodbye to a nationwide service it has revolutionized and dominated for most of the last decade.

ECPI corporate information officer Leon Dy told the Philippine Stock Exchange that the company will be closing down its remaining paging operations in Metro Manila and Cebu by the end of next month.

"This will effectively cut down the losses being incurred by company from its paging operations in view of the continuing deterioration in our pager base," Dy said.

Last March, ECPI shut down all of its provincial sites, except Cebu, after noting that its provincial pager base has gone down to an insignificant level, the continued operations of which would only jack up their losses.

Last year, ECPI wrote off almost P197 million worth of transmission network assets and other related assets, a clear indication that it has lost a substantial portion of its subscriber base to other telecommunication providers. At its peak, the company operated 16 paging sites capable of handling over 300,000 subscribers around the country.

ECPI enjoyed brisk business starting the early 1990s. It elevated paging into a popular mode of relaying communications by introducing faster access, customer-friendly service, compact pager units, and affordable rates.

However, the emergence of the short messaging system (SMS) or text messaging introduced as a value-added service by the mobile phone companies in the late 1990s resulted in a major migration of paging subscribers to cellphones, bringing down not only ECPI’s business with it but the entire paging industry as well.

Dy said they have made arrangements with Island Country Telecommunications Inc., the operator of Jaspage, for them to absorb the remaining Easycall subscribers who will be given new pager units free of charge to allow them to continue using a cost-effective messaging service.

"We strongly believe that the remaining market base for paging can be profitably operated by the remaining paging operators in the country today," Dy added.

He said with the closure of its paging business, the company will now focus on expanding its contact center outsourcing business both for the local and foreign markets, as well as in the Internet and data center services.

With the substantial decline in its paging revenues, ECPI now derives 42 percent of its revenues from call center operations while a significant share (17 percent) is generated by the Internet service business.

Its new business direction has, in turn, attracted strategic investors such as Global E-Business Solutions Inc. (GEBSI), the infotech unit of the Delgado group’s Transnational Diversified Group (TBG) and Centralized Marketing Co. (CMC), a call center outsourcing company from the US, known for providing high quality customer service and telemarketing services to its high-end and quality-conscious corporate customers.

Last June, ECPI said it would form a $1-million, 50-50 joint, venture with CMC that will accelerate ECPI’s entry and access to the huge foreign call center market initially focusing on the US market. The agreement also provided for technology transfer from CMC to ECPI covering best practices in call center operations, training modules and other areas for technology collaboration.