Arch Wireless

Arch wireless was a pager carrier, which is now combined with other pager carriers to offer a company called USA Mobility. Arch wireless has text messaging and mobile internet capabilities as well as its well known pager services. In fact, its pager services were tapped into even by the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, looking into whether or not the combination of carriers would compromise the market forces.

Unfortunately for Arch Wireless, the pager market is ever dwindling in its reach and scope. The idea of a pager has sort of been stretched to its utmost as people have PDA’s and messaging from their cell phones or via the internet. Arch Wireless has changed its business model though and now includes all those disparate elements and offers things like the Blackberry or cellular technology from partners like Sprint and Nextel.

Arch Wireless pagers, in their heyday were one of the most comprehensive pager networks of all their competitors. Arch Wireless was brought to the attention of the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division when they bought Metrocall Holdings, Inc. The DOJ’s decision read, in part that facts did not support the contention that a merger between these companies would give them combined power in the markets in which they compete.

While the DOJ decision from November of 2004 came down favorably on behalf of Arch Wireless, there was an interesting addend to their ruling which was prescient for the pager climate we face today. It reads, in part that there has been substantial decrease in the number of pager units in service in recent years. In fact, the DOJ cites numbers that are startling! In 1999 there were 45 million users and in 2004 the number was less than 12 million.

Did somebody forget to cancel their pager service? I mean, who was still using pagers in 2004?

But overall, the new company which has emerged from the melding of the companies which were once, in part Arch Wireless into USA Mobility has proven to be advantageous for all parties involved. While the pager industry is all but dead in the United States, there is a fairly good international piece of the pie to be had and the merging with and partnering with other companies for both cellular and PDA systems was a wise move for all interested parties. We can only hope to have something die such a quick and painless death. Heh! Pagers!