Nick's Place

Nicholas Barnard EC200 Journal 4 MWF 1-1:50

I have a pager. I don't have it for style or fashion. I have it for the fact that my time is scarce and I cannot be by the phone all the time. What is unique about my pager is the fact that it is the world's smallest commercially produced pager; I wear it as a watch instead of placing it in my pocket or on a belt loop.

Due to the size of my pager watch its designer Beepware, a joint venture of watch behemoth Timex, and pager giant Motorola, had to make a technological compromise and hard wire the pager to one paging service. They chose Skytel, a subsidiary of telecommunications giant MCI WorldCom.

In making this choice, Beepware created a monopoly. What is unique about this monopoly is it is not one created by geographical barriers, legal barriers or cost of entry barriers, but by a technological barrier.

Skytel has taken advantage of this situation and compromised on customer service, taking advantage of its monopolistic powers. My recent attempt to recharge my prepaid paging service took five phone calls, where I spoke with six people, had my pager service disconnected for 4 days, and had my credit card charged twice for the same service. If I had the ability to choose I would not select Skytel as my paging service, as they cannot seem to operate their business in a reasonable manner, but I am stuck because of a technologically created monopoly, if I want paging service, I must buy it through Skytel.