Pocket phones get on line to take calls

CHEVALIER (Telepoint) yesterday cut prices and launched extra services for its CT2 pocket phones, including one enabling the phones to receive calls.

Managing director Neil Montefiore said that a year after launch his service had sold more than 15,000 handsets and had more than 12,500 subscribers.

The Page-Link service allowing incoming calls is based around a linked pager. Someone wanting to ring a CT2 phone dials a special number, which triggers the pager. If the phone reaches one of the coverage zones within a minute it connects to the still-holding caller.

''This goes a long way towards eliminating what some people see as a drawback [of CT2],'' Mr Montefiore said.

CT2 pocket phones are smaller and much cheaper than conventional mobile phones, but can only make calls near base stations installed in public places such as MTR stations or in the home, if a domestic station has been installed.

CT2 operators seem to have been switching their advertising strategy during recent months, trying to educate potential users about their service rather than just presenting it as a cut-down mobile system.

Mr Montefiore confirmed this trend, and said that most users were people who had previously owned a pager. This reinforced the importance of integrating pagers with CT2 handsets.

Chevalier's partner is Telstra Corporation, an Australian telecommunications company.

Together their investment would be about $400 million, of which 60 per cent had been spent. The requirement for break-even was 40,000 to 45,000 subscribers, said Mr Montefiore.

Services such as Page-Link and voice mail, also launched yesterday, use computer-generated voices, available in Cantonese and English. Mr Montefiore said Japanese and Tagalog were being considered.