REGION Valley shares wireless growth

THE VINDICATOR, YOUNGSTOWN
The Valley has four competitors, compared with seven or eight in other markets.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
YOUNGSTOWN -- Frustration with a broken pay phone prompted Steve Christofis to buy his first cell phone. Savings of $60 a month in long-distance charges convinced him he did the right thing.
Christofis is one of the millions of Americans who have contributed to a boom in cell phone use.
"People have overcome the resistance to it as a pricey executive thing," said Claire List, a Sprint PCS spokeswoman. "They look at it as a practical tool which fits their needs."
Christofis, 47, of Youngstown had no intention of buying a cell phone, but the broken pay phone at the mall left him frustrated and without the pizza he was trying to order.
"Some teen-agers walked by with cell phones. I thought, 'If they can have one, then I can have one.'"
Saving money: He bought one that day, and he and his wife regularly began calling his children in Texas and Dayton with it. He figures their $40 cell-phone plan is allowing them to make calls that would otherwise cost $100.
Many others are making cell phones part of their lives. The number of cell phone customers in this country jumped from 1 million in 1987 to 109 million last year.
Locally, no figures are available, but no doubt more people are going wireless.
"The growth has definitely exploded," said Crissa Palowitz, retail operations manager for Alltel in Boardman.
Digital networks installed starting a few years ago have made room for more calls, which has led to cell phone plans with better terms, she said. That's led to more first-time customers and more people buying multiple phones for their families.
Cellular companies are trying to take advantage of this local growth:
U Cingular Wireless just entered the local market. It opened a company-owned store in Boardman last week and plans one for Niles next month.
Dealers who sell Cingular service have opened three area stores and two mall kiosks and plan at least two more stores by the end of the year.
U Sprint PCS, which opened cell phone stores here two years ago, is moving its Boardman store to a new spot nearly three times the size and opened a Niles store three weeks ago.
It is adding more than 50 cell sites to its network to improve coverage in areas such as Columbiana County and northern Trumbull County.
These two companies join Alltel, which acquired the local network of 360 Communications, and Dobson Cellular Systems, which acquired the local Cellular One franchise from Sygnet Wireless.
First new market: Alex Berry, Cingular's field marketing manager for northern Ohio, said the Mahoning Valley is the first new market for the company since it was created as a joint venture between SBC Communications and BellSouth.
"We felt there just was not as much competition as there is in other markets," he said.
Most markets have seven or eight competitors, while the Mahoning Valley has four.
The increasing competition locally isn't hurting Alltel, Palowitz said. The arrival of Sprint PCS and Cingular is creating more local demand because the added marketing gets more people thinking about cellular, Palowitz said.
"It's good. What it's doing is stirring up more business because people are out comparison shopping," she said.
Customers aren't just switching because they see someone has a better offer, she said. They don't want to give up their phone numbers so they usually check back with Alltel to see if they can match a competing offer, she said.
Continuous improvements: The increased competition is happening all over the country, which forces companies to continually improve their cell phone plans.
Just a little more than two years ago, Sprint PCS had a popular plan that offered 500 minutes for $50 a month. Today, $50 will buy 3,000 minutes.
Or shoppers can pay as little as $20 a month or use a pre-paid plan that doesn't have a monthly bill.
Palowitz said cellular users are vigorous shoppers.
"They want the lowest monthly access fee with the most amount of minutes and the biggest coverage area. They want it all," she said.
Berry said customers want to cut down on the number of devices they are carrying so manufacturers have come out with phones that also are text messaging units and personal assistants with calendars, planners and note-taking capabilities.
List said businesses executives are writing purchase orders on phones and consumers are retrieving e-mail and surfing the Internet.
"We've stopped calling them phones. They are handheld wireless devices," she said.
Next up is technology that's called third-generation wireless, which has more capacity, she said. This will increase transmission speed for data, which will create new uses, such as video streaming so cell phone users can see each other while talking.