Dead brands: A stroll through the wireless operator graveyard

Before the cell phone industry caught fire, everyday Americans had already begun to enjoy the benefits of wireless technology--thanks mainly to pagers.

Arch Wireless was one of the nation's leading pager operators, and by the mid-1990s more than 50 million Americans were receiving and--in the case of two-way pagers--sending pages. Indeed, a little-known BlackBerry maker called Research In Motion began refining its wireless email service via paging carriers' ReFLEX networks.

But the paging industry suffered a quick and dramatic decline following the introduction of inexpensive, texting-capable cell phones. And Arch Wireless, along with many of its closest paging competitors, merged into USA Mobility, which continues to offer paging and communications services to hospital workers and other two-way aficionados.

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