Vanguard Cellular Systems, Inc. - VCELA- Profile

Vanguard Cellular Systems, Inc. provides cellular telephone and paging services in the United States. The company had 6.8 million aggregate POP's as at December 1998. The company serves for over 664,000 subscribers in 26 markets located in Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley and in New England region. The company offers new and innovative products including enhanced voice mail, which alerts the customer when a message has been left, and single number service, which allows a customer to use the same phone number in several locations. Vanguard also offers other services such as call management and voice dialing. The call management directs incoming calls to a succession of locations until the customer is reached and the voice dialing lets the customer make calls by spoken command without having to touch the keypad. Additionally, the company also offers digital data transmission over its existing cellular network, which allows the rapid transfer of data to and from personal computers, personal digital assistants and other devices. The wireless products and services of the company are marketed under the brand name CellularONE, a well recognized brand name in the wireless industry. The company acquired Nationpage, which provides paging services in Pennsylvania and New York in 1998. Service fees accounted for 92% of 1998 revenues and cellular telephone equipment, 8%.