This page describes the overcall terminology used by Airwave if your pager is on the my2way.com network.  Your airtime plan allows a set number of messages per month; and any overages are counted and charged as an overcall.  The current plans offered allow 1000, or 3000 messages per month, depending on the plan selected, and any messages over this will be billed as an ‘overcall’ at the rate of $.06 per message.

A message is defined as any message transmitted or received up to 100 characters.  Characters include spaces, letters, punctuation, and numbers.  Any message 101 to 199 characters is counted as 2 messages, 200 to 299 characters would be 3 messages, etc against the 1000 message allotment. 

A few suggestions that might help to ‘save’ your message limit are as follows.  When you receive a message and reply to it with a custom reply you are actually sending your reply plus the original message (this is similar to an email where your reply is at the top of the message and all other replies and the original message are sent as well but they are sent below the latest reply).  This results in unnecessary characters (the original message) being retransmitted back to the sender along with your reply.  The system keeps track of the entire sequence and does in fact count all characters from the originating message, along with all replies, even if your pager does not actually always display every previous reply and the original message.  If your reply was not 100 characters but the entire transmission (your reply(s) & the original message) is now over 100 characters this counts as 2 of your 1000 message allotment.  The idea here is to create a NEW message to the sender instead of creating a custom reply.  In this case you are ONLY sending your 'reply', and not the original message as well, therefore only the characters that make up your 'reply' are counted.

If you receive an initial message from someone that can be answered with one of the ‘canned’ messages in the pager (ie YES/OK, etc) this initial canned message reply does NOT count as a message.  Any custom reply will count though, as described in the paragraph above.  It’s important to note that only the initial (first) reply will NOT count if using the ‘canned’ message technique.  If it’s a second, third, etc reply it will count as a message regardless of the method of reply you use, canned or custom reply. 

If you feel you use your pager in a manner that will exceed the number of calls allowed in your plan you might want to consider another plan to avoid overcall charges.  Most customers will find the 1000 plan fits their needs as it allows for approximately 50 messages a day in an average month.