The company's underlying technology is sort of a lingua franca that allows it to talk to one-way and two-way pagers, digital cellular phones and wireless handheld computers.

Wireless data is a fast-growing field, according to consultant Gerry Purdy of the California-based technology newsletter, Mobile Insights. ``We're going to see more and more of the narrowband paging network used with these handheld devices to deliver very user-specific content that will make these handheld devices much more valuable over time,'' Purdy said.

Clients include three of the country's largest paging services -- Skytel, PageNet and AirTouch -- two national cellular phone service providers, Nextel and Issaquah-based Western Wireless Corp. and PDQ, one of Houston's largest Internet service providers.`` We have no religion about paging companies or (cellular) phones,'' said Curt Miller, vice president of engineering for Wireless Services. ``It's not so much a communication issue; it's more a data issue of how to get the right information to the right person at the right time.''

Wireless Services acts behind the scenes as a gateway through which these companies' customers' email messages are shipped. The company's customizable AirNotes Wireless Email service lets people filter their messages into a hot list for immediate delivery and a junk list. Customers also can schedule message delivery -- important for pager users who may lose any messages they miss. The system also is set up to give a quick highlight of the message, which is unusual.

``We are moving the intelligence out to the phone so it is not as dependent on the back-end processes,'' Miller said. ``It's not necessarily better to be complex when all you really need is a hammer '' you should use a hammer.''

Wireless Services also provides e-mail and fax messaging for United Publishing, the company that distributes the ``For Rent'' magazine in 45 cities throughout the United States. Renters looking for lodgings log about 2 million phone inquiries a month into the ``For Rent'' system. Wireless Services captures that data and sends it out as a page or a fax to some 11,000 real estate agents and property managers.

Wireless Services was formed in 1996 by the four founders of Notable Technologies Inc., a Bellevue-based company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier that year after losing financial backing from AT&T Wireless Services. Notable's chief executive Steve Wood, Miller, Rulfs and programmer Alan Lindsay then bought the defunct company's core technology and its customer base to form Wireless Services.

Wireless Services has been designed to stay small and debt-free; there are only 10 employees who own 80 percent of the company, Rulfs said. ``We had gone through trial by fire,'' Rulfs said. ``We knew we had a proven technology and a product the marketplace would accept if we were patient.''

This Sunday, Wireless Services partners with retailer Radio Shack in a special Father's Day promotion of a new sports ticker for pagers, GotSports.com. Radio Shack customers who buy Dad a pager get a free three-month trial subscription to GotSports. It's like a stocks ticker for sportsnuts who can program in continuous feeds of information about their favorite sports teams and players.

Potentially, GotSports could be used by sports franchises as part of their season ticket package, said Jim Rulfs, vice president of business development for Wireless Services. The company has been talking to baseball and basketball franchises along the West Coast, including teams in the Puget Sound area, Portland and Vancouver, Rulfs said.