The end of pagers.
Discussion
I remember when I came to London in the mid-90s I bought a Nokia mobile phone as I was living in a place with no phone and was trying to get my career as a freelance musician off the ground. Had an argument with a violinist who thought I was an idiot wasting my money of a phone when all I needed was a pager like hers. Sometimes I think of her and wonder if she still has that pager and no mobile phone...
The network was still heavily used last year, asi was playing with my usb sdr receiver and some pocsag decoding software and there was loads of traffic on there. Mostly medical, financial, it and telecoms callouts. Angus council use a lot of pagers for their on call workers due to poor mobile coverage.
I had one of the original ones that didn't send messages, it just beeped. I actually splashed out on the monthly rental and got one that had 4 different beeps that you could assign to different callers. I was working on sites all over the East End and when it beeped I'd say "Ah that's Gary!" (or whoever) grab some change and run off up the road. I would then spend about half an hour legging it around the streets looking for an un-vandalised phone box and voila!
It seemed amazing, cutting edge technology at the time and I would boast to mates about it "Yeah, doesn't matter where I am the client can still reach me".
It seemed amazing, cutting edge technology at the time and I would boast to mates about it "Yeah, doesn't matter where I am the client can still reach me".
Public pagers are pretty much dead.
But business, emergency and government "private" pagers are still used by thousands of workers in the UK.
They are cheap, fast, rugged, reliable, safer than phones, and cannot be used for Facebook slackers on worktime.
Some of those pagers will get replaced by smartwatches or wearables in the near-future.
But business, emergency and government "private" pagers are still used by thousands of workers in the UK.
They are cheap, fast, rugged, reliable, safer than phones, and cannot be used for Facebook slackers on worktime.
Some of those pagers will get replaced by smartwatches or wearables in the near-future.
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