Pager

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A Motorola alphanumeric pager used in Brazil in the 1990s, operated by Teletrim

A pager (sometimes called a page, beeper, bleep or bleeper) is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can only receive a message consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user is then expected to call. Alphanumeric pagers are available, as well as two-way pagers that have the ability to send and receive email, numeric pages, and SMS messages.^[1]

Until the popular adoption of mobile phones in the 1990s, pagers fulfilled the role of common personal and mobile communications. Today, pagers mainly support the "critical messaging" markets. They are the ideal solution for very quick, very reliable personal or group messaging. Unlike many other mobile communications networks, they continue to work in times of emergency or disaster as they do not suffer from network overload as has been proven many times (September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina). For this reason, they are still very popular with emergency service personnel, medical personnel, and information technology support staff.

Function and operation

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The front end of a numeric pager

Paging is a subscription service offered in a variety of plans and options to meet the needs of a subscriber and the type of device used. In general, all pagers are given unique phone numbers while alphanumeric pagers are given an email address, usually consisting of the phone number.

When calling a phone number assigned to a pager, the calling party reaches a recorded greeting asking the caller to enter a numeric message, and sometimes giving the caller an option to leave a voice mail message. Generally, the paged person will receive an alert from the pager with the phone number the call and/or a pager code within a few minutes. In the case of email paging, the text is displayed.

• Numeric pagers are the simplest of the type of devices offering only a numeric display of the phone number to be called and pager codes
• Alphanumeric pagers are essentially modified versions of numeric pagers with sophisticated display to accommodate text. These devices are usually given an email address to receive text messages.
• Two-way Alphanumeric pagers are alphanumeric pagers capable of both sending and receiving text messages and email. To do this, the units either have a small built in keypad that allows the user to input messages, or the message can be typed from a wireless keyboard and is received by the pager.

Most modern paging systems use simulcast delivery by satellite controlled networks. This type of distributed system makes them inherently more reliable than terrestrial based cellular networks for message delivery. Many paging transmitters may overlap a coverage area, while cellular systems are built to fill holes in existing networks. When terrestrial networks go down in an emergency, satellite systems continue to perform. Because of superior building penetration and availability of service in disaster situations, pagers are often used by first responders in emergencies.

Pager use in the 21st century

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A Skyper pager that is in use for ham radio

A pager that is in use for emergency services

A mid 1990s opaque black Avont pager model

Original Motorola "beeper" pager, used in NYC in the late 1970s.

Pagers are still in use today in places where mobile phones typically cannot reach users, and also in places where the operation of the radio transmitters contained in mobile phones is problematic or prohibited. One such type of location is a large hospital complex, where cellular coverage is often weak or nonexistent, where radio transmitters are suggested to interfere with sensitive medical equipment and where there is a greater need of assurance for a timely delivery of a message. The U.S. paging industry generated $2.1 billion in revenue in 2008, down from $6.2 billion in 2003.^[2]

Some common environments in which pagers are still used are:

• Pagers remain in use to notify emergency personnel. For example, they are required to be used by UK lifeboat crew and retained firefighters.
• Police, coast, local government emergency co-ordinators and other emergency services also carry pagers as a back-up system in the event of civil emergencies when mobile transmitters or networks may be unavailable.
• Security services use pagers (including global satellite pagers) as the signal is broadcast nationally (or across a global region in the case of satellite pagers) and there is thus no way of interceptors tracking the location of the pager-holder. Encrypted messages are also used in this scenario.
• Pagers are mostly carried by staff in medical establishments, allowing them to be summoned to emergencies. This is particularly important as one-way pagers do not interfere with medical equipment.
• Some construction and mining staff have to use one-way 'intrinsically safe' pagers as opposed to mobiles, as these do not risk triggering explosions in certain environments.
• Pagers are also widely used in the IT world, especially in cases where on-call technicians cannot rely on more modern cellular telephone systems. A good example would be in a cellular telephone company, where a service interruption in the cellular network would also mean that it would not be possible to notify a technician due to the outage in the network. Therefore, in these companies, engineers are usually equipped with a pager that uses another telco's mobile network to ensure reachability in case of emergency. Pagers are also frequently used by non-telco IT departments.
• Railway staff (for example those working for rail companies in the UK) use pagers because of their consistency of signal, to supplement mobile usage.
• Deaf people who have no use for mobile voice services sometimes use two-way pagers.
• Pagers are widely used by rare bird-chasing "twitchers", paying for rare bird information companies to send them messages telling them up-to-the-minute details of the latest rarity sightings across Britain.

Additionally, some irrigation control systems and traffic signals are now controlled by messages sent via paging networks. Due to energy concerns in the United States and other countries, two way paging networks are being used for power company meter reading and control.

Another pager technology in wide use today is the call or tone pager. Mainly used in the hospitality industry, customers are given a theft-protected portable receiver which usually vibrates, flashes or beeps when a table becomes free, or when their meal is ready.

Security

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Pagers also have privacy advantages compared with cellular phones. Since a one-way pager is a passive receiver only (it sends no information back to the base station), its location cannot be tracked. However, this can also be disadvantageous, as a message sent to a pager must be broadcast from every paging transmitter in the pager's service area. Thus, if a pager has nationwide service, a message sent to it could be intercepted by criminals or law enforcement agencies anywhere within the nationwide service area. With pagers there is nothing like a secret since interception is easily made when it has a nationwide coverage.

Technical information

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Many paging network operators now allow numeric and textual pages to be submitted to the paging networks via email. This is convenient for many users, due to the widespread adoption of email; but email-based message submission methods do not usually provide any way to ensure that messages have been received by the paging network. This can result in pager messages being delayed or lost. Older forms of message submission using the Telocator Alphanumeric input Protocol protocol involve modem connections directly to a paging network, and are less subject to these delays. For this reason, older forms of message submission retain their usefulness for disseminating highly-important alerts to users such as emergency services personnel.

Common paging protocols include TAP, FLEX, ReFLEX, POCSAG, Golay, ERMES and NTT. Past paging protocols include Two-tone and 5/6-tone.

In the United States, pagers typically receive signals using the FLEX protocol in the 900 MHz band. Commercial paging transmitters typically radiate 1000 watts of effective power, resulting in a much wider coverage area per tower than a mobile phone transmitter, which typically radiates around 0.6 Watts per channel.

Although 900 MHz FLEX paging networks tend to have stronger in-building coverage than mobile phone networks, commercial paging service providers will work with large institutions to install repeater equipment in the event that service is not available in needed areas of the subscribing institution's buildings. This is especially critical in hospital settings where emergency staff must be able to reliably receive pages in order to respond to patient needs.

Unlike mobile phones, most one-way pagers do not display any information about whether a signal is being received or about the strength of the received signal. Since one-way pagers do not contain transmitters, one-way paging networks have no way to track whether a message has been successfully delivered to a pager. Because of this, if a one-way pager is turned off or is not receiving a usable signal at the time a message is transmitted, the message will not be received and the sender of the message will not be notified of this fact. In the mid 1990s, some paging companies began offering a service, which allowed a customer to call their pagernumber, and have numeric messages read back to them. This was useful for times when the pager was off/out of coverage area, as it would know what number paged you even if you never actually received the page.

Other radio bands used for pagers include the 400 MHz band, the VHF band, and the FM commercial broadcast band (88-108 MHz). Other paging protocols used in the VHF, 400 MHz UHF, and 900 MHz bands include POCSAG and ERMES. Pagers using the commercial FM band receive a subcarrier, called the Subsidiary Communications Authority, of a broadcast station.

Satellite pager

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A service based on the Iridium satellite constellation uses satellites to deliver short text messages to one-way pagers similar to those used by terrestrial paging networks. Despite the fact that the network provides world-wide coverage the messages are only sent to pre-selected message delivery areas which can be set on a web-based interface or by binding the service to a satellite phone. Messages can be sent in the form of SMS, email or from a web interface.

See also

• Alfred J. Gross
• Plectron
• Motorola Minitor Voice Pager
• Wireless Communications Transfer Protocol (WCTP)
• Simple Network Paging Protocol (SNPP)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pagers

References

External links

• BBC news reports closure of UK domestic pager systems in 2001
• NotePage technical support - Technical information on protocols, carriers, etc.