in the uk or anywhere for that matter? obviously mobiles have sort of made them redundant. but do they still work anyway?
is it still possible to use pagers?
Yup. I use one for work. 24/7 on-call. Pagers have better coverage than mobiles and tend to work anywhere. Plus it means I can turn my mobile off at night. The main reason though is that I work for a mobile network and if I'm being called out for some part of that mobile network being down then mobile might not actually work 
How do pagers work, surely they can't be better coverage than a mobile they must use the 2G mobile masts right?
I haven't seen anyone with a pager in years!
I haven't seen anyone with a pager in years!
Hospital staff still have them. I keep hearing the Mrs one go off all the time followed by a loud "What the frack do they want now?"
Originally Posted by Thine Wonk:
“How do pagers work, surely they can't be better coverage than a mobile they must use the 2G mobile masts right?”
“How do pagers work, surely they can't be better coverage than a mobile they must use the 2G mobile masts right?”
Well the pager network was built before the mobile networks. I'm sure a lot of pager sites share the same towers as the mobile ones but not all of them will. Pagers work on a far lower frequency than mobile phones which means the signal travels much farther and through buildings far easier. Roughly 140mhz ish if I remember rightly. Compared to mobiles which are 900mhz and 1800mhz. I'm not sure on this point but it's probably also much higher power levels because it's only one way and doesn't need communication back to the transmitter.
Originally Posted by xtaz:
“Well the pager network was built before the mobile networks. I'm sure a lot of pager sites share the same towers as the mobile ones but not all of them will. Pagers work on a far lower frequency than mobile phones which means the signal travels much farther and through buildings far easier. Roughly 140mhz ish if I remember rightly. Compared to mobiles which are 900mhz and 1800mhz. I'm not sure on this point but it's probably also much higher power levels because it's only one way and doesn't need communication back to the transmitter.”
“Well the pager network was built before the mobile networks. I'm sure a lot of pager sites share the same towers as the mobile ones but not all of them will. Pagers work on a far lower frequency than mobile phones which means the signal travels much farther and through buildings far easier. Roughly 140mhz ish if I remember rightly. Compared to mobiles which are 900mhz and 1800mhz. I'm not sure on this point but it's probably also much higher power levels because it's only one way and doesn't need communication back to the transmitter.”
Some pagers offer two way and use a different number of frequencies, for example in the US i believe they used 900MHz for pagers. Some even acted as a voicemail service whereby the pager would beep telling the user to check their mailbox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pager
interesting stuff guys, thanks for the info. is it possible to actually still buy one and have it connected to a network for personal use? or is it only for people that work within specific organisations these days? I kind of like the idea of using one.
Well this is who we use: http://www.paging.vodafone.net/ , though that's on a business page. I'm sure you could get one personally if you wanted to though.
I have a pager, On Vodafone.
It costs around £17 per month with a 500 email allowance, emails come through within about 60 seconds.
In the UK pagers are available on Vodafone or PageOne networks.
It costs around £17 per month with a 500 email allowance, emails come through within about 60 seconds.
In the UK pagers are available on Vodafone or PageOne networks.
ah! good stuff,thanks for that link and info xtaz and sean. its nice to see that they are still available for personal use. will look into vodafone and pageone.
