I work in secure facilities where I can’t have any phones, smart watches, anything with wifi, microphones, etc. However, pagers are allowed since they receive only.
I was also pretty mobile, moving between buildings so calling my desk phone was very unreliable.
The pager service I got had an email gateway so my wife could either text or email messages to it.
I set up 2 iOS shortcuts to send emails. One said “call me when you can” and the other said “call me NOW”.
they never quite made it into the pantheon of excellent sitcom plot devices like answering machines
Huh. I never thought about it before, but the times I can remember pagers being a significant plot points in sitcoms is when they were already on the way out. Dennis Duffy's pager business on 30 Rock for example.
Still do, I have my pager on me right now. Though I feel they've gone down in quality over the years. I usually go through at least one a year, and the buzzer function tends to die after just a few months.
No idea if this can be secure in any reasonable way, but one way communication based on cheap devices and available frequencies could be quite attractive for activist mass mobilisations, or disaster releasee 🤔
Pagers are still fairly popular for hospital workers because (among other things) they are cheap, minimally distracting, and not that useful if stolen. And they are still very popular among people who have to work in secure areas or on airgapped machines because it is (effectively) one way communication.
But for the vast majority of people? SMS provides all the same benefits (I mean, pagers are basically just one way SMS boxes) and emergency alert systems already exist.
Pagers also work even in parts of the hospital that cell phones don't for whatever reason. At least last time I had a hospital pager a few years ago. Now a lot of places use commercial solutions like vocera that also work everywhere and allow two way voice comms.
How does a one way transmitter (transceivers are 2 way) ensure the message is received? Does the sender just have to hope the recipient is in range at the time of sending?
With one way pagers, there is no way to ensure the message is received. The transmitters can be hundreds of watts and the signal is narrow band and uses forward error correction. As long as the pager is on and in the coverage area, there is a pretty good chance the message will get through. The signals will penetrate much deeper into buildings than cell signals. Of course if you are underground or in a shielded room the signal will not get through and you will not know that you missed a message.
