5 ms·

Does it work while you're out and about? My understanding was they were generally limited to a small range, like the area inside and near a major hospital.

mattowen_uk 5y ago
Back in the day many countries had nationwide paging networks. Nowhere was safe from getting a page. You couldnt just use the 'I had no signal' excuse. There wasn't cross country roaming for pagers though, I don't think.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  There was in the United States. But it was pretty expensive. Pagers hung in for a long time because they had far better coverage than cell phones. I don't know if that's still the case.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    It's partly because of the low frequencies used that penetrated buildings better. My pager was 159Mhz. At those frequencies you have significantly less bandwidth but pages were expensive so they weren't used for idle chitchat. That made it work with the low bandwidth available. And there really wasn't that much because with one-way pagers as used in Europe, all messages had to be sent out all over the entire country! Because the network had no way of knowing in which area a pager would be. So all you had was a 2400 bit/s stream for all nationwide users. That's why they made it so expensive.
dm319 5y ago
I just looked this up for the UK, and noticed that there is still a single national paging network. I use pager at work, but, as you say, the network is limited to the site.
dlgeek 5y ago
Not at all. There are a some very large pager networks in the US. As a bonus, since the messages are so simple, they have better penetration in a given area than GSM would. (I've had my pager go off in a deep parking garage for example). Ex, here are the coverage maps for SPOK who bought out USA Mobility: https://www.spok.com/solutions/paging-services/wide-area-paging/check-coverage/ https://www.spok.com/solutions/paging-services/wide-area-pag...
- justusthane 5y ago
  The only problem is there’s no indication on the pager whether or not you’re in range, and no way to know whether you missed a page due to being out of range. At the same time, the reason they’re still used is there’s no good modern alternative in a lot of ways (battery life, range). Troubleshooting paging issues is one thing I do not miss from my time in healthcare I.T.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    The only problem is there’s no indication on the pager whether or not you’re in range The pager I had in 2003 has a signal strength indicator just like a cell phone so you know if you are in range. The pager was also able to let the network know if the message was received. If it didn't, the network would keep retrying until it got an ACK.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Even my digits-only pager had an out of range indicator. I visited some caves back in the day and it was the only time I ever saw it. You just never really saw it as the service was so good.
- owenversteeg 5y ago
  Is the coverage really that bad? Looking at that map it seems like you’re really only covered inside major cities. Even somewhere like Connecticut seems to have most of the state with zero coverage!
  - 5y ago

mattowen_uk 5y ago

Back in the day many countries had nationwide paging networks. Nowhere was safe from getting a page. You couldnt just use the 'I had no signal' excuse. There wasn't cross country roaming for pagers though, I don't think.

reaperducer 5y ago
There was in the United States. But it was pretty expensive. Pagers hung in for a long time because they had far better coverage than cell phones. I don't know if that's still the case.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  It's partly because of the low frequencies used that penetrated buildings better. My pager was 159Mhz. At those frequencies you have significantly less bandwidth but pages were expensive so they weren't used for idle chitchat. That made it work with the low bandwidth available. And there really wasn't that much because with one-way pagers as used in Europe, all messages had to be sent out all over the entire country! Because the network had no way of knowing in which area a pager would be. So all you had was a 2400 bit/s stream for all nationwide users. That's why they made it so expensive.

dm319 5y ago

I just looked this up for the UK, and noticed that there is still a single national paging network. I use pager at work, but, as you say, the network is limited to the site.

dlgeek 5y ago

Not at all. There are a some very large pager networks in the US. As a bonus, since the messages are so simple, they have better penetration in a given area than GSM would. (I've had my pager go off in a deep parking garage for example). Ex, here are the coverage maps for SPOK who bought out USA Mobility: https://www.spok.com/solutions/paging-services/wide-area-paging/check-coverage/ https://www.spok.com/solutions/paging-services/wide-area-pag...

justusthane 5y ago
The only problem is there’s no indication on the pager whether or not you’re in range, and no way to know whether you missed a page due to being out of range. At the same time, the reason they’re still used is there’s no good modern alternative in a lot of ways (battery life, range). Troubleshooting paging issues is one thing I do not miss from my time in healthcare I.T.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  The only problem is there’s no indication on the pager whether or not you’re in range The pager I had in 2003 has a signal strength indicator just like a cell phone so you know if you are in range. The pager was also able to let the network know if the message was received. If it didn't, the network would keep retrying until it got an ACK.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Even my digits-only pager had an out of range indicator. I visited some caves back in the day and it was the only time I ever saw it. You just never really saw it as the service was so good.
owenversteeg 5y ago
Is the coverage really that bad? Looking at that map it seems like you’re really only covered inside major cities. Even somewhere like Connecticut seems to have most of the state with zero coverage!
- 5y ago