Nicely said Nate! Other benefits include MUCH longer battery life (how long does your cell phone last? 4 hours? 6? A pager that doesn't last at least a month on 1 AA cell has a problem!) The lack of a transmit function is necessary in many environments, like hospitals, as well as many hazardous atmospheres/environments.
As others alluded to, throughput on a paging network is much better too. We strive for a throughput under 60 seconds. A text msg is just about the lowest priority for cellular, and times are usually much longer. There are some new products out too. You know the little 'coaster pagers' you get in restaurants? How about having one in a hospital waiting room so you can be reached even if you leave the room? With one of those on the network, you can not only leave the waiting room, you can go down the street and get something to eat, or pick up a few items for the patient, etc. We also have a device that can hang on the wall or sit on a desk, with a wall supply and a D cell, for schools, fire depts, utilities, and so on, for mass alerts. To answer the other side of it, the more modern transmitters are very clean. We've had excellent luck with the Glenayre transmitters, both the 7900 series and the 8500/8600's. Yes, the older VHF PURC's and Quintron's (with tube PA's) were pretty dirty, and needed to be 'baby-sat' a lot, so a narrow band-pass cavity and circulator/isolator was a must (and before you ask, the Glenayre's all come with a circulator standard). But at least here in Cleveland/NE Ohio, that stuff is basically gone. I think the only VHF paging left is the medical 152.0075, and that's fading fast. There is still a fair amount of VHF and UHF in WV and PA, where the terrain makes 900 MHz rough. Jim Barbour Field Engineering American Messaging (trying not to sound like a salesman, er, person ;cP) Nate Duehr wrote: > On Feb 9, 2009, at 12:43 AM, Jacob Suter wrote: > >> Seriously... >> >> What is today's market for pagers? I can't imagine there's any real >> reason >> for them to continue to exist. > > There are a number of excellent uses of pagers, including penetration > of structures that are RF dense (where cell phones don't work), or > signaling people in areas where cell phones are not allowed for > security or other reasons. > > In addition, there's a pretty good number of remote control devices > that listen to a particular paging system and a single CAP code (or > whatever those are called these days) and numbers correspond to a > particular unit doing "something", like switching power on/off to > reboot a system, etc. > > Additionally so-called "two-way" pagers are used to monitor systems, > check stock in vending machines/signal the owners to come refill them, > empty the coin boxes, whatever. > > Paging has cost benefits over cellular text in these applications, > with cellular carriers being greedy enough to think a single text > message should cost $0.50 each, and multiple "receivers" can't be used > on that network for a single paging bill... > > Nate WY0X > > > ------------------------------------
