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Japan's Final Pager Provider To End Its Service In 2019 (bbc.com)
Tokyo Telemessage, Japan's last pager provider, has announced that it will end service to its 1,500 remaining users in September 2019. It will bring a national end to telecommunication beepers, 50 years after their introduction. The BBC reports: The once-popular devices are able to receive and show wireless messages. Users would then find a phone to call the sender back. Developed in the 1950s and 1960s, they grew in popularity in the 1980s. By 1996, Tokyo Telemessage had 1.2 million subscribers. However, the rise of mobile phones rendered the pager obsolete, and few remain worldwide. Emergency services, however, continue to use the reliable technology -- including in the UK.
No. I work as a clinical pharmacist. All the docs and many others, including myself, still carry one. There is no plans to discontinue their use.
It's actually quite the opposite. Pagers have no guaranteed delivery, because they are a one way service. The pager does not ever communicate back to the tower (or at least the type most doctors carry don't). If the pager is out of range or has a poor signal at the moment the page is broadcast, you are SOL. On the other hand, SMS will at least hold the message until you connect and then make a best effort to get the message to you.
The advantage of pagers is that they work successfully off a much weaker signal and have much broader coverage. And even more importantly, a pager runs off a AA battery that is good for months and can be swapped out with an off the shelf battery in a matter of seconds. You can't say that about any phone.
You can get a two-way pager if you want one. There are pagers that just send in the fact that they've received a message, that it was read, or ones that can compose a message and send it in.
I work for a paging company. Paging is very much a niche product, but a good niche product has always been a license to print money.
...laura