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.

Comments

Used to flood call with pagers.

[Blaede]

Pager companies would buy sequential blocks of numbers. So if I number xxx-xxx5 was a pager, good chance xxx-xxx4 and xxx-xxx6 were pagers too.

So I would these pagers, and enter the number of my target. All these pager owners would then call my target, who was mystified.

I came up with this when one day I dialed wrong, and a minute later the chick's insecure boyfriend *69 me back telling me not to ever call her. So I had about 20 guys call the number.

I wonder what ever happened. Maybe he killed the girlfriend in a jealous rage? Ed will never know.

Re:Fake pagers

[jwhyche]

With cell phones, you can no longer get out of meetings, but at least you can play Tetris while the boss drones on and on.

When I got my first smart phone I loaded a app called fake me out of here. I could give my phone a quick shake and a few minutes later it would ring like I had a incoming call. I used this app to get me out of conversations and meetings that I didn't want to be in. Checking google, I see there are several apps that do just that.