paging services

A pager is an electronic device used to contact people via a paging network. It pre-dates mobile phone technology, being most popular during the 1980s and 1990s, but similarly uses radio transmissions to communicate between a control/call center and the recipient. Many of today's pagers use the FLEX on-air protocol. The slower POCSAG on-air protocol is still used for some pagers in the United States and probably in other countries as well.

At the height of pager popularity, many drug dealers used the devices to make their connections. West Virginia Paging - Digital and Alpha Numeric Paging with Internet. This has become the subject of many parodies, where a man is usually shown wearing dozens of pagers all over his body.

Early pagers only provided an audio notification, such as a series of bleeps, to indicate reception of a page. The paged party then had to telephone the control/call centre to collect the message either from an operator or an early voice mail device. Some early models included an analog audio receiver and speaker; upon receiving a page the speaker would activate, and the user would hear a human voice reciting their message. Later pagers used digital messages, first numeric and later alphanumeric, to provide the recipient with more information.