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A pager, also known as a beeper or bleeper, is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknowledge, reply to, and originate messages using an internal transmitter.
Pagers operate as part of a paging system which includes one or more fixed transmitters (or in the case of response pagers and two-way pagers, one or more base stations), as well as a number of pagers carried by mobile users. These systems can range from a restaurant system with a single low power transmitter, to a nationwide system with thousands of high-power base stations.
Pagers were developed in the 1950s and 1960s, and became widely used by the 1980s through the late 1990s and early 2000s. Later in the 21st century, the widespread availability of cellphones and smartphones with text messaging capability has greatly diminished the pager industry. Nevertheless, pagers continue to be used by some emergency services and public safety personnel, because modern pager systems' coverage overlap, combined with use of satellite communications, can make paging systems more reliable than terrestrial based cellular networks in some cases, including during natural and human-made disasters. This resilience has led public safety agencies to adopt pagers over cellular and other commercial services for critical messaging.
By early 2002, pager usage was rapidly declining in places like North America.
The U.S. paging industry generated $2.1 billion in revenue in 2008, down from $6.2 billion in 2003. In Canada, 161,500 Canadians paid $18.5 million for pager service in 2013. Telus, one of the three major mobile carriers, announced the end to its Canadian pager service as of 31 March 2015, but rivals Bell, Rogers and PageNet intend to continue service.
In 2017 the UK National Health Service was thought to have been using over 10% of the remaining pagers in the world (130,000), with an annual cost of £6.6 million. Matt Hancock, (then) Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced in February 2019 that the 130,000 pagers still in use were to be phased out. NHSX announced plans in May 2020 to replace pagers and bleepers with "more modern communication tools," accelerated by the pressure placed on the service by the COVID-19 pandemic in England. In August 2020, a new procurement framework for clinical communications was launched which was intended to phase out pagers by the end of 2021, replacing them with "dedicated clinical-facing communication and tasks management tools" from 25 approved suppliers.
In Japan, more than ten million pagers were active in 1996. On 1 October 2019, Japan's last paging service provider shut down radio signals and terminated its service.
In Russia, the last paging provider was closed in November 2021.
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In this gallery "Pager" we have 29 free PNG images with transparent background.
