For reasons I still don’t actually know the answer to, I still own a pager. Perhaps this confirms I’m a hoarder? Anyway, Here’s a geeky thread about it!

The pager network is still active! It runs on around 150MHz (slightly above FM so has similar coverage and building penetration, better than mobile phones). A rival pager network closed a few years ago and I can’t imagine this one will last too many years more.

This one is a Pay As You Go model, they make their money out of a slightly more expensive number. I have to remember to send a page to myself once every few months to keep the number active as they shut down inactive ones!

If you have the right equipment and software (raspberry pi, sdr, etc) you can decode pages. The text is sent unencrypted so anyone with the right bits could read anyone else’s pages. Don’t try this though as it’s still illegal!

The date is set to 1999 because this pager has well surpassed it’s life expectancy and won’t let me set the date to 2021. it didn’t expect to still be around! 1999 is the same date pattern as 2021 so that’ll keep it functioning.

Every pager listens to all the transmitted messages but only display the ones intended for them which are identified by a seven digit code. There’s no acknowledgement so if your pager is out of range and doesn’t hear your message it doesn’t get resent, it’s lost!

I think the last few active pagers are mainly used by NHS/medical. I don’t know anyone else who still has one. I’ve only kept this one for the novelty and amazement the network is still active and working! End of thread...