The technology around pagers can be quite confusing. Most seem to emit nothing more than a quiet buzz, but fans of hospital dramas will recall often seeing doctors receive text messages through to their pagers. So what exactly do pagers do, and how many different types of pagers are there?

The Beeper

Ever eaten out at a fancy restaurant and wondered just how the waiting staff knew the exact moment to serve you your pudding? Your waiter was probably using a simple pager known as a beeper. The beeper was so named because of the sound it made, alerting the waiting staff that your sticky toffee pudding was ready to leave the kitchen. Nowadays, although the pager is more likely to vibrate, the name remains the same. Beepers are most commonly used by waiting staff telling them that there is food in the kitchen waiting to be taken out. Theft-proof beepers have recently started to be handed out to customers at popular eating establishments in order to alert them when a table becomes available. Rather than just vibrate, beepers can also beep, light-up or use audio-signals.

Voice Tone Pagers

Voice tone pagers allow you to listen to a recorded message when phoned and are a little more sophisticated than the standard beeper. If someone needs to contact you in a hurry and relay an important message to you, then the voice tone pager is more reliable than a mobile phone. This is because the voice tone pager doesn’t suffer from the signalling or networking problems associated with mobile phones. When you receive a message, your pager will beep as normal and you can then listen to the recording and take the appropriate action.

Alphanumeric Pagers

Have you ever watched Scrubs and been confused by the pager antics? Just how does JD know its Doctor Cox that’s texting him and how does he know which number to call after receiving a page? It’s all very confusing! Actually all the staff at the Sacred Heart Hospital have alphanumeric pagers. An alphanumeric pager can receive messages of up to 80 characters and these can consist of both letters and digits; basically a more reliable form of a text message. In this instance the person responding doesn’t need to find a payphone, they can simply react to the text. This saves valuable time and therefore is the type of pager most commonly used in emergency services situations. As the most popular type of pager, they are available in a wide range of colours and contemporary styles; fans of Grey’s Anatomy may remember Cristina and Meredith fighting for a rather snazzy jewel-encrusted pager.

Numeric Pagers

A step down from the alphanumeric pager is the standard numeric pager. This pager has a small screen that can display up to twenty digits at a time. You may have seen hospital dramas, where doctors and nurses receive a page and then run to a lobby phone and dial the number presented on the screen. This number puts them in touch with a senior who informs exactly where they need to be. Pagers operate on a private paging network, which is set up for each customer’s site so there will always be coverage and reception isn’t a word ever used as pagers always work – that is their ‘raison d’etre’. A mobile phone works using GPRS (when it has a signal) and if a major incident occurs or the network is busy your message may be delayed or simply not get through at all.

Author Bio: Jenny Kettlewell is the Marketing Manager for Multitone Systems, a telecommunications strategy company that has provided the pagers and paging systems for organisations in the public and private sector for many years.

Category: Computers and Technology
Keywords: pagers