Does Anyone Still Own A "Beeper"?

In My Humble Opinion
21

My fiance carries a beeper so that his ex can get ahold of him regarding issues with the kids without having to call him at my house (long story). He hates cell phones, as do I, and would much rather pay a tiny fee for a beeper than a big fee for a cell phone.

22

I have a text pager because I’m constantly receiving network alerts. Telco switches are constantly sending out text messages alerting us humans about network failures. Text messages can be 2000 characters long. The limit on my cell phone looks to be about 50.

Also, the pager network will store messages if I happen to be out of the service area briefly (in the subway, down in the cable vault, etc). When I come back into the service area, the message is delivered to my pager.

My customers also like to know that their message has actually been delivered to my pager. They can go to www.myairmail.com and get real-time confirmation that I have received their page or text message.

Lastly, mobile phone fidelity still leaves much to be desired; I don’t care what that “can you hear me now?” guy says.

I wouldn’t mind giving up my cell phone but I need ot in case I’m out in the middle of nowhere and have to return a page.

23

By the way, I haven’t heard anybody call it a “beeper” in years. Is “beeper” really still the common term in some places?

24

Most ambulance services issue pagers. It’s kinda handy- we get a duplicate of the call information given over the radio and we get our trip numbers and times via pager as well. It’s also handy for places where our radios can’t get in/out (“Get your ass out of the hospital, we’ve got a call for you!”). They also use them to page out overtime and other company-wide messages.

St. Urho
Paramedic

25

I still use mine… for an alarm clock.
(I don’t actually have a paging service anymore, just the pager. And it makes an excellent alarm clock!)

26

P.S. Number one thing I hated about my pager: the low battery warning was just like the pager going off, and it invariably went off at 2 AM. This was about the same time I would actually get paged, so it really sucked, since I had to get up and check it.