There was a time when a pager on your belt was an important image attribute business man. Now any pensioner on the train can take a mobile phone out of his pocket, and this will not surprise anyone. One gets the impression that cellular finally replaced paging. Unless some radio DJ asks listeners to “send your messages to the air pager.” However, professors at Russian universities still include extensive chapters on paging systems in the latest reissues of their textbooks on mobile radio communications. Well, textbooks are textbooks, but it’s much more interesting to find out the real situation paging in the modern Russian telecommunications market.
The main reason that paging is inferior to cellular communications is obvious: a mobile phone is capable of taking on the traditional functions of a pager, but a pager fundamentally cannot perform the most important functions of a mobile phone. Cheaper cell phones and their tariffs also played an important role in the rapid rise in their popularity. Of course, pagers are even cheaper, but they provide the user with significantly fewer options. For business people who talk a lot on the phone, a difference of a few tens of dollars per month is not critical. But convenience, efficiency and two-way communication have become familiar and almost taken-for-granted features for such users, as well as for those who spend no more than $10 a month on calls. Pagers also have their own conveniences, but of a different kind (for example, the ability to send a message to many pagers at the same time, which is very convenient for various services such as courier services). And the so-called twerers, which implement two-way communication, only partially compensate for the shortcomings of pagers in comparison with cell phones.
One way or another, today the pager has taken its not very noticeable, but quite stable place in the Russian telecommunications market. By the way, the same story happened abroad even earlier. Paging communications also exist on the world market, and quite successfully, but, of course, there is no talk of any competition with cell phones there either. By the way, the loss to cell phones also determined the geography of distribution of paging communications in our country. Where cellular communications are less developed, there is more room for pagers. And, on the contrary, in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities, where there has long been a boom in cell phones, paging operators have also long ago practically stopped registering additions to the subscriber base. In other words, if paging still has a resource to continue its development in Russia, then only in the regions. Actually, this is what is happening, especially in the Siberian and northern regions. But for how long?
However, some experts do not look at this already inevitable process of paging communications leaving the cell phone shadow with such drama. They say that now pagers have simply found their own niche in the telecommunications market. To claim the place of the businessman's main mobile communication tool was for paging a manifestation of unjustified optimism. These expectations came true for several years, but now it is history.
Today, some paging companies have ceased to exist (this happened, for example, with Transpage), some have merged with each other. Many companies from this sector (Alfacom, Taskom, Vesso-Link, Multi-Page, Astra Page), in an effort to secure their business, are simultaneously developing other projects, such as the area of pagers (new additional services, increasingly free) and other areas of the telecommunications market. For example, Taskom today is among the companies developing wireless technologies in Russia. "Astra Page" has created a call center. According to Astra Page CEO Grigory Shershnev, “a kind of friendly takeover took place: paging turned into one of many orders that are carried out by the call center.”
Now the user base, which is made up of Russian owners of pagers in Russia, is, in many ways, courier services, security companies, security services, delivery services and other transport enterprises, etc. It often turns out to be much more convenient to provide the employees of the listed organizations with pagers than to give each one mobile phone. This preference is less dependent on the development of cellular telephony, and therefore these customers, sometimes called "blue collar", can be considered quite reliable and loyal fans of paging.
So, paging communication is alive in Russia. It turns out that, having occupied its niche, domestic paging is not doing so bad: it is almost not developing, the demand for these services is now relatively small, but more or less stable. Specific figures for Russia are not so easy to obtain; paging operators, unlike cellular operators, are not particularly eager to disclose the number of subscribers, which, of course, can be interpreted as an indirect reluctance to admit that things are not going well. The number of connected cell phones in Russia has long been in the millions, and the figure of 100 thousand subscribers for a paging operator is evidence of a very large company. Most of these operators are much smaller. Most likely, over time, as a result of ruins and mergers, there will be no more than 5-7 such paging operators throughout Russia, and the total number of subscribers will be several hundred thousand.
Like cell phones, electronic pagers transmit and receive signals using radio waves. A call from a paging device first arrives at a base station, where it is analyzed and temporarily stored. Several base stations then simultaneously send signals to the paging device, which picks up the signal closest to it.
In most cases, the pager will beep or vibrate when it receives a signal, alerting the owner to call the station for a message. These tone pagers are gradually giving way to devices with displays on which phone numbers and short messages.
Call by electronic pager
- When you dial a pager number, you first contact the base radio station. After the answer tone, the caller dials his own number.
- On base station the message is processed and sent to several peripheral stations via radio along with the identification number of the paging device to which the message is transmitted.
- Having reached several peripheral stations, the message spreads in the form of a radio signal. The peripheral stations can form a radio network over two hundred miles in diameter.
- Many paging devices can pick up the signal, but only the pager with the specified number will respond to its own number, register the message and alert the owner of the incoming call.
Base stations repeat the signal every 20 seconds. In order to save batteries, pagers are designed in such a way that they can recognize their own numbers once every 1.4 seconds, being synchronized with the waves emitted by the stations.
Paging device
The pager in the illustration at the top of the article records and displays the caller's number and a few words of the message. In the future, the size of pagers will become even smaller. Someday, any digital wristwatch will be able to function as a paging device.
Now we have begun to forget what a pager is. Previously, it was a symbol of success. Those who did not have enough money for cellular telephone, which in those days cost more than $1,000 plus considerable expenses for calls, acquired pagers. However, rare owners of mobile phones did not neglect them either.
What is a pager
A pager was a small one-way communication device that displayed short messages (no longer than an SMS) on the display. The peculiarity of this type of communication is that only specialized paging networks could transmit signals. Messages were sent to the device from the paging center, where operators typed them on a regular keyboard and sent them to the recipient.
To send a message to a pager, you had to call an operator on a specific phone number, give the subscriber’s number or his nickname and dictate the message. You could also specify the time when this message should have been sent. The operator sent the typed message over the air, preceded by a special code signal, unique to each pager, which caught the message intended for it, like a radio receiver.
If the owner of the pager is this moment found himself “out of reach” (for example, in the subway) or simply turned off the device, then he could miss the message. To prevent this from happening, you could order the message to be sent multiple times. In the absence of cell phones, such communication was very convenient. You could send an order to the pager, ask to call, warn about something, give a signal, etc.
Pagers gave rise to a wave of jokes:
“Suck in your stomach, I’m suffocating! Your pager" (in Russia, the pager was often worn on the belt)
“Uncle Gogi, Uncle Vakhtang asked you to call him back!” - Thank you Pager-jan.
Yesterday I re-read the pager. I thought a lot.
Invention of the pager
The first paging devices appeared in the United States in the late 20s. They were invented by radio engineer Charles Niergaard. Legend has it that when he was in the hospital, he was terribly bored with the intercom calls that were used to find doctors. It was these loud calls that prompted him to come up with such a “quiet” connection. In the 1930s, pagers were actively used by the police.
But the adoption of these devices has been slow. A more modern version of the pager was created in England in 1956 by Motorola. In those years, the number of network subscribers could not be more than 57, and the range did not exceed 200 m. However, it was very useful inside hospitals, large offices, etc. At the same time, the name appeared - pager - from the word “page” (servant, page).
The first devices could only produce a beeping signal, which is why another name appeared - beeper. Hearing the signal, the doctor knew that he had to run to the operating room, the military man hurried to the headquarters, and the firefighters were preparing to go to the fire.
Then pagers became more sophisticated: they were able to transmit audio messages. Having heard the beeper signal, the subscriber brought it to his ear and listened to the message transmitted by the dispatcher. Thanks to the system of circuits inside the pager, it could only receive the signal that was intended for it. Other signals are not available to him.
Quite quickly, beepers were equipped with small screens on which first only digital and then alphabetic information was displayed. This information was not only displayed, but also remembered. Thus, the subscriber could re-read the message at any convenient time. Some departments in England and the USA still use pagers: they are very convenient and economical when two-way communication is not needed.
Paging modernization
The heyday of paging communications in the USA and Europe occurred in the 80s, when it became possible to transmit text information. The transmitted message, which was transmitted by the user, was entered by the operator into the computer where it was stored. Transfer via the Motorola FLEX protocol was carried out either immediately after the order, or at a time specified by the user. Repetitions were possible at a certain interval so that the subscriber was guaranteed to receive the signal and not forget about it.
Motorola Advisor pagers are equipped with an 80-character, 4-line backlit display, battery indicator, built-in clock, and alarm clock. The memory capacity in Advisor is 52 messages per 6400 characters and in Maxima 231 messages per 18480 characters. In the 90s, Motorola created a two-way pager based on the ReFLEX protocol, the so-called twager (“two-way paging”). But at the same time, cell phones began to spread rapidly, and the star of paging began to decline.
Pagers in the USSR and Russia
Watch pager.
Having appeared in the USSR in the late 70s, pagers did not become the property of the general public. They were used mainly by ambulance doctors. There was a surge in paging activity during the 1980 Olympics, when many services used it. But basically pagers have spread in Russia since 1993.
Then, in the 90s, pagers, along with rare cell phones, were a sign of the owner’s wealth. Even cheap Chinese watches appeared in the form of this means of communication. Many fans of splurge bought these watches to demonstrate their imaginary “coolness”.
Paging network operators did not accept messages with obscenities, much to the chagrin of profanity. Even then, euphemisms like “6 la” were invented. And the operators obediently typed “lalalalala.”
A little later, some operators organized the transmission of messages via email or a site on which the user himself typed the message. True, a variety of spam immediately fell into the mail.
The decline of pagers
Perhaps two-way paging - twiding - would have allowed pagers to live and develop further, but 1998 struck. Then, on the verge of ruin, mobile operators reoriented from the middle class, which we have in Russia even today, to the main masses of the population. Mobile phones and tariffs began to quickly become cheaper. The final blow was dealt by the development of the SMS service.
Today, pagers are used only in some places, in local departmental networks, since pager communication and the devices themselves are much cheaper than mobile phones. In addition, messages sent to the pager remain on computers, and this is already a document, but a conversation on a cell phone “can’t be tied to business.” But all this is just remnants of its former glory.
Now we are so accustomed to smartphones that even staying with a stupid “dialer” for a few days is a real test. But there is one interesting, and very long, chapter in the past of telecommunications technology: pagers.
Tiny receivers with black and white screens and meager, by modern standards, capabilities. We'll tell you how these gadgets developed and why they are still in use.
To begin with, it is worth understanding what is hidden under the definition of “ pager" And why modern smartphone, who easily receives SMS messages is not his relatives.
Yes, there are already people who don't know
A pager is a radio frequency receiver that can receive messages broadcast on a specific frequency over a special network of radio base stations.
Messages are sent from a paging center - usually a person would need to call and give the recipient's number to the operator. Later it became possible to use email.
How did pagers come about?
The first pager from Motorola
Initially, a system vaguely reminiscent of future pagers appeared with the Detroit police in 1921. Then the police cars were equipped with primitive radios.
However, the pager's birthday occurred in 1949, when the corresponding invention was patented by the inventor Alfred Gross ( the same person had a hand in the development of portable radios). At that time, the name “pager” was not yet used, and the devices were intended for medical personnel.
However, the Federal Communications Commission approved the use of such receivers only by 1958: this is a turning point in their history.
Already in 1956, Motorola gave such gadgets the name “pager”, and at the same time secured its leadership position in this product category - for four decades to come.
However, the first commercially successful pager appeared on the consumer market only in 1974 and was called Pageboy I. It did not have a display, and internal memory to store messages, however it worked - notifying users with beeps.
Because of this feature, devices have been assigned alternative name, beepers. Such modest functionality was enough for that time. Having heard the required signal, the police returned to the department, and the doctors contacted the operators to obtain information.
This is what Pageboy 1 looked like
In the 1970s, pagers learned to receive messages of different tones and even voice messages. But technology continued to develop slowly. By 1980, there were about 3.2 million pagers in the world.
The reason for the relatively low popularity was the limited area in which the receivers could operate - it did not exceed 40 kilometers. Pagers were used by local rescue, medical or police departments.
We also knew about this thing. Only a few
By the way, the first peak in the use of USSR pagers occurred in 1980. At that time, the XXII Summer Olympic Games were taking place in Moscow, and pagers were issued to a narrow circle of office workers. However, the main events took place overseas.
Pagers began to become more complex in terms of functionality. Models with tiny screens appeared - at first it was possible to transmit only numbers, then it was possible to send short messages, in the manner of modern SMS.
In the early 80s, the creators finally overcame the geographical limitations of pagers - they began to work on the scale of cities, states and even countries.
In addition, the sender could order a message to be sent at a certain time or repeated calls - so that the subscriber was sure to receive the message, even if he was temporarily outside the coverage of the paging network.
It was led by Motorola, which in 1986 released the world's most popular pager model - Bravo.
In 1988, SkyTel officially launched a nationwide paging network with support for text messages in the United States, which caused a stir among consumers. By 1990, there were about 22 million active pagers in the world; by 1994, this number had already reached 61 million.
The pager became a status device - in addition to functional benefits, it brought significance to its owner in the eyes of others. The latest major technological innovation in the world of pagers is the "tweeger", a two-way pager.
They vaguely resembled push-button communicators and were equipped with a folding QWERTY keyboard, with which you could type reply messages.
This is what the popular SkyTel Tweager looked like.
The first Tango tweeter was released by Motorola in 1996, with telecommunications support from SkyTel. However, by that time it was clear - mobile connection and cell phones will push pagers back into the professional environment.
By 2001, two leading manufacturers, Motorola and Glenayre, had lost interest in the market.
Phones have won.
Are pagers dead? No
In the United States, pagers continue to be used by doctors, police, rescuers, and a number of private companies, and the leader of the fading market, which brought in $361 million in profit in 2009, was Spok.
By the way, if you look closely at “House” or “Scrubs”, you will notice that all the doctors in the show wear pagers.
This connection has several advantages:
- highest reliability, incomparable to vulnerable telecommunications networks
- cheap devices
- ability to easily record all sent messages for later use in protocols
- With an average frequency of use, pagers can last up to 30 days on one AAA battery
As for domestic realities, the golden age for pagers was the period from 1993 to 1998. They were a popular way to stay connected without spending over $1,000 on a cell phone.
Pagers were usually attached to a belt - some were literally wrapped in a belt of small black beepers. The market for devices styled after them also flourished: for example, watches in the form of a pager were especially popular among schoolchildren.
At the same time, the necessary telecom infrastructure for pagers was poorly developed. Over all these years, not a single federal paging operator has appeared in the country.
Local companies operated, at best covering the region and surrounding areas. Average subscription fee ranged from 100 to 300 rubles, considerable money at that time. To this should be added the cost of the device itself, which was at least 800 rubles.
Pagers can still be used today
Now most paging operators have closed or changed course: in addition to providing paging services for private security or courier companies, they organize call centers.
However, in Moscow, for example, you can still use the services of “
Curious electronic devices, which make our lives easier, began to appear in the middle of the 20th century
Much water has passed under the bridge since then - technology is developing at a crazy speed. However, thousands of people around the world still use pagers, dot matrix printers and landlines. Why are all these outdated things still popular? website to understand this issue: we present to your attention a list of technical devices from the last century that people still use with pleasure.
Photo: pixabay.comMany American hospitals still have huge fax machines. Electronic transfer of documents, x-rays and other papers between some medical institutions in America (and even within the same clinic) is still impossible, since this is supposedly “unsafe”, according to retrogrades. Personal information can be intercepted if sent by e-mail, while fax provides complete confidentiality.
Photo: I, Kevster/wikipedia.org
Archaic receiving device text messages was very popular in the 90s. A pager in Russia was considered an indicator of the success and coolness of its owner. But, really, back then it was a real curiosity. So who and, most importantly, why uses pagers now? In the UK, these gadgets are popular among paramedics and rescue workers. The pager works for a very long time offline mode and can receive a message even in a place where a cell phone cannot “receive” it. It is also used by ornithologists and wildlife researchers - the latter subscribe in advance to regular newsletters from a special service.
16-bit game console
Photo: pixabay.com The days of the iconic 16-bit video consoles from Sega and Nintendo have sunk into oblivion. Modern computer games amaze with the beauty of the graphics and the realism of what is happening on the screen. However, true fans still remain faithful to their “first love.” A similar set-top box can now be purchased in the online store. For mere pennies you can throw yourself some amazing nostalgic evenings. In addition, if you are great at Street Fighter or beat Mario in half an hour, you can take part in a special tournament. Similar competitions are held all over the world, and the real rulers of 16-bit consoles live in Asia.
Push-button cell phone
Photo: Larry D. Moore/wikipedia.org Nowadays, it is not entirely clear to many who might need an old-style push-button mobile phone. However, they continue to be released. The reliability of touchscreen smartphones still leaves much to be desired - they discharge quickly, and may refuse to work in cold or hot weather. At the same time, a cell phone with buttons can work for almost a whole week without recharging; it does not tolerate temperature changes or even falling from a small height. Moreover, these gadgets are very popular among older people. Well, really, why do people who really don’t want to change their habits and their comfort for functions they don’t need at all need a fancy smartphone?
Matrix printer
Photo: pixabay.com Yes, it is very noisy. Of course, he types very slowly. But a dot matrix printer is currently the most reliable and economical printing device. The resource of even the simplest one is simply incredible - on a dot matrix printer you can print about 30 million characters without replacing parts, which eventually become unusable. Basically, these squeaking and squeaking units are now used when printing tickets, subscriptions and labels.
Photo: pixabay.com
At one time, magnetic tape cassettes “spoke out” against vinyl, and later the compact disc was invented, which, it would seem, was supposed to destroy the record industry. But it was not there. The fact is that analog recording has always been valued much higher by music lovers than digital recording. And in fact, music from vinyl sounds much cooler than from a laser disc. Almost every popular Western group continues to release new albums on vinyl records. Players also continue to be produced. This has only one drawback. Player, amplifier, good speakers and systematically buying records is really very expensive.
Problems
