Guests at restaurants where you get a device that beeps when your food is ready. Guess what? That’s a pager.
People that work on-call do this, especially in tech or security.
I’m considering making the switch because my paging calls are from a random set of phone numbers, so I cannot attach a specific ringtone to them. After a few horrible pages, you start to associate your phone going off as a world-ending experience, when it’s just your wife calling to ask if you want her to pick something up for you from the shop. A separate device that disassociates my phone from pain would be nice.
A separate device that disassociates my phone from pain would be nice.
Like a work phone?
Could you not just change the ring tones of your contacts to something else and then have all unknown callers use the bad time ring tone?
Opsgenie and PagerDuty let you add them as contacts from within the app and it manages the rotating numbers for you so you can keep using a specific ringtone for them. This is also how they can override DND so you can go back to muting your phone at night and know that pages will still come in.
Alternative thought, what about dual sims? Could you not assign a ringtone to a specific sim, and use that sims phone number only for work?
This along with a work profile works just fine
In the HAM Radio world we use them. But we also use our own infrastructure. I have mine set to let me know when something happens that needs my attention asap. Only works around my stuff or other HAMs that have stuff tied into our system. So not useful outside narrow circumstances.
People that work in classified environments. You can’t have smart devices (phones, watches, anything that communicates with the outside) while in these controlled spaces. pagers are acceptable because they’re 1 way communication, so there’s no risk of data leaks from the classified space
Pagers are not guaranteed to be 1 way comms and bringing them into secure locations is a security violation. Additionally, depending on the classification, no unauthorized and undisclosed devices of any kind would be permitted, including any electronics or electronic media such as tapes, CDs, discs, etc. Even when I was issued a verified 1-way pager, I was specifically briefed I was not permitted to bring it into a classified location. Most of the highly classified SCIFS are shielded anyways, you can’t use it inside so it’s safer to leave it out, along with all other devices.
If your organization allows it, then (if federal) they are breaking the law and should be reported/up-channeled. If it’s corpo, you should bring up additional concerns with your security team.
Edit: Also, it goes without saying, current events are probably a good reason why pagers (and other devices) aren’t allowed in classified areas. While most focus on disclosure (getting out), we must not forget the risk of data/operations getting destroyed.
Idk man, I have a federally compliant 1 way pager. So it’s not illegal. We score the highest marks on our DoD security audits every year. Theyre distrubuted from the security office, so I’m sure they do some sort of vetting on each individual one.
We’re a govt contractor, but our civilian govt counterparts use them too
Doctors
Israel could have taken out entire hospital staffs with this “technique”. Hope they remain human and don’t.
They (Israeli government) have murdered thousands of innocent men, women and children already without any remorse. Destroyed the entirety of Gaza.
What makes you think the Israeli government has any heart, sympathy or feelings at all?
A lot of the pager victims were civilian, and calling zionists “human” when a decades-long war has long since surpassed the genocide threshold is insulting.
Not defending arab extremists either in case your us/them mentality couldn’t tell and no, not all Palestinians are terrorists.
Seems unlikely considering only pagers belonging to Hezbollah had the explosives added.
Source?
Multiple news articles are saying this was a production level attack, on devices that were specifically ordered by Hesbollah.
It’s been widely reported, here’s a reuters source.
There isn’t one, because this is objectively not true.
Source?
There are many sources because it’s been widely reported. Here’s one: reuters.
Hezbollah, the de facto government of large parts of Lebanon, ordered the pagers and widely distributed them. Many of them went to civilians for legitimate purposes. It’s unreasonable to suggest that these are fair targets because they were briefly in Hezbollah’s control at some point along the chain.
widely distributed them. Many of them went to civilians for legitimate purposes.
Source?
Those devices were bought by Hesbollah, for their soldiers to use, and were connected to a network they operate.
From what I understand about the attack, even if one of these devices made it’s way into the hands of a doctor, it would have to be connected to the Hesbollah network to detonate.
Multiple electronics stores caught on fire. I doubt Mossad found a specific box that said “To: terrorists” on it and only rigged those pagers. They just don’t care about killing civilians.
My understanding of this is those pagers and the network they were connected to were only for use by Hesbollah.
Yet they killed children and were in mobile phone stores.
Not just their soldiers, civilian members of the organisation were also using them.
Bold of you to call them soldiers. For the Israel state or, I hope, government, they are all active/inactive terrorists. Yeah, 10 year olds, too.
I called them soldiers because that is the terminology the person I was replying to used.
3000 less people than last week
You can also setup local comms network for them and the bands they can operate in have better structural penetration vs most WiFi/cellular?
It also gives them a singular, simple device that won’t be confused for personal notifications like a smart phone.
Not everything needs to be bleeding edge. We still use forks and spoons cuz they just work.
Not everything needs to be bleeding edge. We still use forks and spoons cuz they just work.
I use my hands, even better than forks and spoons.
Hands are essentially just giant sporks
You use your hands because they were better than just your mouth 🤷♂️ (thanks evolution)
I’ve been told I’m pretty good with my mouth.
Who still uses pagers?
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon (injured in pager explosion), apparently!
He was probably meeting with someone who had one, being an ambassador and all.
I saw something where they gave their kid a pager instead of a phone so they could still be told when to come home but couldn’t waste time fucking about online.
I thought that might actually be pretty effective except for the fact that the kid could easily just ignore your pages.
Although there are dumb phones out there
People that don’t want their location triangulated from cell phone towers.
Hezbolah, apparently.
Not anymore.
Beeper king ftw
If anyone sees a salamander, it’s Liz’s.
I think I’d like a 2-way pager these days. They were a little ahead of their time because me and most people preferred phone calls to sending text messages but that’s obviously flipped hard over the last decade. I straight up groan when someone has the audacity to call me now lol
They’re called phones.
They offer text messaging as well yeah, but simpler devices are nice. I use my smartphone most when I’m at work, bored in the break from (like right now) but outside of that I just usually have better things to do. I often leave my phone at home in favor of my smart watch which does a lot less but still has my music on it and a way for the wife to contact me which are the 2 main things I value. I’m just saying that even it’s not for the majority, 2 way pagers would likely have a place in the market. There’s a whole group of people these days that love shopping for dumb phones to cut distractions out of their days.
So…essentially just because they’re cheap?
I can see maybe businesses that don’t want/need to buy full-blown smartphones for their employees. These things probably cost $50? vs. $700 for a smartphone.
Cellular signals have a hard time penetrating dense concrete buildings and underground structures. That’s why doctors still use them, even in the States.
Doctors that work in hospital bunkers? Do pagers not use cellular signals?
Hospitals are practically faraday cages, it can be hard to get a signal in large hospitals.
But a text message that amounts to just a few bits can usually sneak through without much delay.
I don’t know why people still using pagers this day. Smartphones exist to replace that, even if you afraid to use smartphones because NSA/FBI/CIA/KGB tracking you could use dumb phone tho…
Even dumb phone can achieve so many things compared to pagerMaybe you could read the article and learn something:
But the tiny electronic devices remain a vital means of communication in some areas - such as health care and emergency services, thanks to their durability and long battery life.
“It’s the cheapest and most efficient way to communicate to a large number of people about messages that don’t need responses,” said a senior surgeon at a major U.K. hospital, adding that pagers are commonly used by doctors and nurses across the country’s National Health Service (NHS). “It’s used to tell people where to go, when, and what for.”
Smartphones do a lot of things that might not be needed (look into how many different sensors they have). Sometimes a person doesn’t have access to a charger or time to charge a device and running out of battery could mean someone dies.
It’s because they are simpler devices which are much less infrastructure dependent, and also less power hungry. A single battery charge in a pager will last you much longer than a single battery charge on a smartphone.
Also due to their lower infrastructure requirements they can function even if cellular networks are not functioning, at all or optimally.
if cellular networks are not functioning
What networks do they use then?
