Pager Services To End Tuesday In Japan After 50 Years (japantoday.com) 37
Japan's sole pager provider, Tokyo Telemessage Inc, will shut down radio signals for its services Tuesday, ending support for the device first introduced in the country half a century ago. Japan Today reports: In recent years, the device had been favored mainly by those working in hospitals, where cellphone use was once discouraged because of concerns over the effect of electromagnetic waves on medical devices and where cellphone reception can sometimes be poor. Beeper services in Japan began in 1968 with the predecessor of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. Users would call a specific number via a landline, causing the device to emit a beeping sound. But from the late 1980s onward, the popularity of pagers grew as they could be used to send messages combining numbers and text characters.
The number of pager users exceeded 10 million in 1996, with the device becoming one of the defining symbols of a subculture among female high school students along with "loose socks" and taking photos in puri-kura photo booths. However, beeper services declined with the introduction of mobile phones. The number of pager users further decreased as e-mailing, texting as well as taking and sending pictures by phone became standard.
The number of pager users exceeded 10 million in 1996, with the device becoming one of the defining symbols of a subculture among female high school students along with "loose socks" and taking photos in puri-kura photo booths. However, beeper services declined with the introduction of mobile phones. The number of pager users further decreased as e-mailing, texting as well as taking and sending pictures by phone became standard.
too bad in a way (Score:5, Interesting)
simple device, reliable, works on a AA, no ridiculously complex software running on insane processors, no spyware, no constant upgrades.
Re:too bad in a way (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: too bad in a way (Score:3)
Open source pagers are a thing, but operating in amateur radio bands - commercial paging requires a license to use spectrum.
Pagers are still used in hospitals because of their superior coverage and quicker response time than cellphones. A hospital can place a paging transmitter on their roof and get 100% coverage of their facility for pennies a day per user, cellphones not so much - and pager technology is much simpler, having evolved over the past 50 years.
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female high school students with "loose socks"
Can someone explain which of the 8,192 wierd Japanese fetishes this is referring to? I can't figure out whether it's nasal tentacle sex or waifu face-farting.
True, but its a one way device (Score:4, Insightful)
If you had a message to contact someone you had to go find a payphone (if you were in the office near a phone they wouldn't have paged you in the first place). Good luck with finding a payphone these days so you'd have to carry a mobile phone anyway making the point of the pager redundant. Which is exactly what happened.
Re: True, but its a one way device (Score:4, Insightful)
Hospitals are the biggest use of them. They are extremely low bandwidth and work practically anywhere. Chances are good that they will either pick up the nearest hospital phone or use their cell phone. But it doesnâ(TM)t matter if theyâ(TM)re in the basement of the morgue or in a fallout shelter, I think the pager still goes off even when the cell phone is in a dead zone. So at least they know they need to get their ass somewhere quickly.
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True, I'd forgotten about hospitals.
I imagine pagers had better coverage because they used a relatively low VHF freq rather than the UHF frequencies cellular systems use.
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Pagers also don't emit any RF on their own, they're passive devices. That can be still be an issue with some equipment in hospitals.
Re: True, but its a one way device (Score:4, Insightful)
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Hospitals are the biggest use of them. They are extremely low bandwidth and work practically anywhere. Chances are good that they will either pick up the nearest hospital phone or use their cell phone. But it doesnâ(TM)t matter if theyâ(TM)re in the basement of the morgue or in a fallout shelter, I think the pager still goes off even when the cell phone is in a dead zone. So at least they know they need to get their ass somewhere quickly.
Sure, because the pager service transmitter uses a lot of power. Problem is that the power amplifiers tend to be pretty dirty, and spew a lot of RF in places where it isn't wanted.
And at least in our area, the operators don't give a damn. Probably because they know they'll be going away.
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Re:too bad in a way (Score:5, Interesting)
simple device, reliable, works on a AA, no ridiculously complex software running on insane processors, no spyware, no constant upgrades.
To the chagrin of many folks in the US who lived in drug infested neighborhoods, pagers used to be a great tool for drug dealers. The customer would page the deal with a telephone number. Then the dealer would call the customer from a public phone booth.
This lead some neighborhoods to request the removal of public phones.
It's interesting to see how the criminal world is an early adopter of new technology, and seems to fully exploit the potential.
Re: too bad in a way (Score:3)
Crime and porn are probably the biggest drivers of technology LOL
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"To the chagrin of many folks in the US who lived in drug infested neighborhoods, pagers used to be a great tool for drug dealers. The customer would page the deal with a telephone number. Then the dealer would call the customer from a public phone booth."
Pagers were a big concern when I graduated HS (1995), and I went to school in an upper middle class neighborhood.
There aren't many Doogie Howsers in HS, so there was no good reason for any student to have a pager.
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simple device, reliable, works on a AA, no ridiculously complex software running on insane processors, no spyware, no constant upgrades.
You don't HAVE to buy a flag ship smartphone you know?
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None of that is related to a pager service itself, and all are possible using modern GSM / LTE networks.
Re: too bad in a way (Score:3)
LTE does not work in the basement of a morgue where you are constantly surrounded by 12 inches of concrete, massive electrical power distribution, a shit ton of piping systems full of water and other fluids, and every other faraday obstacle you can come up with. 900 MHz does not have nearly the attenuation problem that the higher frequencies do. It does not transfer much in the way of data rate, But youâ(TM)re only sending about 500 bytes of data. Additionally since itâ(TM)s receive-only, you don
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Indoor repeaters are available for LTE, and for a public building like a hospital, the phone companies will probably come and install them for free.
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AAs are probably not so good for the environment though. The main limitation is the length of the message, usually it's used more like a notification to go check some other system for a more information.
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Re: too bad in a way (Score:2)
Exactly. I suspect the vast majority of hospital pages sent out are little more than room numbers.
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simple device, reliable, works on a AA, no ridiculously complex software running on insane processors, no spyware, no constant upgrades.
Horribly dirty Intermod source transmitters that make a mess wherever they are planted. Our local pager radio transmitter is slated to go out of service at our local antenna farm. I think everyone else is going to throw a party when it shuts down.
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You realize the paging protocol is completely open, right? And since pagers are receive only devices, a paging network has to send the message through the covered area. It is extremely simple to simply stick a receiver up and record all paging traffic since all traffic is broadcast everywhere. If you need to find the target pager address (POCSAG address), it's a trivial mat
A bad day for the Beeper King (Score:3)
https://motherboard-images.vic... [vice.com]
Right up there with 8-track tapes (Score:3)
Now, about those buggy whips.
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They're back, but not for horses. FIY they're right next to the handcuffs and the lube.
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Not really. I only hang in the hentai DVDs and dolls section.
Kermit Protocol to pager (Score:2)
Now how does a sysadmin have their Unix box call home if the network is down?
Serial ports and terminal connection calling my pager
#!/usr/local/bin/kermit + /dev/ttyS0
if ( 2 \v(argc) ) exit 1 Usage: \%0: phone-number [ message ]
set modem hangup-method modem-command
set modem type usrobotics
set line
set speed 2400
pdial \%1@\%2
if fail exit 1
exit 0
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This looks familiar. A lot like the script I used with my pager to get me out of long, boring meetings.
"Oh, oh. The shop is paging me with a 911. Gotta go or production shuts down!"
What about hospitals? (Score:2)
Doctors still use pagers because the signals penetrate concrete and steel structures better than cell phone signals.
Maybe now they have cell repeaters inside of the building, i dunno, but I wouldn't shut down the service until it's confirmed that there is an adequate replacement already in place.