Sept 18 (Askume) – As mobile phones have become the world’s dominant communications device, pagers (also called pagers because they emit a sound to notify users of incoming messages) have become largely obsolete and have not been used since the 1990s after a rapid decline in use since the late 1990s.
But these small electronic devices remain a vital means of communication in some sectors, such as healthcare and emergency services, due to their durability and long battery life.
A senior surgeon at a major British hospital said: “It is the cheapest and most effective way of getting information out to a large number of people who do not necessarily need to respond.” He added that pagers are a part of the country’s National Health Service (NHS) and are commonly used by doctors and nurses.
“It’s used to tell people where to go, when to go, and what to do.”
Pagers were thrust into the spotlight on Tuesday when thousands of pagers used by members of the terrorist group Hezbollah exploded simultaneously across Lebanon , killing at least nine people and wounding nearly 3,000.
A senior Lebanese security source and another source said the explosives inside the devices were planted by Israel’s Mossad spy agency .
According to the British government, around 130,000 pagers were in use in the NHS in 2019, accounting for more than a tenth of the global number of pagers. More recent data is not available.
Physicians working in hospital emergency rooms carry these items with them when responding to calls.
A senior NHS doctor said many pagers can sound a siren and broadcast voice messages in groups so that the entire medical team can be informed of an emergency at the same time. This is not possible with mobile phones.
A source familiar with the lifeboat service told Askume that the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) used pagers to alert its crews. The RNLI declined to comment.
Burner Phones
Pagers are more difficult to track than smartphones because they lack modern navigation technology such as the Global Positioning System, or GPS.
This has made them a popular choice among criminals in the past, especially American drug smugglers.
But former FBI agent Ken Gray told Askume that criminal groups are now using mobile phones more frequently.
“I don’t know if anybody uses them (pagers) or not,” he said.
“All those cell phones become burner phones,” which can easily be destroyed and replaced with other phones with different numbers, making them harder to track.
Gray, who worked for the FBI for 24 years and now teaches criminal justice and homeland security at the University of New Haven, said criminals change with the times and new technology.
The global pager market, once a major source of revenue for companies such as Motorola, will reach $1.6 billion by 2023, according to an April report from Cognitive Market Research.
This is only a small portion of the global smartphone market, which is expected to be worth nearly $500 billion by the end of 2023.
The report states that the demand for pagers is also rising due to the increasing need for efficient communication in the healthcare sector due to the growing number of patients. The report predicts a compound annual growth rate of 5.9% from 2023 to 2030.
The company said North America and Europe are the two largest pager markets, with revenues of $528 million and $496 million, respectively.
