>I found myself missing 1990s pagers.
I still use one which gets one-way service from <https://pagersdirect.net/> (~$14/mo, with phone number and pager included). Most US cities, large and small, still have active infrastructure. I live in a city with a few hundred thousand people, great coverage.
This has replaced my mobile phone, which I no longer carry. It also prevents spammers from messaging... because the systems don't understand this antiquated technology [1].
For those interested, Pagers Direct has an email-to-pager option (I don't use it, phone digits only please caller, after the beep). It also has two-way pagers, which I have no experience with.
One caution: for one-way pagers, if you're out of range[0] when somebody sends you text, you will never get the message (no handshake/confirmation).
[0] does not use traditional cellular infrastructure
[1] TBH: most humans don't either, unless you explain how to page somebody: key in your callback#/code after the beep [no audio/text]
[•] I don't work for the above-linked paging service, I'm just a very happy customer.
Also had a pager up until 2023 (when I was on call). If you're in range is an awesome tool to use. Great for alerts, ironically I had it hooked up to SMS with PagerDuty.
That is so cool. I really want to get one (or make a hardware company that builds simple, DIY kits for them).
With a prepaid annual subscription, they sent me a pager for FREE.
>builds simple, DIY kits for them
So I highly doubt this would be profitable for you.
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As far as the paging infrastructure is concerned, all the messages are mass-sent, in an un-encrypted analogue broadcast. EVERY device receives EVERY page, as long as within range. It is the pager itself which chooses to only display "your" message(s).
Your DIY hardware could lead you into some interesting discoveries of your local area's messaging/users.
Yep, 20-odd years ago, I had modified a radio scanner and added a discrete output. Then used Poc32 to decode pager messages from the scanner via the PC’s sound card.
Got lots of server health messages and requests to call people back. And some more personal messages, too.
That is the exact vibe I wanted to capture. The feeling of a raw, unencrypted signal that just "appears" without a handshake. It felt more alive than a JSON payload over HTTPS.
>Got lots of server health messages and requests to call people back. And some more personal messages, too.
That vibe is reflected in the 9/11 pager messages as well... https://911.wikileaks.org/