Eli5 how did pagers work?
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If we’re going to keep it at an ELI5 level, it’s basically a cell phone, that only receives text messages.
Most people were not texting, you would call the pager from your phone. You would then hear a beep, and type in the number you want to send, or maybe your family had a code setup. -911 followed by your phone number would mean call home right this second.
There are of course, some differences, pagers use VHF radio signals, which travel much further than cell phone signals. This is why some are still in use today. Its simple technology that works, and has great range. (So a hospital or Mountain rescue team might use them where a cell phone signal would be unreliable.
Another major difference between pagers and SMS, is pager networks just send the signal out once, then forget about the message. Maybe its received, maybe it isn’t. The network doesn’t care, and there is no way on a lot of pagers to acknowledge the message was received. (Some pagers did have this feature to acknowledge a message)
With SMS, if you our out of range, or your phone is off, the network will store the message until you get back online.
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