Except for you young guys for whom they’re pretty much the same:
“Japan’s sole pager provider will end its services Tuesday, with the device, first introduced in the country half a century ago, made redundant by mobile phones.”
(Are we really being asked to be nostalgic about…pagers?!) https://t.co/L3mzj3IKi5
— Kontra (@counternotions) October 1, 2019
If you aren’t a fairly young person you almost certainly have first-hand knowledge of pagers. A colleague once described them to me as an electronic ball and chain. Unless you’re in the pager business, they won’t be missed. At all.
Of course, now cell phones are serving the ball and chain function but somehow it seems much less onerous. Perhaps because we all carry one anyway. I think it’s likely that anyone who doesn’t have a phone today is someone who doesn’t want one for some reason.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a pager in the US. A quick DuckDuckGo check reveals that there are, apparently, still some companies offering service. Who are the customers for these services? Has anyone seen one in the wild recently?