
Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50-year run - ytch
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/30/business/tech/japanese-pagers-last-beeps-50-years/#.XZKmvC33VTY
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medymed
I love pagers. Sometimes I carry three for three different hospitals.

There is no risk of malfunction due to automatic software updates when the
software does not update. There is no chatty distraction of text platforms.
Functionality is not affected by changes to volume or mute status as it might
be on a heavily used phone. The wavelengths used reportedly have better
penetration deep into buildings with shielded areas like around MR machines.
They are bulky, and it would be hard to forget that one is on call when they
are strapped to the waistband/belt.

When the pager goes off, it doesn't bother other people because they either
don't know what it is or know it's a medical issue and is acceptable.

The major problem is that I constantly 'hear' my pager going off when other
devices beep in a roughly-similar fashion even when I'm not wearing it and my
heart starts racing, so I have to change the ringtone frequently to de-Pavlov
myself.

~~~
AgalmicVentures
You're absolutely right about the various advantages of pagers over cell
phones.

On the other hand, all of that medical information goes over the air in plain
text. It is trivial to capture and decode POCSAG [1], requiring less than $100
of hardware: a Raspberry Pi 3 has enough horsepower to handle the 2 RTL-SDR's
needed to capture both the 929MHz and 931MHz bands.

Modern security simply demands that pagers go away (or at least be heavily
modified). This is not a theoretical concern [2][3].

[1] [https://github.com/pvachon/tsl-sdr](https://github.com/pvachon/tsl-sdr)

[2] [https://www.rtl-sdr.com/art-installation-eavesdrops-on-
hospi...](https://www.rtl-sdr.com/art-installation-eavesdrops-on-hospital-
pagers-with-a-hackrf/)

[3] [https://openprivacy.ca/blog/2019/09/09/open-privacy-
discover...](https://openprivacy.ca/blog/2019/09/09/open-privacy-discovers-
vancouver-patient-medical-data-breach/)

~~~
asdaddasdad
Does the paged text typically contain information that can identify the
patient?

~~~
satanspastaroll
I'd imagine it to be trivial to also send malicious signals and jam the
system.

~~~
giancarlostoro
That sounds like any radio frequency though. Alao a great way to get the FCC
knocking on your door sooner or later.

~~~
satanspastaroll
True you could create a trash beacon for any frequency, but as you said it'd
be very "loud". Disrupting service with seemingly innocent messages would be
much harder to detect though

~~~
giancarlostoro
Oh I see, you're suggesting a very specified attack. Sounds like a smaller
scale Stingray or something, but for beepers.

Edit: Yeah I'm not entirely familiar with interference detection, but I would
always suspect some HAM somewhere will figure it out and report it.

------
jake_morrison
It is funny to see these technologies being shut down right when they are
useful for IoT.

I was building LED displays for bus stops to show information about the next
bus. I found pagers to be a great match: cheap chips with integrated support
for communications and displays, low costs for small text messages, great
network coverage. But then the telecoms started shutting down the networks.

Now we are seeing the same thing with the push to 5G. I don't want 5G, I want
2G. Before there was TCP/IP over cellular networks, we had cellular packet
data. Very power and network efficient, it was the basis for things like
BlackBerry's push email. Now the 2G patents are expiring, so it could be cheap
and ubiquitous, built into everything. But instead the 2G networks are getting
shut down...

~~~
ac29
4G LTE has dramatically higher system spectral efficiency (in bits/Hz)
compared to 2G - over 100x [0]. That's why 2G is getting decommissioned in
favor of LTE (and 5G).

NB-IoT is probably where your application would go these days. Bi directional
communication, cheap chips, and data plans around $10/device/year for 12MB
[1], which is a lot of short messages (though things like OTA firmware updates
might be painful).

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_efficiency)

[1]
[https://www.twilio.com/wireless/narrowband](https://www.twilio.com/wireless/narrowband)

~~~
ansible
Spectral efficiency is super important. Especially with IoT, because there are
going to be so many devices. Trying to do that with old pager network
bandwidth would quickly overload the network.

~~~
jake_morrison
I am not talking about using the pager network for that, I am talking about
the 2G network.

I am not opposed to using more efficient network protocols, more that we are
endlessly replacing old technologies with completely new systems. The selling
point of 3G/4G/5G has been that they will have more bandwidth, so people can
watch videos or use self driving cars.

What is more interesting to me is embedding cheap low-bandwidth smarts in more
devices. The costs of the new and immature hardware gets in the way of that.

~~~
zamadatix
> The selling point of 3G/4G/5G has been that they will have more bandwidth,
> so people can watch videos or use self driving cars.

In the cellphone commercial sure but in technical reality it's about device
density. There is only one set of airspace and only certain chunks are useful
for where we want to communicate; getting the most devices able to communicate
has been the leading driver of RF planning and design for quite some time now.
Bandwidth usually materializes out of a combination of more "slots" to talk
and simply not using restrictions needed for 20 year old consumer hardware.

------
tyingq
I do sort of miss having a separate device for work, that work paid for, and
that I could turn off when not on call. The two way pagers with the qwerty
keyboard were pretty nice.

~~~
mc32
I know there are companies for which you BYOD your smartphone, but then they
want to MDM that device of yours to protect company data. Ha!

~~~
zifnab06
Google has this neat implementation on Android where your work applications
end up in a seperate profile that the company can manage. They can erase that
profile but they can't see or manage any data outside of it.

This is the only way I'll ever allow work things on my phone.

~~~
faceplanted
Are there instructions on this anywhere? I get really annoyed at the MDM from
my work email, which I can just get through the browser, but without it set
up, I can't get work calendar notifications, which I do actually need.

~~~
ptha
Some further info on Work Profiles from Google:
[https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/6191949?hl=en](https://support.google.com/work/android/answer/6191949?hl=en)

------
partingshots
It feels as if Japan decided one day to just stop progressing. Lots of little
things like this along with flip phones still being popular seem to emphasize
a sort of complacent stagnation. That’s probably a little to harsh, but
there’s definitely a feeling of slowness to me.

~~~
lunchables
It is actually growing rapidly in Japan. But I think one reason that
smartphone usage in adults in Japan is lower than other developed countries is
because of their aging population. Their birthrates have been so low, it is
hard to offset an aging population who are living longer and are unlikely to
adopt smartphones.

------
joyjoyjoy
That is sad. Biggest advantage of a beeper over a cell phone? Privacy. The
beeper just receives and does not send your location.

~~~
herbstein
Eh. In some aspects, sure. But everything sent to your pager is trivial to
intercept, as it is simply sent in clear text.

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ryanmercer
I miss having a pager in the 90s and early 2ks. I basically could go anywhere
I wanted, or be on the internet when my parents weren't home, and all they had
to do was page me and I'd know I either needed to come home, call them ASAP or
call them immediately.

I still remember the number too but don't remember a few of my phone numbers.

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dzhiurgis
Anyone got pics of how pagers looked and worked in 1968?

~~~
severine
All I found is this:

\- Pager and It's Development:
[https://youtu.be/ebtppTU_sng?t=114](https://youtu.be/ebtppTU_sng?t=114)

\- Fancy Pager1970s Columbo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rybqMKo8kQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rybqMKo8kQk)

~~~
tim333
Here's wikipedia on the pageboy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Pageboy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Pageboy)

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jonnycomputer
They should all go off at once for a last hurrah.

All ten of them.

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t34543
One way pagers are the last bastion of privacy friendly wireless
communication.

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peter303
Pagers several cell tower power failures, e.g. long term disasters like
hurricanes. However they can fail in satellite failures, e.g. rare solar
coronal mass ejections.

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davidbanham
I’d love to be able to ditch my pager and rely solely on smartphone apps.
Unfortunately there’s no way to get our alerting apps to override silent mode
on iOS and they’re patchy on Android. So I keep a pager next to my bed to make
sure I get woken up if something’s on fire.

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kegal
End of an Era!

~~~
nineteen999
Well in Japan I suppose. In other parts of the world, we have wide area paging
networks that are still running strong. My team builds and maintains a paging
network that covers an area around 2/3 the size of Japan.

~~~
rfdave
Nice. Which protocol are you using? How is equipment availability?

~~~
nineteen999
POCSAG. If you mean transmitters, we have a local supplier, no issues there.

