>- Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices
Hold out companies for obsolete technologies always fascinate me. I remember reading there is like one guy who services candle pin bowling pin setters that run on 90s era Turbo Pascal software on whitebox 486 PCs and he's pretty much retired and drives up and down the North East in an RV doing his work.
I happily used PagerDirect[.net] 2020-2023 — their service includes a receive-only pager, either numeric or alphanumeric. They also have Tx pagers, but I have no experience with that service.
An issue with Rx-only paging is that your device must be on 24/7, and within RF range — if offline/out-of-range, you will never receive that page.
I only stopped because I moved outside of their reliable service area (but they provide service to practically any metro center with greater than 100k people). When I lived 3 miles from "downtown" the pager was a great asset (for call screening, e.g.: spammers never "figured out" how a pager worked).
It's very inefficient because every tower must broadcast every message. This is why you can find an archive of pages from the morning of September 11th online, they transmitted unencrypted to a huge area.
So that raises costs and limits the coverage area. Fine for a hospital with 100 idk doctors who need paged, not fine for continental coverage of 100 million users.
It's very inefficient because every tower must broadcast every message.
No, it's incredibly efficient because the messages are tiny.
If you need to send a long message, then you page the person with "you have a long message from XYZ, please use higher-bandwidth mechanisms to retrieve it".
I don't carry a cell phone, and stopped using email years ago.
When I do discuss these experiences, most people aren't able to believe me. "How?" is a typical response... which to me seems equally strange a question.
It does make parking difficult ("pay with the app!"); last time I had a court action, the judge required me to sign a document stating I did not use email, because this is "a required piece of information."
Until this year, I handed out my numeric pager as "my phone number," which grateful reduced successful contact [to my chagrin].
But I've learned that, aside from mentioning "I don't have a phone" it's really not useful to discuss it any further on the internet. There seems to be a large cohort of trolls who love arguing with anybody who doesn't have a phone. I guess it bothers them that some of us can be free from what so many are addicted to.
I wouldn't argue with you. I'd just observe that you cut yourself off from a lot of modern conveniences. (I certainly grew up without cell phone until well into my adult life and largely without Internet as well.) You don't need electricity or indoor plumbing either--although those are arguably at a different level.
Modern conveniences is right. Everything is two factor authenticated now. Even if you avoid that in your private life your workplace is liable to roll it out if they haven't already.
There are alternatives to 2FA that don't require phones. But, yeah, at some point you become the weird person who refused to have a smartphone (or a cell phone at all) and, unless you're really special in some way, you probably have a target on your back.
For my workplace it was a choice of downloading duo on the phone or getting sms codes. In the past year they cut out the sms codes, now you get a temporary code from the duo app you need to enter into the login portal vs just a push to duo.
There are TOTP apps for regular computer. I am using an old tablet for the microsoft authenticator and banking apps.
Technically it is pretty much like a phone but it is not used as a phone. No number, no sim card.
I am pretty sure some of these apps could work on waydroid too if needed.
So in the end all this discussion really depends if we are talking about the mobile device as a whole that you carry with you nearly all the time or some parts of the ecosystem that you may have at home.
Not all Amish are the same. You're likely thinking of Swartzentruber Amish. It depends on your community, some have phones, some have a house with a shared phone. The Amish world at the moment is facing some of these changes, and some standards are evolving, but there will always be some separation with the English world until these modernities can be used in ways that don't erode community faith and relationships.
- Some beepers are made to only RX, not TX, as to not skew results of medical equipment
- Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices
- Beepers are still sold today, new in box
- Two-way pagers have been almost totally displaced from the market (lack of service and hardware) despite being more advanced than regular beepers.
Anybody want to share a testimonial about their current beeper for someone who's looking for a good option?