On 10/12/2010 5:29 PM, SMS wrote:
On 10/11/2010 5:11 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 09 Oct 2010 12:31:21 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:



One more time, I have had the same pager number for more than 20 years,
it's how people get in touch with me. If it's an emergency, those who
have a reason to call me with an emergency know to punch in 911 followed
by their number. REDUNDANT communication is important to me and the
paging system has proven itself to be much more reliable in getting a
message to me. I hope you can understand that. I have more than one
phone number and those numbers are forwarded to a single point which is
my paging service. A cellphone doesn't always work and only one
cellphone has ever proven itself to be as tough as my pager which will
last 15 years. It has a 1996 Motorola Nextel phone that was huge and
tough enough to use as a billy club and keep working. The little Nokia
I have now, comes apart, flying in all directions if I drop it. The
pager hits the ground, bounces a few times and all I have to do is wipe
any dirt off of it keep on truckin. I want things that work all the time
and in my many years of experience, cellphones don't do that.

TDD
Just one question - you don't have portable numbers where you are?
Here, if I have a phone number for ANY type of phone service, I can
have it transfererred to a new service - so no problem transferring
that long-standing pager number to a new cell-phone on ANY carrier -
and forwarding that number to my home phone in non-working hours or
when I'm at home so there is no air-time charge for calls I recieve
when at my (or any other) land-line.

I find Google Voice an amazingly useful system. Now I give out my Google
Voice number and it rings whatever numbers I want it to. If I'm home, I
activate the landline to ring, otherwise it rings my cellphones all at
the same time. But it would not really work with a pager.

It is true that the paging system is a usually a more reliable way of
being contacted.

Only if it was a two way pager which is pretty rare. I carried a pager
for years and one of the things you wonder if calls are important to you
is did you lose any. Paging systems simply burp out the page. If you are
out of range in a poor coverage area or your pager is off then too bad.

OTOH the cell system uses store and forward if necessary and doesn't
even attempt to send a text message until your handset registers with
the network.