On 10/12/2010 5:47 AM, George wrote:
On 10/11/2010 9:10 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 10/11/2010 7:11 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 don't own the pager number, I'm sure the company could yank it any
time they wished. Right now, two of the guys I work with are having
problems with dead and dying cellphones, roommate just went out the door
cursing the infernal contraption. My pager was having a little
problem so I changed the single AAA battery, problem solved. I must
have simple reliable communications, pager and POTS line win every
time. I suppose I could find another "Tough Phone" but I don't have
a ton of money to spend on anything right now so I'll keep the little
Nokia that has to be protected from gravity.

TDD

Sure but isn't a pager the definition of unreliable? Suppose someone
paged you when you had the battery out just now (or you were out of
range)? You would never know.

The cell system would simply save that message until it saw your handset
register itself with the system and deliver it to your handset. That was
one of the big problems with pagers especially if the call you just
missed might have meant putting money in your wallet.

The pager voice mails are saved on the companies' server. I call my
number, enter my access code and retrieve my messages. If I'm not
feeling well, I'll turn my pager off. When I wake up, I call and
check my messages.

TDD