NHS Now to ditch Pagers.

[electronicskip]

Following on from the recent announcement that the NHS were to stop buying and using Fax machines , its been reported in the new that they have now been told to ditch Pagers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47332415

I still have my old Pager somewhere although I did throw out a couple sometimes ago but kept one for old times sake.

[Bazz4CQJ]

Some of them are already collectables. I had a one of the "Multitone" 27MHz pagers, that I think were around in the mid to late 60's, and sold it a couple of years back for £60. Think it consisted of an AF117 regen with a short ferrite rod aerial and then a couple of OC71's pushing AF tones through a filter.

B

[Station X]

Trouble is that the replacement ie text messages to mobile phones relies on infrastructure provided by someone else and shared with others ie the mobile phone networks.

Imagine the scenario, terrorist attack with lots of people killed and injured. Injured taken to a local hospital. Everyone in the vicinity tries to call their friends and family saying they're safe, overloading the networks. Hospital attempts to send a text message to doctors...………..

[Techman]

I'm going to have a look to see if I've still got any of my old pagers from when I was at work - I'd completely forgotten about them. We'd stopped using them years ago!

[MrBungle]

SMS is far more reliable than pagers. We killed them off years ago due to this.

Firstly the human factor is horrible with pagers. People always losing the damn things or turning them off.

Then there's the fact that most pager systems don't have any delivery notification so if the pager doesn't receive it then the recipient never knows and neither does the sender. SMS has an SMSC with a queue so the message will be queued if the destination device in unavailable.

The last scenario is handled because after the 2005 London attacks they changed the QoS policy of the major networks meaning greater priority for SS7 over calls.

The only risk is total network outage which is far lower than pagers anyway due to the commercial pressure when it's down.

Really it's all going IP. Our response/alert system is now Slack, which is basically an IRC platform over IP with mobile apps. Does the job and is even more reliable than SMS was!

[electronicskip]

According to the news there is now only one provider of Pager services left so I guess when the NHS ditch them the provider will probably withdraw the service for good as I cant see any other big organisations using it

[emeritus]

In my area, SMS messages are not always delivered immediately. They can take a day to arrive. SMS messages use otherwise spare capacity in the channels used to place a call. Voice calls take priority, and if lots of calls are being placed, then SMS messages have to wait until capacity is available. At least, that was the situation with the original cell phone technology in the 1990's. I don't know what the present arrangements are with 4G, and we tend to use Watsapp rather than text for messages between the family. .

[MrBungle]

SMS are priority now so that shouldn't be the case. Delivery receipts are low priority though.

[Station X]

Yes, but the hospitals' SMS Text Messages will be competing with everyone else's for processing power and bandwidth.

In the days of Strowger and crossbar exchanges we had preference keys which, in the event of an emergency, could be thrown so as to deny service to low priority customers. They worked by switching off the 50 VDC supply to selected lines. I don't recollect this facility ever being used, but it would have been very effective.

With the advent of digital common control exchanges, this function was moved to software. Each line would have its preference status marked in a look up table. On receipt of a call attempt the software would have to identify the line, check its status and if necessary reject the call. Tests with high volumes of call attempts being generated artificially showed that this was nowhere near as effective as the analogue system.

[emeritus]

Thanks for the update!

[kellys_eye]

Every hospital I've seen/been in has signs saying "please switch off your mobile phone as it may interfere.....etc"

Why the sudden change in policy? Same with aircraft - can they REALLY do as they warn?

[emeritus]

The usual reason is a politician needing a sound bite. In the present performance-related culture you get little credit for leaving things as they are.

[Techman]

It's good that this has come up, as if I do still have my old ones somewhere, then they may still have batteries in them and they may be rotting by now! I can't remember what we used, but it may have been rechargeable types or it may have been industrial Duracel Procell either AA or AAA, I can't remember - I may even have handed them back in at the time, although it rings a bell that I've seen at least one of them around somewhere several years ago.

[AC/HL]

Modern mobiles are extremely low powered, because of the density of base stations, and the need to conserve battery power. Interference is not the problem it once was.

[Richard_FM]

I remember my Dad having a pager for work for a few years before his company could afford to issue staff with mobile phones to people at his level.

The more important travelling staff started using mobiles a few years before, & occasionally my Dad would borrow one if he needed to be away from the office for an extended time.

[Dual Standard]

Originally Posted by MrBungle

SMS is far more reliable than pagers. We killed them off years ago due to this.

Strange, we found the complete opposite and hung onto pagers until 2015 when the provider announced that the service would be ending.
SMS blackspots included engineers homes, comms rooms, roads over the pennines, just ordinary offices in otherwise SMS happy buildings plus of course the ever increasing number of places where mobiles were not allowed or had to be switched off.

Reminds me of a time I was on 24hr call. After arriving home about 7pm one Saturday I suggested to The Boss that we eat at the pub, she readily agreed but of course as I was still on call my phone and pager came too. This was back when mobile phones were quite new and were a struggle to get into even a jacket pocket especially with the extra large battery needed to make them last the all day. After making our choices from the menu I went to the bar to order the food taking my phone and pager with me.
As I placed them on the bar the guy next to me said 'Wow, a pager and a phone, you must be important!'
No, I replied, just stupid.

Mike

[stitch1]

Originally Posted by Station X

Trouble is that the replacement ie text messages to mobile phones relies on infrastructure provided by someone else and shared with others ie the mobile phone networks.

Imagine the scenario, terrorist attack with lots of people killed and injured. Injured taken to a local hospital. Everyone in the vicinity tries to call their friends and family saying they're safe, overloading the networks. Hospital attempts to send a text message to doctors...………..

I think a lot of pagers would be used ‘on campus’ so likely to be on WiFi as first choice and the mobile network as back up so more resilient than pagers. And if off site they usually need to find a phone to call in.

The mobile network is part of the Critical National Infrastructure ensuring network is available when there is an ‘incident’ so should never be overloaded by the public, although it may seem that way to us in fact non-registered phones are not allowed access so the network is available to the emergency services.

I have fond memories of pagers, being an on call engineer I always had one clipped to my belt. Before mobiles I remember going to a fault when my pager went off (before they had text) it took me a while to find a public phone box to call the fault desk only to be asked if I was there yet

John

[Refugee]

Originally Posted by kellys_eye

Every hospital I've seen/been in has signs saying "please switch off your mobile phone as it may interfere.....etc"

Why the sudden change in policy? Same with aircraft - can they REALLY do as they warn?

Those were the days when mobile phones used to "interfere" with the accounts of bedside phone providers.
Medical equipment is far better screened than CE marked stuff.

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by kellys_eye

Every hospital I've seen/been in has signs saying "please switch off your mobile phone as it may interfere.....etc"

Why the sudden change in policy? Same with aircraft - can they REALLY do as they warn?

Mobile phones have been allowed in most hospital environments for about a decade. They were initially prohibited because bureaucrats were terrified they'd be sued if they caused interference with medical equipment (they don't). Bans continued because hospital trusts had signed contracts with companies providing bedside wired phones and internet connections, and nobody was going to use these if they could just use their mobile. Mobile phone use was progressively permitted as the contracts expired or the companies running them went bust.

The prolonged ban on mobile phones is one reason that doctors still use pagers today (though apparently not for much longer).

[Malcolm G6ANZ]

If they get rid of pagers and start using phones the thought occurs, whose phone would they use? The consultant's own private one or one supplied by the hospital? If hospital supplied which company would get the contract for supplying and servicing them?
A pager is simple and cheap admittedly it doesn't send an acknowledge of call received but its alert sound is distinctive compared to a phone ringtone.
As with most government decisions I don't think the reasoning has been fully thought through.

Malcolm