Pagers replaced by texting

Pagers have been used by the Team for many years, however pager technology has not changed a great deal in that time. Mobile phone technology, on the other hand, has advanced dramatically in recent years and the use of text messaging is now commonplace. In fact texting has been used as a backup to pagers for some time. Text messaging providers now exist who can offer a reliable mobile phone texting service, one example being World-Text.

Mobile texting offers a number of advantages over the use of pagers. Initiating a callout by text is a much simpler process and the time required to initiate a callout is dramatically reduced. In recent months problems have been encountered when the Vodapage pager bureau has been engaged, something which does not happen with mobile texting. If a pager is out of contact when a message is sent out it will never receive the message. Text messages to mobile phones, however, will be delivered as soon as the phone comes back into range of a signal. Providers such as World-Text only use UK based message delivery and can therefore guarantee that text messages are delivered quickly.

For these reasons the decision was made in September 2004 to stop using pagers to initiate callouts and rely instead on mobile phone texting for a 6 month trial period. To date the use of mobile texting to initiate callouts has been very successful. If this success continues to the end of the trial period then the Team will be able to say goodbye to pagers for good.