[fukawi2]

We still use pagers for emergency response alerting (Victoria, Australia). It's a dedicated, reliable alerting system that ensures the alert goes out between the emergency call takers and first responders.

It's reliable partly because it's so basic - it's a "one-way" broadcast network, and only operates at 1200bps (IIRC). They're not trying to build a network to serve hundreds of Mbps over duplex data connections so everyone can download their favourite cat pics. The network is built to cover 98% of the state by area, mobile networks cover less than that by population.

As a volunteer unit, we use mobile apps to augment our response (ie, hit green on our phone to indicate we're responding, red if you're not), but the primary alerting system is still the pager. The amount of people that turn their pager off then act surprised when they miss an alert because they don't get the difference is fun though.