[shermozle]

More to do with the fact a pager will reach places a phone won't. Operating theatres are often in the basement or the middle of the building where mobile signals don't reach but pager signals do. They're super high power and lower frequency so they penetrate further.

[dhosek]

Not entirely:

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/15/1219737658/why-do-doctors-sti...

[agos]

it's also due to the fact that the pager can represent a role (on-call cardiologist, for example) and not a specific person

[kanbara]

ah yes, the beeper, more high power than the top end 5g UC flagship phones. because that makes so much sense

[ben_w]

> because that makes so much sense

I detect sarcasm, but yes, it does.

The history of phone tech is "can we get more done with less joules?", while a pager is "you have one job".

Even when a pager is implemented on top of normal cellular networks like 3/4/5G, it's still better because there's nothing else on the system to drain the battery.

But it doesn't need to be on those systems at all, it can be an even less 'smart' radio receiver such as POCSAG system, on its own frequency, chosen specifically for getting though concrete etc., and disregarding any concerns about bandwidth because 1.2 kb/s is probably more than it needs.

[cruffle_duffle]

It actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of pagers operate on lower frequencies (~100 mhz instead of 400 or 700) that can penetrate way deeper than the higher frequencies used by modern phones. Plus the data rate is substantially lower, which acts in the favor of getting reception.

So yeah it makes a ton of sense. These are very different devices operating using different frequencies and protocols.

[supertrope]

Pagers are typically unidirectional. So a client's inability to transmit back an ACK deep inside a building is not a constraint. Just crank up the broadcast power on the network side.