Author: Michael Collett-White and Josephine Mason

As mobile phones took over as the primary communication tool worldwide, pagers, or beepers, dwindled in demand from their peak in the 1990s. However, they remain crucial in sectors like healthcare and emergency services due to their reliability and long battery life. Despite the rise of smartphones, pagers are still widely used in the UK’s NHS to efficiently disseminate non-urgent messages to medical staff. These devices played a significant role when thousands of Hezbollah pagers were detonated in Lebanon, causing casualties. With difficulty in tracking compared to smartphones, pagers become a preferred choice for some groups, including criminals. The global…