Pager: Contacting me en route

Since pagers are not as common as they used to be, here is a brief description on how you can contact me if you know or assume that I am not at home or my phone line is not functional. Please attempt an ordinary phone call before sending a message to my pager and leave a message on my voice mail.

Pagers are RF-based portable data receivers that can detect signals which inform the pagers owner that someone wants to contact them. You can send a numeric or alphanumeric (plain text) message. The service provider will broadcast this message within the subscribers area (Germany, in my case) and only my particular receiver will selectively recognize it. I can then seek the next telephone and call back.

Please observe the following when contacting pagers:

• There is a fixed limit of 80 characters (in alphanumeric mode) or 15 digits (in numeric mode).
• It is not possible to tell if a pager message was really received since it is a selective broadcast system; a pager cannot send anything, not even an acknowledgement.
• Nothing but the message you send is transmitted and you must explicitly enter your name.
• Roaming does not exist: If you know for certain that I am not in Germany, there is no point in sending a message.

To contact my pager, there are three phone numbers:

• +49 164 5200461: This number transmits your Caller ID. If your phone has Caller ID, it might be a convenient way to send your own number as a request to call you back. If you do not have or disabled Caller ID, this number behaves like the one below.
• +49 168 5200461: You can enter an arbitrary sequence of 15 decimal digits which is sent to my pager. Confirm with the #-key.
• +49 169 515200461: Operator service - There are telephone operators working to type in your message and send it. They will also tell you if the transmission failed (but they cannot tell you if I actually received it, as this is, like I said, physically impossible!)

Last change: 13.12.2023 09:08:30 UTC