Some of you might be young enough that you don’t know what a pager is. Mobile phones marked the end of these gadgets, however. For some reason, Japan has been slow to give them up compared to the rest of the world. But now they are finished in Japan. The last remaining pager service in the country is now shutting down.
Tokyo Telemessage Inc. is the last service provider for pagers in Japan, with some 1,500 users still relying on these devices. Some of those users work in hospitals where pagers have been used because they don’t emit electromagnetic waves.
Most other users are older people who just didn’t want to give up their pagers after these years. More than 20 percent of the country’s entire population is over the age of 65 so that makes sense. The company is giving them a grace period, though. It won’t shut down the service abruptly on them. Users have until September 2019 to get their pager affairs in order. After that, they will not be able to use the service.
The last few service providers, NTT Docomo and Okinawa Telemessage, shut off their pager services way back in 2007 and 2017. Tokyo Telemessage made its last pagers almost 20 years ago. Goodbye pagers.
Source Ubergizmo
Filed Under: Technology News