cross-posted from !Brussels:
Old radio pagers sometimes surface in the 2nd-hand market. So the question is, are they strictly nostalgic ornaments, or can we still get service for them?
In principle, emergency response services /should/ still be using pagers because SMS is unreliable, while 1980s radio pagers are far more robust. But OTOH Belgium seems to be increasingly disregarding robust availability to bow down to digital transformation, which pushes us toward fragile novelty of all things digital.
If Belgium was wise enough to keep pagers in play, the next question is whether just anyone can get service, or only ambulences? I vaguely recall hearing about Belgacom pulling the plug on pager service, but that could potentially just be in terms of the general public.
It’s also theoretically possible that Ham radio folks could be supporting a POCSAG service, but then it would be interesting to know whether old commercial pagers can be easily modified for ham frequencies.