Voicemail over radio?

[monstermatt2]

i was on a business trip in ile de la madeleine so i brought my scanner along with me, theirs a frequency over there (143.6875) which broadcast paging sounds from the hospital over there, ok, but on the same frequency, periodically there's another transmission which play's 2 tones, followed by a message from a phone line, saying (example) Bonjour Monstermatt2, pouvez-vous me rappeler au 418-123-4567, merci et bonne journée" then the transmission stopped. to this day im still trying to figure out what this is, anyone have any idea???

 

[dlwtrunked]

i was on a business trip in ile de la madeleine so i brought my scanner along with me, theirs a frequency over there (143.6875) which broadcast paging sounds from the hospital over there, ok, but on the same frequency, periodically there's another transmission which play's 2 tones, followed by a message from a phone line, saying (example) Bonjour Monstermatt2, pouvez-vous me rappeler au 418-123-4567, merci et bonne journée" then the transmission stopped. to this day im still trying to figure out what this is, anyone have any idea???

Typical voice paging probably from the same company doing the digital paging. Voice paging, starting with tones to select the receiver, then the message, is older than the digital paging but has disappeared in many areas.

 

[monstermatt2]

Typical voice paging probably from the same company doing the digital paging. Voice paging, starting with tones to select the receiver, then the message, is older than the digital paging but has disappeared in many areas.

ohh, didnt realize this was older lol

 

[cmdrwill]

Tone and Voice paging. Maybe old technology but IT WORKS. Lots of fire departments use the same thing on their frequencies.

 

[mmckenna]

I ran one of those systems at work up until about 2000.
Yeah, they work great, but like so many things, replaced by cell phones.

 

[plaws]

ohh, didnt realize this was older lol

Way older. Like 70s-80s. I'm sure it lasted into the 90s as a niche product but by then almost everything was digits (cheaper devices, easier/cheaper to run on the back end since it's all data - milliseconds per page instead of seconds means more money).

FD paging isn't really the same since in most instances (I'm sure there are contrary examples), the message is transmitted live by the fire alarm operator and not recorded.

Reminds me of 25+ years ago when I lived in Arkansas. The little town PDs out in the county didn't have dispatchers - the 7D you dialed was forwarded to an autopatch and it was answered by the officer on duty.

 

[plaws]

Reminds me of 25+ years ago when I lived in Arkansas. The little town PDs out in the county didn't have dispatchers - the 7D you dialed was forwarded to an autopatch and it was answered by the officer on duty.

Oh! I remembered another, more pertinent thing. When I volunteered with Cote St Luc EMO (now EMS) I did the "scheduling pager" for a couple weeks. What a pain that thing was. Not so much being paged but having to write down the number the person spoke into the phone ... which when you were driving was just dumb. No display, no ability to replay the message (much later, there were voice pagers that would store the audio). 1983? Maybe? A long time ago.

 

[ecps92]

There are still some hospitals that use the ole' Tone/Voice [many a local VA]

Way older. Like 70s-80s. I'm sure it lasted into the 90s as a niche product but by then almost everything was digits (cheaper devices, easier/cheaper to run on the back end since it's all data - milliseconds per page instead of seconds means more money).

FD paging isn't really the same since in most instances (I'm sure there are contrary examples), the message is transmitted live by the fire alarm operator and not recorded.

Reminds me of 25+ years ago when I lived in Arkansas. The little town PDs out in the county didn't have dispatchers - the 7D you dialed was forwarded to an autopatch and it was answered by the officer on duty.

 

[TurboLed]

Albeit being an older technology, paging worked better than cell phones today because of the power of the transmission from the tower and being a one-way communication device. You could be in a forest in a remote area where no cell phone works but the paging system would still work. That must be why some of these systems are still around.

Cell phones are made as low-power two-way communication devices which cannot benefit from high-power towers because the phone would need to be high-power for the tower to "hear" it.