Pine phone Junior, message phone ?

[Zebulon Walton]

In the 90s when I didn't have the money for full service cellular I took incoming calls through a pager which either sent me a SMS like message or a callback number and voicemail.

I did pretty much the same thing, and actually still do. My carrier still has the "outcall notification" feature that notifies a numeric pager when someone leaves a message. Back in the day since airtime was expensive I'd usually find a pay phone to retrieve the message and return the call. Thirty years later I still use that feature but of coruse pay phones are very rare now. At home I'll use the land line. The the cell phone only gets turned on and used if it's the only way available.

Not sure what I'd do if that notification feature goes away. I suspect not very many people are using it at this point and am kind of surprised at this late date that it still works. I don't know of any carrier that has a similar feature, probably because 99.9% of users leave their cell phones on all the time.

[bcnaz]

I only had 'company pagers' ... I hated them, could be working on a roof, or driving the highway, ... the caller always wanted an immediate response.
Later I bought an operator assist radio phone, I kinda liked that. $28. a month if I did not have out of area roaming charges.
The handheld walkie talkie had a 60 - 80 mile range, with the optional booster in the truck, and sitting on a hill - over 200 miles was "possible" ...
Days long gone....

[biketool]

I only had 'company pagers' ...  I hated them,  could be working on a roof, or driving the highway,  ... the caller always wanted an immediate response.
Later I bought an operator assist radio phone,  I kinda liked that.  $28.  a month if I did not have out of area roaming charges.
The handheld walkie talkie had a 60 - 80 mile range,  with the optional booster in the truck, and sitting on a hill - over 200 miles was "possible" ...
Days long gone....

I am curious the frequency band?
It can be assumed a HT is 2w maybe up to 5w but that signal stuffed through a horrible dubber duck antenna but the tower side will have a good antenna and a nice on band LNA at the antenna before sending the signal to the actual receiver.  Since we get diminishing returns form EEIRP especially when compensating for crap antenna I am guessing anywhere form 50-200w at the truck, though I once saw an ambulance with a 1500w power amp at ~150mhz, the thing would blow out the fire station PBX if the radio was keyed inside the station(I recall ~3m from antenna to PBX).
I love the topic and hope I get a response but I feel like I am derailing the thread.