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.