When Pagers really come in handy...
The Verizon outage on 1/14/26 and the AT&T Wireless outage on 2/22/24 are great examples of how a pager could have come in handy during this time. T-Mobile also had their share of outages...
- August 8, 2026 , Verizon had an issue which spiked to over 12,000 user reports on Downdetector. The issue primarily affected voice calls and mobile services in parts of the East and Midwest, but was resolved by engineers shortly after 6 p.m. ET that same day. Separately, a localized outage hit Southern California customers on Sunday, August 9, caused by vandalized fiber lines.
- July 24, 2025: A significant disruption from morning until late morning, affecting all users' ability to make/receive calls.
- January 28, 2025: Another major outage, preventing all users from making and receiving calls.
- December 19, 2024: An outage impacting all users' ability to make/receive calls.
Suppose someone needed to get in touch with you for an urgent matter. They could have paged you or sent an alphanumeric message via email to your alpha pager with a brief summary of the issue and you could have used either a landline or borrowed a friend's phone on a carrier that wasn't having an issue.