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What is the difference between a wide area 1-way pager, in-house pager and virtual paging?
Wide-area 1-way pagers are the type of pagers that have a phone number and/or email address linked to the pager, and the pager itself can work for many miles, or in multiple states, or even nationwide in areas that have paging coverage. These are the types of pagers that doctors use as well as anyone that needs a way for urgent notifications to get through. They are called one-way pagers because they can only receive a message but cannot reply back to the message.
There are one-way numeric pagers and one-way alphanumeric pagers. One-way numeric pagers are capable of receiving a numeric page that is sent using a telephone. Most commonly, this is simply a telephone number that your caller would like you to call them back at. Alphanumeric pagers have their own email address. If somebody wants to send you a message that consists of words and/or numbers, they would simply email your pager.
Text messaging sometimes works, but not always and we do not recommend using text to the pager's phone number since it is not reliable. An alphanumeric pager would be required for a text to come through if it is going to come through at all. Again, we do not recommend using text; we recommend using email only. Common frequencies for wide area pagers are 929.6125, 929.9375, 929.6625 MHz.
In-house pagers are also 1-way but are the type of pagers that work in a building where there is a transmitter base, and the signal is sent from the base to the pagers within the building. These are commonly used with nurse call systems, assisted living facilities, nursing homes, offices, warehouses and restaurants. In-house pagers do not need to travel outside of the premises and do not have pager phone numbers or an email address linked to them. They can, however, display a message if the pager is alphanumeric capable, in the event of a restaurant, they might just vibrate to let a server know that food is ready in the kitchen or that a table is ready so a patron at a restaurant knows to come to the host stand. In-house pagers work on a different frequency range than most wide area pagers. A common frequency range for in-house pagers is the 450-470 MHz range.
Virtual Paging is when you get notified of pages through:
- An app on your smartphone
- Via an email
- Possibly a text message on your phone
With virtual paging, there is no physical pager that you carry separately. All messages are routed through your phone via a pager app or a text message. You can also have pages sent to an email address and view the page on any device that can receive emails.
We call the place that the pages are directed to the "virtual pager destination" so if you want messages sent to a pager app on your smartphone, the virtual pager destination will be a pager app.
Message Carbon Copy is a pager service option that allows the page to be sent to both a physical pager and a virtual paging destination at the same time so you can have alternate ways to view the page which can be a great backup in the event the pager does not receive a page due to poor reception, if you travel outside of the pager's coverage area, the battery died, you forgot to bring the pager with you or simply as a way to have a record of pages sent to your pager.