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October 1, 2019 07:00 am

Pager Services To End Tuesday In Japan After 50 Years

Japan's sole pager provider, Tokyo Telemessage Inc, will shut down radio signals for its services Tuesday, ending support for the device first introduced in the country half a century ago. Japan Today reports: In recent years, the device had been favored mainly by those working in hospitals, where cellphone use was once discouraged because of concerns over the effect of electromagnetic waves on medical devices and where cellphone reception can sometimes be poor. Beeper services in Japan began in 1968 with the predecessor of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. Users would call a specific number via a landline, causing the device to emit a beeping sound. But from the late 1980s onward, the popularity of pagers grew as they could be used to send messages combining numbers and text characters. The number of pager users exceeded 10 million in 1996, with the device becoming one of the defining symbols of a subculture among female high school students along with "loose socks" and taking photos in puri-kura photo booths. However, beeper services declined with the introduction of mobile phones. The number of pager users further decreased as e-mailing, texting as well as taking and sending pictures by phone became standard.

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