Nevertheless, pagers continue to be used by some emergency services and public safety personnel, because modern pager systems' coverage overlap, combined with use of satellite communications, can make paging systems more reliable than terrestrial based cellular networks in some cases, including during natural and human-made disasters.

[9] Physicians paid US$12 per month and carried a 200-gram (7 oz) pager that would receive phone messages within 40 kilometres (25 mi) of a single transmitter tower.

Solid-state circuitry enabled the Bellboy pager, about the size of a small TV remote device, to fit into a customer's pocket or purse, quite a feat at that time.

[18] Volunteer firefighters, EMS paramedics and rescue squad members usually carry pagers to alert them of emergency call outs for their department.

[20][21] Today, companies like Visiplex offer similar solutions for onsite pager systems in the medical, education and commercial sectors.

[24] Matt Hancock, (then) Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced in February 2019 that the 130,000 pagers still in use were to be phased out.

[25] NHSX announced plans in May 2020 to replace pagers and bleepers with "more modern communication tools," accelerated by the pressure placed on the service by the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

Older forms of message submission using the Telelocator Alphanumeric Protocol involve modem connections directly to a paging network and are less subject to these delays.

For this reason, older forms of message submission retain their usefulness for disseminating highly-important alerts to users such as emergency services personnel.

Although 900 MHz FLEX paging networks tend to have stronger in-building coverage than mobile phone networks, commercial paging service providers will work with large institutions to install repeater equipment in the event that service is not available in needed areas of the subscribing institution's buildings.

In the mid-1990s, some paging companies began offering a service, which allowed a customer to call their pager number and have numeric messages read back to them.

In Canada and the United States, pagers that use the commercial FM band receive a subcarrier, called the Subsidiary Communications Authority, of a broadcast station.

Hospitals commonly use on-site paging for communication with staff and increasingly for contacting waiting patients when their appointment is due.

Paging systems also support various types of direct connection protocols, which sacrifice global addressing and accessibility for a dedicated communications link.

Automated monitoring and escalation software clients, often used in hospitals, IT departments and alarm companies, tend to prefer direct connections because of the increased reliability.

[29] Modern paging systems typically use multiple base transmitters to modulate the same signal on the same RF channel, a design approach called simulcast.

This type of design enables pagers to select the strongest signal from several candidate transmitters using FM capture, thereby improving overall system performance.

The coverage overlap, combined with use of satellite communications, can make paging systems more reliable than terrestrial based cellular networks in some cases, including during natural and human-made disaster.

On September 17, 2024, a massive attack against Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria was allegedly committed by Israel, who simultaneously detonated pagers that they were using.

Popular artists from the era, including Ice Cube, Method Man, and A Tribe Called Quest, began referencing newly developed mobile technologies such as the pager.