Last Of The Pager Service In Japan Is Folding Up As Tokyo Telemessage transition to Emergency Telemessages.

VoIP-Info


Pagers are being phased out in Japan. Tokyo Telemessage, the last remaining carrier says it will be stopping its service at the end of next September.
Tokyo Telemessage currently services about 1,500 customers in Tokyo and neighboring prefectures. Many are medical workers. 
Pagers have served Japan for 50 years, and reached the peak in 1996 when the number of customers reached more than 10 million. Soon they moved away giving the space to Mobile phones and smart phones. But they became things of the past with the arrival of mobiles and later smartphones.

Tokyo Telemessage is the only pager service provider left in Japan. The company says it plans to use the pager frequency band to strengthen its emergency disaster radio services for local authorities. The the pager frequency bandwidth of 280 megahertz more appealing as they can penetrate buildings, even underground etc reaching those who are unreachable during natural disasters. Tokyo Telemessage will use the bandwidth to assist local governments to provide disaster radio services.

Tokyo Telemessage President Hidetoshi Seino showing a radio that can receive pager frequencies.