New Pagers. New Solutions. New Areas of Application.

“If pagers are mainly used just as beepers in Europe today, that indicates a lack of imagination.” That was the finding of a 2001 market study by Forrester Research that also stated: “The potential for application in industry, trade and services is infinite.” e*Message’s success story bears out these statements. Paging network operators in Europe, America, Asia and Australia have developed completely new solutions and pioneered new fields of application in recent years. Pagers are not just “beepers” any more, but also weather stations, storm sirens, and electricity rate displays. Some devices are even integrated in parking and traffic guidance systems. As classic pagers, they guide truckers to the right loading dock, call out snowploughs in the winter, and dispatch service technicians to the site of a breakdown. Last but not least, more and more firefighters in Europe are alerted within seconds by fire alarm pagers.

The use of paging as an auxiliary function in a variety of primary systems, currently under development, is becoming increasingly important. A UMTS module in a battery-powered device would require 113 batteries for the same application that a paging module can realize with just one battery. The use of paging modules in commercially available smoke alarms is an example that demonstrates how paging technology makes innovative applications possible. Paging offers other industries a new orientation in the market. For example, by adding forecast features to their products by means of paging, manufacturers of personal weather stations have been able to prevail in Germany and France while others floundered.

Thanks to the 2wayS by e*Message multichannel alerting system, a hybrid communications concept was developed. It features two completely independent infrastructures in one device, which allows it to achieve even higher availability and better accessibility.

A paging solution for switching and controlling applications is also available for energy providers. The ‘Strompager’ is a switch receiver for secure, radio-based control of load and feed-in management. Based on the e*Nergy service , the device controls consuming units and power generators such as photovoltaic systems, heat pumps, electric charging stations and illuminating devices. The further developed electricity pager Strompager DX is a hybrid control box that combines radio receiver, switch electronics and interface into an intelligent measuring system.

The traditional application for paging is to receive messages on a pager. In fact, nearly every electronic device can be transformed into a ‘pager’. There are already more than three million German and French households with radio weather stations that receive dynamically-updated information via the satellite-based e*Message paging network. An integrated paging chip also enables other devices to provide dual functionality.

With the help of the specially developed e*Warnmodul in storm sirens or smoke alarms, citizens at risk can receive warnings anywhere in the country or even at a specific street or address, alerting them of various dangers such as terror, floods, blackouts or industrial disasters.