I happily used PagerDirect[.net] 2020-2023 — their service includes a receive-only pager, either numeric or alphanumeric. They also have Tx pagers, but I have no experience with that service.
An issue with Rx-only paging is that your device must be on 24/7, and within RF range — if offline/out-of-range, you will never receive that page.
I only stopped because I moved outside of their reliable service area (but they provide service to practically any metro center with greater than 100k people). When I lived 3 miles from "downtown" the pager was a great asset (for call screening, e.g.: spammers never "figured out" how a pager worked).
It's very inefficient because every tower must broadcast every message. This is why you can find an archive of pages from the morning of September 11th online, they transmitted unencrypted to a huge area.
So that raises costs and limits the coverage area. Fine for a hospital with 100 idk doctors who need paged, not fine for continental coverage of 100 million users.
It's very inefficient because every tower must broadcast every message.
No, it's incredibly efficient because the messages are tiny.
If you need to send a long message, then you page the person with "you have a long message from XYZ, please use higher-bandwidth mechanisms to retrieve it".
