Pager

A pager is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric messages.

Pagers in Singapore
The pager was an ubitiquous communications device in the 1980s and 1990s in Singapore, as an alternative to the mobile phone, the latter of which had a high price tag in the range of $900-$3,000 SGD; in comparison, pagers were more affordable at $300-$500. In 1998, pager users numbered 1.36 million, or nearly one in two of the population; there were only 900,000 mobile phone subscribers in the same year. Till the emergence of competitors like Hutchison Paging, SunPage and M1 in the 1990s, SingTel (then known as Telecommunications Equipment) was the only paging services provider then. Motorola was the dominant pager manufacturer in Singapore, although other brands like Avont Innovations and Telson also had shares in the market.

SunPage was the last provider in the market to bow out of the paging industry in April 2012, close to 20 years after the heyday of the pager. This was preceded by SingTel Paging ceasing its paging services in 2008, M1 Paging in 2003, and Hutchison Intrapage in 2001. In April 2012, there were only 10,000 pager subscribers, a number of whom were military personnel (regulars and NSFs), petrochemical industry workers, and doctors.