PAGER OR PAGING SYSTEMS HAVE MANY NAMES
In our more than 20 years of working with paging systems, we have encountered many different names for a pager.
The most used are buzzer or beeper or bibber, but there are also names like coaster pager or restaurant coaster, puck pager, restaurant beeper, patient buzzer, calling pager, button call, pizza pager, guest calling pager, restaurant pager are just some of these.
Buzzer and beeper are also used internationally but it is usually the same, namely that it is a pager that buzz or beep no matter in which industry it is used. Restaurants use them to call on guests when food or a table is ready, Logistics locations use a buzzer pager to call trucks waiting for a specific ramp. Hospitals buzz or beep their patients when it’s their turn.
Buzzers or beepers or pagers, regardless of the name, have been a help for many years for various industries and here in the 20th century there are many who ask if the mobile phone will not take over the function of buzzing or beeping people when they are in a waiting or queuing situation.
This is of course a logical question, but it can be said that despite the technological development, there are still many places where a buzzer or beeper can be used. This is because SMS/Text message technology is not always in what is called real time. One can thus experience that a
sent SMS/text message only comes after many minutes or in the serious cases after hours, due to congestion of networks etc. This does not happen for a pager, buzzer or beeper system, as this is a closed system which only calls the guests, patients or people you are searching. You can imagine that a restaurant that buzzes a guest to pick up their food with an SMS/text message is only notified 10 minutes after the message has been sent, and then the food is cold!
You will of course survive cold food, but there are many places where buzzer and bibber systems are much more important. Think, for example on firefighters, police, industry where one has to alert about something, just to name a few. In addition, there are many people who do not want to give their phone number out to be buzzed through it, as they are afraid that their number will be misused. Patients in hospitals do not always have their phone with them or will not give their number to others. In the restaurant industry, it can be difficult to create a queuing system with only a mobile phone, as there is no time to register a mobile number, and in many queuing systems it is not possible if the guest has a foreign number.
The same is true in the logistics industry where buzzer and beeper pagers are used to call trucks to a ramp. If all ramps are occupied when the truck arrives at the loading or unloading ramp they can drive away and wait, and the driver is notified through a buzzer / beeper when the ramp is free. That message could well come via SMS/text, but again is this in real time? And since many drivers may be from abroad as well as only have their own private cell phones, they also will not give their number away of fear of the cost of a text message. Likewise, it is often the case that the drivers take the opportunity to get some sleep while they wait, and there a buzzer or beeper are a more powerful tool for waking people up.
So…. buzzers or beepers will not disappear in favour of mobile phones, but we will probably in the future see more and more systems that allow the user to combine SMS/text messages with pagers buzzers and beepers, as this can give more flexibility.
Discover Systems has over 20 years of experience with buzzers, beepers, pagers or whatever you like to call them, so let us give you advice on how it can strengthen your waiting situations.
