My (future) insane communication setup
I have a pager. Yes, I really do have a pager. Not just a pager that can do nothing, I have a real pager with subscription. What and why?
It’s a alphanumerical pager so I can get full text messages. It runs on POCSAG 1200 from what I can gather (checking messages via sdr). It’s not so (but it kinda is) cheap, £11 a month. This includes the pager rental itself and the subscription. I can either call the pager number (it has its own number!) which allows me to send a numerical message only, call a number where a real human takes a message then forwards that message to the pager or use A REST API!!!1 to send a message to the number.
Using a pager in 2026 is, err, very simple. The rest api is basically header auth, recipient and message body. Nothing else is needed or given for you to really do. I can also see past pages via a portal, just in case I missed the page. Did you forget (or didn’t know) that pagers are one way and are only sent out once? Your pager doesn’t pick up the signal? Tough shit no message for you!
What do I use the pager for? I use it to get messages! Dumb questions get dumb answers. In all seriousness, I do use it to get messages. I had it at one point forward sms messages so when I was out, I could leave my phone at home but if I needed to be contacted, I could be. I no longer do this, because people would send me messages that shouldn’t really be sent out on the pager network. If you don’t know how pagers work, let me educate you! Pagers are a very basic technology that are rather dumb but rather beautiful. Your pager is receive only unit, it is contently tuned onto a certain radio frequency (153.350 mhz for pocsag) and if it hears a message on this frequency, it may buzz and beep and decode the message. Now, it only decodes and beeps and boops if the message is designated for your pager. Each pager has a “unique” code associated with it called a RIC (Radio Identity Code) or a (CAP code) Channel Access Protocol code and it is this code that the pager is looking for. Now it does some extra cool shit to basically do fuck all till it hears a message and then only a certain bit of data is processed to know if it needs to fully wake up. Read the wiki article on POCSAG if you’re interested.
There’s twp major flaws with pagers. First one is POCSAG is plaintext lol. All the messages are broadcast unencrypted. Using a radio that can receive the signal and some software can allow you to decode the pager network traffic with ease. Secondly, because it is receive only and you never “connect” to a radio tower like you do with a mobile phone, the pager network has no way of knowing where you are. This is a benefit for privacy because there’s no way to track you back to a cell tower like with a mobile phone, but it also means that they cannot direct the message directly to you. The only way to send a message is to propagate it out to the entire area covered by the pager network (pretty much the entire country). Anyone can read the message you sent yourself or was sent to you. Now you know why I stopped sending the sms contents like the twat I am.
I’m not going to detail what I currently send my pager, as anyone can read the message and maybe then deduce which pager is mine and spam me. But it’s not hard to figure it out. I mainly use it as a notification system for when I do not have my phone with me. I am actively trying to remove my phone from my life and the challenge of this is, I do like to be contactable if need be. This does kinda solve that problem, but it doesn’t solve the reply part of the system. For that, I will need something else.
WIFI to the rescue.
Yes, I am planning to use a device (my Hiby is going to be it if I ever ship it to china to get fixed) for this communication. I will rely on VOIP, once I can be arsed to set up the crusty old shite Asterisk. I would like to connect my mobile phone to the VOIP server as well and I have seen that this might be possible with something called chan_mobile and one of my old phones using bluetooth but I don’t really know tbh. If it does work though, the idea would be that I could get a page, find some wifi with allways on vpn. Connect to my voip and see who called or text me. Then I can call or text back that person. I could also have the call automatically answer and provide a message to the caller saying I have been alerted to their call and I will call them back. Same with the SMS, auto reply and then they know I’m not ignoring them which is better than what happens now (they get ignored for a while).
This is all potentially complicated and may not even be possible, but damn it I want to try it because it sounds so mental and deranged that it might just work. Who knows, it could be the new way to have private communication where you can have multiple avenues of communication that all tie together. Or it could be an opsec nightmare with so much easily ingestible metadata that you just open yourself up.
Shit does sound fun to build though!