Pagers: The Early Network Good
Pagers, the early network good we didn't pay attention to
When you talk about "network goods," the mind automatically switches to something high-tech or something Facebook-ish. The old-tech seems to not cut it. And yet, network goods have been around since humanity has been around, and plenty has been written about them. Old-tech has as much to offer by way of learning as new-tech, and in this article, I examine the case of pagers.
The Beginning
The concept and early execution of pagers dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when a bunch of policemen in Detroit started tinkering with their radio sets in the police cars, to install a radio receiver and antenna. This was used to dispatch police cars. Fast forward to 1949, Al Gross, a telecommunications engineer, created the first version of a telephonic pager. He also invented the walkie-talkie and the cordless telephones. The patent was filed in 1949, but the device wasn't called a "pager" just yet. The device was shown to healthcare professionals, but was met with some skepticism on its efficacy and need. It was eventually first used in a New York hospital in 1950.
The device popularly called as "the pager" was called so only after Motorola started to produce pagers in 1959. Early pagers were pocket-sized devices which operated on radio frequencies or pager networks and meant for quick dispatches.
A Note on the Design of a Pager
A typical pager was meant to fit into the palm of one's hand. It had just a few buttons, which were small enough to not require too much space, and yet designed with enough allowances to not be difficult to push by people of different age groups. It could be easily placed into a pocket or strapped onto a belt—which is how most professionals carried their pagers. The classic "beep" of the pager—which gave it the alternative name of "beepers"—was meant to alert, without the fanfare. It was a characteristic sound that could not be confused with, say, the sound of a telephone or any sound from hospital devices etc. The sound meant, "you've got a page" and often had an "action" associated with it. For example, in a hospital, it meant a code and reporting to a particular point. The later text-messaging devices displayed the message on a screen. The screen was something like the screen of a calculator, easily readable in all lighting conditions.
As devices which allowed mostly alerts and short texts, pagers were best suited to cut through the clutter of other messages, content, conversations etc, and deliver the message to the receipient promptly (and often with a sense of urgency). This, combined with easy accessibility of pagers for people from all backgrounds, made them the go-to device for many special use-cases, apart from mass usage at their peak. In many ways, pagers had it "right" very early on, in terms of a technological innovation to serve a specific purpose for the users.
The Rise and Rise of Pagers
Pagers may have had a slow start, but once their utility was well-understood, their uptake grew sharply all over the USA and the world. Pager usage started looking up with the launch of Motorola's "Pageboy 1" in 1964. The early pagers of the 70s and 80s were mostly one-way messaging devices, with only an alert sound and tone-only feature (no text message).
The growth of pagers was most marked in the healthcare sector, with wide usage in hospitals. Growth in pager usage, and hence, demand for pagers, was accompanied by technological growth and innovation. Through the 70s, pagers evolved from being one way, single-tone messaging devices to multi-tone and voice-enabled devices. The voice-enabled messaging devices could deliver short voice messages.
The 80s was the time for the most marked adoption of pagers. On the one hand, pagers leaped forward from being beeping devices alone to devices with alphanumeric messaging, and from being limited range critical communication device to being wide range communciation devices which ran on radio waves. On the other hand, these two innovations made it possible for far larger number of people to use pagers, and hence use it for multiple purposes, beyond just critical communication in a localized area (around 25 mile range). The messages could also be more nuanced then a simple beep. This drove the usage of pagers up and up. The 80s was the period when network effects1 really started to kick in. To communicate requires atleast two people. Hence, as more people used it, that drove even more people to use. It was a bandwagon people wanted to hop on to. It is estimated that in the 80s, there were 3.2 million pager users worldwide.
The 90s paved the way for even better features, along with the advent of a new player—Blackberry—in the pager market. Blackberry introduced a QWERTY keyboard and two-way messaging on pagers. This made pagers more accessible and more immediately useful to a broader category of people. You could now make dinner plans on a pager rather than just a doctor using the pager for rushing for a code. Motorola's "Tango" was designed to be a two-way personal messaging pager. It could also be used to download emails. Blackberry launched its own "Inter@active" pager, with a full keyboard and display screen. In the mid-90s, it is estimated that 61 million pagers were in use worldwide.
Innovation led to more usability and hence increased market demand, which led to higher revenues for the firms, which led to further innovation and further increase in market demand. The pager firms harvested the benefits of this early network good until further technological innovation and launch of mobile phones started to make the pager less attractive.
The Taper
The early 2000s were the time for the dot-com bubble. Technological innovation wasn't just growing, it was exploding. Mobile phones, computers, internet, all were dazzling people with what all they could do with it. One could now send an SMS over a mobile phone, which could also be used to make calls and play games (remember Snake?). Pagers looked less and less attractive with time. While their usage didn't plummet suddenly, it did reduce and remained limited to specific use cases for which they seem to work the best—as devices for critical, short communication. The 2000s was the time when technological innovation in pagers was then directed towards their use in the healthcare and other sectors, rather than for mass usage. Pagers still remain in usage in these sectors.
The Long Tail
Pager usage never really died out; they just dwindled away from common sight. The network effects wore off, and pagers remained a communication device used by first responders or immediate, limited communication in corporate offices. The technological growth further fine-tuned and perfected these devices for specific industries rather than mass uptake.
Newer devices came with message encryption features. Some devices designed for usage by firefighters came with a skin that would survive extreme environments. For eg, Motorola's MINITOR 7™Two-tone analog voice pager is a small, light, handy and sturdy device that can be used by first responders. Spok's GenA pager is a secure, encryption-enabled, e-paper display device that allows integration with other workflows.
What Were they Good For?
The lessons of pagers as an early network good were not simply a paragraph in a textbook. The innovators were watching and learning. The success of pagers in the healthcare sector was an extraordinary case study in successful product design, network effects and technological innovation. Many companies built upon these early lessons and incorporated them into their own startups and products.
The most remarkable example of this is a company which has loaned its name from the good under discussion—"pager health." Pager Health created a platform which could be used to find a doctor who would be willing to pay someone a home visit. As technological innovation and user expectations evolved, the startup evolved too, and it grew to include a whole bouquet of services for both doctors and patients. As of now, Pager Health offers a complete Saas platform which any healthcare centre (like a hospital) can use to connect a patient with not just a doctor, but a range of healthcare practictioners, monitor patient activity, monitor patient's vitals, test results, and a whole lot more.
Pager Health built upon the success of a network good, to build a platform connecting patients and doctors, and then build a SaaS product which can be used as a platform by any healthcare center. With the turn of this decade being towards Artificial Intelligence (AI), Pager Health now offers AI-enabled features in its services.
The pagers were in some sense the ancestors of many products we see and use every day. Though pager usage declined over the last decade, lessons from their design and utility resonate through many products and firms today, and probably will for a long time to come.
References:
The Pager: A 100 Year History in Brief
Why pagers still matter: the history of pagers (1921-2021)
Health-tech startup Pager is pivoting to be more “scalable”LISTEN: Why Pager Isn’t Really The “Uber For Healthcare” AnymorePagers Are Here To Stay
Footnotes:
1) "...network effect exists if consumption benefits depend positively on the total number of consumers whopurchase compatible products."— Church, Gandal and Krause (Church et al. 2002, p. 1) in The Network(ed) Economy.