With today's modern mobile and wifi networks pagers might seem terribly old fashioned. But pagers are still in use today in places where mobile phones typically cannot reach and also in places where the operation of the radio transmitters contained in mobile phones is problematic or prohibited.
Whilst many of the national networks have closed down some are still going and some locations such as large hospitals have their own systems and are still popular with birdwatchers in Britain and Ireland with companies Rare Bird Alert and Birdnet Information offering news of rare birds sent to pagers that they sell.
Decoding pager messages using a PC involves some software and a receiver usually with a discriminator tap and using the sound card and/or a data-slicer. The most popular software is the PDW suite.
I decided to use the FUNCube Dongle to attempt some decoding as being able to keep everything digital within the PC rather than having audio leads from a scanner plugged into the soundcard meant no problems with audio circuitry messing up the signal. Also the ability to alter the bandwidth should mean I could get some excellent decoding - and I did, both the higher speed and more problematic FLEX and the easier POCSAG protocols.
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