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Pager: Messages
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Datacast is a news service provided by American Messaging which broadcasts news, weather, and sports information directly to an alphanumeric pager. This information is provided as "Maildrops" which deposits the pages on the second line of your pager. Datacast is not available on numeric or Hospital Funded pagers. Listed below are the Datacast features that are received in the Kansas City area.
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When not displaying a message, the pager will display the time continually; this time remains accurate for short periods and is adjusted when the paging terminal sends its next update. The time-of-day transmissions ... are used to determine if the pager has moved out of range of the transmitter. If the periodic page is not detected, the pager will alert the user that it is "out of range." Prior to transmitting page alerts, a preamble is transmitted that takes the pagers out of a battery-saver mode; page alerts then are transmitted back to back. Because of the time to transmit a binary "1" is double the time for a "0," the duration of a tone-only page depends on its address. A single page alert can be transmitted in 224 to 276 milliseconds.
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Small enough to clip comfortably on your belt, pocket or purse, pagers come in five types: "Tone-Only," "tone and voice," numeric," "alphanumeric," and "two-way". Tone-only pagers send out tones to alert you that you have received a pager message. Most tone-only pagers have two different tones, each correlating to one of two possible predetermined phone numbers. The sound of the pager tone tells you which number to call. Tone & Voice pagers emit a tone alert and then a voice message when paged. Someone trying to reach you calls your pager number and leaves a recorded voice message. Your pager will then emit a tone or vibration alert and you hear the recording of the message the pager caller left, in the caller's own voice. Numeric pagers are the most popular. They have a small screen that displays up to 20 digits.
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Other attempts at pager interception rely heavily on software to do the decoding function. If you spend time on Internet, you may have noticed the hobby attempts at pager decoding software. There are even some "law enforcement surveillance" pager decoders built around these software packages. The problem is, software decoders just aren't fast enough to keep up with today's busy paging channels. For short bursts these systems may seem to decode OK, but what you don't know is these things are missing a lot of the traffic. They can't keep up with the constant high speed flow of paging messages, so they discard entire batches.
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When you received your pager, you should have received an American Messaging Custom Coverage "Quick Reference Card" that lists the steps described above, as well as the Custom Coverage Codes for the United States. If you did not receive this, you can get one from the Pager Warehouse located in Dykes Library. The Pager Warehouse is open from 8am - 5pm, Monday through Friday. The extension is 8-2337. Instructions for changing the Custom Coverage Codes can ... be viewed online.
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Because ERMES would involve system operators, pager manufacturers, paging terminal manufacturers and transmitter equipment manufacturers together, it was decided that an entirely new standard would be created. This would avoid giving any individual entity a bigger head start than any other in developing ERMES-compatible equipment. The standard is comprehensive in that it encompasses various analog and digital telephone input protocols; data network input protocols; protocols for moving tone-only, numeric, alphanumeric and data messages to paging terminals, protocols for encoding information to the pager; protocols for moving information to the transmitter equipment. This section will be limited to a discussion of the ERMES pager encoding format.
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