Who even uses pagers these days?

As mobile phones became the world's main communications tool, pagers also known as beepers because of the sound they make to notify users about incoming messages were largely rendered obsolete, with demand plunging from their 1990s heyday.

However, the tiny electronic devices remain a vital means of communication in some areas,such as health care and emergency services,thanks to their durability and long battery life.

"It's the cheapest and most efficient way to communicate to a large number of people about messages that don't need responses," said a senior surgeon at a United Kingdom hospital, adding that pagers are commonly used by doctors and nurses across the country's National Health Service (NHS).

"It's used to tell people where to go, when,and what for."

But pagers grabbed headlines on Tuesday when thousands used by members of the militant group Hezbollah were detonated simultaneously across Lebanon, killing at least nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others.

WATCH |Several killed, thousands hurt by blasts in Lebanon:

Exploding pagers injure thousands in Lebanon, Israel blamed

10 days ago

Duration 3:37

Warning: Video contains graphic images | Hezbollah is blaming Israel and vowing revenge after several people were killed and thousands more injured when pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded simultaneously across Lebanon.

According to a senior Lebanese security source and another source, explosives inside the devices were planted by Israel's Mossad spy agency.

In the U.K. in 2019, theNHS was using about 130,000 pagers, or more than one-tenthof the world's pagers, according to the government. More up-to-date figures were not available.

Doctors working in hospital emergency departments carry them when they are on call.

Many pagers can also send out a siren and then broadcast a voice message to groups so that whole medical teams are alerted simultaneously to an emergency, a senior doctor in the NHS said. That is not possible with a mobile phone.

Britain's Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) uses pagers to alert its crews, a source familiar with the lifeboat service told Reuters. The RNLI declined to comment.

Burner phones

Pagers can be harder to track than smartphones because they lack more modern navigation technologies like the global positioning system (GPS).

That made them a popular choice among criminals, especially drug dealers in the United States, in the past.

These days, however, gangs are more likely to use mobile phones,former FBI agent Ken Gray told Reuters.

"I don't know if anyone uses them (pagers)," he said.

"They all went to cellphones, burner phones" which can be easily disposed of and replaced with another phone with a different number, making them difficult to trace.

Gray, who served 24 years at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and now teaches criminal justice and homeland security at the University of New Haven, said that criminals changed with the times and newer technology.

The global pagers market, once a major source of revenue for companies like Motorola, amounted to $1.6 billion in 2023, according to an April report by Cognitive Market Research.

That amounts to a tiny fraction of the global smartphone market, estimated at the end of 2023 to bearound half a trillion U.S. dollars.

However, the report added that thedemand for pagers is rising as a larger patient population creates more need for efficient communication in the health-care sector. Itforecasts compound annual growth of 5.9% from 2023 to 2030.

It said North America and Europe are the two biggest pager markets, generating $528 million and $496 million in revenue respectively.