[BBLISA] New cell phone recommendation?

[Sean OMeara]

I could be completely wrong about this, but I think you're trying to
make an apple/orange smoothy.

If I understand correctly what you wrote, you're looking to have the
following happen:

* Device in your wife's pocket attached to the number 555-555-5555
either:

a) * Someone dials 555-555-5555. Instead of the phone ringing, they
get a pager prompt (beepbeepbeep), to which they leave a callabck
number with the keypad
or
b) * Someone dials 555-555-5555. The phone rings as normal. Instead of
voicemail, they get a pager prompt (beepbeepbeep), to which they leave
a callback number with a keypad.

* This number shows up in a list on the device's display, with an easy
interface for to dial the number back.

I believe motorola tried something like this in the early 90's but it
failed miserably.

Modern cell phones are simply not equipped to receive "pages" in the
same way a traditional Doogie Houser/ Tribe Called Quest style pager
does.

These paging systems have to listen for, decode, and translate DTMF
tones from input via an fqdn line or simulated from a cellphone and
then "beam" them out to all pagers listening on the band, which your
pager picks up very much like a nic listening on a hub.

http://www.refreq.com/braddye/pager.html
http://www.panix.com/~clay/scanning/frequencies/pager-freq.shtml

This is completely and totally different than "text messages" which is
market speak for SMS, which runs atop of digital gsm/cdma/tdma systems

http://www.gsm-technology.com/gsm.php/en,unlock,subpage_id,smsfaq.html

This is, of course, different than email, which is fetched via
pop/imap/whatever and sent via smtp over an IP network, which I'm sure
you're familiiar with.

Verison does not, as far as I'm aware of, sell a device that can tune
into the old, antediluvian paging system (I've been waiting like a
year to use that word. heh.)

Pretty much all modern cell phones can send and receive SMS (text messages)

Verizon's treo will allow you to establish an IP connection to the
internet and use palm or wince based apps to access Email, as well as
work with SMS messages, but not "pages"

-s


On 10/22/07, Adam Moskowitz <adamm at menlo.com> wrote:
> My wife is in the market for a new cell phone with the following rather
> specific requirement: She would like to use the phone as a pager (as
> well as a phone, of course), and she would like to be able to dial
> numbers sent to her in pages without having to write them down then
> manually dial them. That is, she wants it to either "just work" or she
> wants to use the stylus to highlight the number to be dialled then hit a
> single button or key to actually cause the phone to dial.
>
> The gotcha is that she's working with a very UN-technical paging company
> and we have no idea how the messages will be sent. The phone may think
> they're "text messages" or "email" or who-know-what-else but the point
> is there's no guarantee of anything except the number to be dialed will
> appear as text on the screen. And no, we can't get the paging company to
> change how they do things; we have to take what they give us.
>
> So, this sounds to me like she needs a Treo or something like it.
>
> I'm pretty sure at least one of the Treos will do the job but I don't
> know if all the different models will work this way. I also don't know
> if there are other phones that can do this.
>
> One last constraint: Our carrier is Verizon Wireless and we don't want
> to change that.
>
> Any recommendations, for or against?
>
> Thanks,
> AdamM
>
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