A pager (sometimes referred as a Beeper) is a personal telecommunications device used to request a phone call from a pager subscriber and/or receive simple text communications in the form of e-mail and SMS. Pagers exist as one-way numeric and alphanumeric models that only receive incoming communications and two-way alphanumeric models capable of sending e-mails and SMS messaging.
Until the popular adoption of mobile phones in the late 1990s, pagers fulfilled the role of common personal and mobile communications. As of 2007, pagers have fallen into obsolescence and preserved only by niche markets of emergency service personnel and information technology support.