A
pager (also known as a
beeper) is a wireless
telecommunications device that received and displays numeric and/or receives and announces voice messages.
One-way pagers can only receive messages, while
response pagers and
two-way pagers can also acknowledge, reply to, and originate messages using an internal transmitter. Pagers operate as part of a paging system which includes one or more fixed transmitters (or in the case of response pagers and two-way pagers, one or more
base stations), as well as a number of pagers carried by mobile users. These systems can range from a restaurant system with a single low-power transmitter, to a nationwide system with thousands of high-power base stations.