PAGING stands tall in Britain’s earthquake disaster

Britain’s biggest earthquake in 25 years highlights that Paging is no white elephant in the communications mix.

At a time when rapid emergency response is absolutely vital, Britain’s biggest earthquake in 25 years has only re-emphasised that despite the digital revolution, there is a need for robust, resilient and effective methods of communication – paging.

Flooded with calls, police and ambulances across the country were called out and directed via a paging network to damaged homes and tremor-related incidents. The British Red Cross volunteers were instantly alerted and called out via paging technology to provide practical and emotional support to distressed citizens with damaged homes and cars.

Prompt and well planned emergency response, from the government and public sector is integral to any kind of disaster relief. Methods of communicating and coercing aid need to be dependable, and often the more glamorous modern day technology will not live up to it. Landlines can go down, mobile signal can be limited and networks can be overloaded. This does not happen with paging.

Paging has yet again proved itself to be a powerful, invaluable and extremely robust service when notifying rescue teams or organising mass evacuation. There is no doubt that paging systems have saved lives. For resilient, reliable infrastructure in a crisis, there really is only one vehicle you can rely on – paging.