What is a pager?
Pagers, or beepers, are rudimentary communication devices. Popular in the 1990s, before the advent of the smartphone, they allowed people to receive short alert messages or texts and, in certain cases, send them. Until very recently, they were still widely used in British hospitals.
Since these small devices are battery-operated, they have a long battery life. Their low power makes it highly unlikely that they could have caused the powerful explosions that left several hundred people injured, according to initial reports.
Reuters news agency reported this summer that Hezbollah was using increasingly rudimentary communications technologies, including pagers, to counter the surveillance capabilities of Israel, one of the most advanced countries in terms of digital surveillance.
In late 2023, Hezbollah asked residents in the south of the country, which is Israel’s neighbor, to turn off their surveillance cameras for fear of being hacked by the Jewish state’s intelligence services. Fighters were also ordered not to carry their cell phones during fights.
Some models of professional pagers have message encryption functions. In 1996, Yehia Ayache, considered to be Hamas’s main attacker, was killed when a mobile phone containing 15 grams of a powerful explosive, RDX, exploded.
