I use alphanumeric paging for my business. Cell phones are unreliable in the California foothills, but work well in cities. I need to be notified in both kinds of areas, and since cell phone providers don't care about covering sparsely populated mountainous terrain, paging seems to be the only alternative. I looked up the paging frequencies of various providers (Metrocall, USA Mobility, SkyTel, etc) and programmed them in to my scanner. While driving through cities, all carriers had strong signals. When I traveled away from town, signals got weak in some areas and stayed strong in others. Sometimes, some of the paging carriers disappeared completely. USA Mobility's nationwide network was a runner-up, but Cook Paging's VHF system wins hands down. No matter where I went around Calaveras, Amador, and Tuolumne Counties, Cook Paging had a super strong signal and barely any fades. So, I contacted Cook and got one of their pagers. No problems, and excellent customer service. Best of all, it is VERY inexpensive! I pay less for one year of paging service than I do for one month of Cingular cellular phone service, and the pager works everywhere, even where the phone does not. The Cook voicemail system is the main one I use now instead of the cellular company VM system.
