2-WAY PAGING versus 1-WAY PAGING

During the last 5 years paging has become common place in programming school zone flashers. In its original inception, paging was limited to one way (1-way) paging. Further this technology used POCSAG protocol which severely limited the amount of data that could be transferred with a single page. Consequently flasher control programs for only one week could be transferred to the remote time clock in a single page. As a result, the program on the central computer was required to be active at all times; necessitating that a computer be pretty much dedicated to managing school zone time clocks. This certainly represented costs to the end user.

While improvements have been made in 1-way paging technology, 1-way paging has a number of inherent shortcomings. As with any electronic communications device, the user does not know if the device being addressed received the message unless the remote device answers. While one can anticipate that the remote device received the communications, there is no guarantee that it did. All one has to do is witness the number of times one is unable to connect on the cell phone to appreciate that the remote device may not have received the communication. Developers of 1-way paging systems, including ELTEC, usually send the page more than once to improve the likelihood that the remote device received the page. But this is not fool proof, especially if the remote device has a fault. The user will not even know that the device has not received the message until a report of flashing beacon failure or abnormal operation is reported. This is an after the fact condition and is the bane of all signal technicians.

Some improvement has occurred in 1-way paging since this early development. Several of the providers of paging devices and programs have taken advantage of the Flex protocol offered by the leading pager services. Flex protocol allows the user to send a scheduling program for the entire school year including all exceptions with one page. As a result, a computer is no longer required to be maintained in an active and dedicated state nor is constant and regular pages to the remote device necessary.