What is a pager and why Hezbollah still relies on this old device

At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 injured in Lebanon after thousands of wireless devices used by Hezbollah members exploded on Tuesday. A senior Lebanese security source claimed that Israel’s Mossad spy agency had planted explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers or “beepers” ordered by the Iran-backed group months before the blasts.

What are pagers?

A pager or ‘beeper’ is a small, portable communications device that receives short messages, usually numeric or alphanumeric, over a radio frequency signal. The pager was widely used before cell phones became popular. It was a vital communications tool, especially for professionals such as doctors, journalists, technicians and managers. This allowed them to receive important messages even in remote areas.

How Do Pagers Work?
The operation of pagers was simple but efficient. When a message was sent via radio waves, the device would alert the user with a distinctive beep. Following this signal the user had to locate a nearby public or landline phone to respond to the message.

As technology progressed, pagers underwent significant improvements. Newer models were equipped with a small screen, allowing them to display short messages directly on the device.

However, by the 1990s, mobile phones began replacing these small devices. The convenience of mobile phones quickly reduced the demand for pagers, and by the late 1990s, beepers had nearly disappeared from public use.

Why Hezbollah members still use pagers
The recent cyberattack targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah revealed that pagers, which many believed had become obsolete, were still in use by the group.

Pagers were used by Hezbollah fighters as a low-tech means of communication to evade Israeli location-tracking.

According to reports, Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s blasts.

A Lebanese security source told Reuters the pagers belonged to Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but the company said in a statement it does not manufacture these devices. It said they were made by a company called BAC, which has a license to use its brand, but gave no further details.

A Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 beepers from Gold Apollo, which multiple sources say were brought into the country earlier this year.