Paging systems: network architectures and interfaces

In the past few years, the penetration rate of the paging service has significantly increased. The paging service is competitive because paging networks offer inexpensive service in large service coverage areas, and pagers are cheap and easy to carry. This article provides an overview of the one-way paging network architecture and the interfaces among the paging network elements. The author also briefly describes two-way paging services and uses the GSM short message service as an example to illustrate how two-way messaging can be offered under the cellular platform.