Russia to stop licensing paging services – Kommersant

The Ministry of Digital Development intends to exclude paging services from the list of communication services licensed in Russia, follows from the draft government decree published on the website regulation.gov.ru. The ministry clarifies that the paging technology is outdated and completely replaced by cellular communications, and the regulation developed for it “is unclaimed and redundant.”

“The technology of personal radio calling (paging) is outdated and is currently completely replaced by mobile radiotelephone communication technology on the territory of the Russian Federation,” follows from the explanatory note to the project. The Ministry of Digital Transformation specified that by June 2023, there were no active license holders for paging communications in Russia.

Pagers made it possible to receive text messages transmitted over the air, in most cases the communication was one-way. Urban paging networks began to close in Russia in the early 2000s due to the growing popularity of mobile phones. The last company providing paging services in Russia was Telecomt: its founder, Leonty Ogarok, spoke to radio stations in 2020 “Moscow Speaks”that such networks remained at the Kola NPP and at the Central Clinical Hospital with a polyclinic. Telecomt LLC, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, was liquidated in November 2021.

Yuri Litvinenko