Forget the Nokia 3310 - there are still lots of people using pagers in Britain

When rumours began circling that the classic Nokia 3310 was to return, the technology world went berserk over the retro, stripped-down device from the year 2000.

But some people are still loyally using a technology far, far more retro – the Nineties essential, the pager.

This week, Vodafone announced that it was selling its British pager business to Capita, which provides its own service.

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Vodafone says that it still has around 1,000 users of the technology – where users can receive text alerts, and little else.

Most of the users who still rely on pagers today are not hipsters who want to bask in the devices’ retro cool – it tends to be workers on call and emergency responders.

Lifeboat crews, repair men for companies such as EDF, and ambulance crews rely on the devices – which are highly reliable for receiving short messages.

Liam Lehane of the London Ambulance Service told The Guardian, ‘They’re really good for pushing messages out. It’s a system that the NHS uses quite widely.