If you are located in the US, take a peek at the Motorola website and
search for CreateLink2XT. It's a 2-way pager module that will allow
you to originate pages to other pagers on the Skytel system or send
email. Single unit cost is about $140 or so, and service from Skytel
is dependent on how many bits you push through. 

Disclaimer-I am one of the design engineers that worked on the
product, but I don't get a cut from Motorola. 


Dave Bengtson


On Thu, 2 Sep 1999 14:09:26 -0700, in  you wrote:

>Andres Tarzia wrote:
>>
>> Hi all!
>>
>> I am designing a PIC-based alarm system. The instrusion detection is easy.
>> The local alarm is very easy too.
>>
>> But I'd like to include some form of remote alarm. I was thinking about a
>> regular pager as the alarm receiver, but I don't know how to transmit data
>> to it. Does anybody knows how to send an alert to a pager? Please, without
>> using the phone. I mean a Pager Transmitter like the one that carrier
>> companies have, only smaller. Provided that one can build/adquire the
>> equipement, is it legal? Does the FCC allows you to transmit in the Pager
>> frequencies? Or are they restricted? Do you need some kind of licence?
>
>It's
>a) impractically complex. Figure on hiring a couple people.
>
>b) a pager frequency license was recently sold for the SF bay area for 22 million,
>if memory serves.
>
>What's your objection to using the phone lines? Simple enough to get a pager & activate
>it, then don't give anybody the number. Make a circuit (or use the modem if you've
>got a PC in the system) to dial the pager number, and off it goes!
>
>Indeed, if it's an alphanumeric pager, they're usually connected to email addresses.
>Make your software email your pager when the alarm trips.
>Check the latency in this, but it's usually trivial compared to the pager latency anyway.