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Text-Messaging Saves Fire Department Thousands of Dollars

by Kaiser Hwang on March 18, 2009 at 07:16 PM



Remember pagers? Yeah, we toted them around, too, receiving secret number codes from our buddies and feeling more important than we really were. Believe it or not, the simple one-way paging system is still used at fire departments to call in off-duty firefighters in the event of a fire. The Taylors Fire Department in North Carolina may have started a new trend, though, after firefighters requested that they receive text messages on their phones rather than a page when called for. This simple change alone resulted in a savings of $345 a month, or roughly $4000 a year -- a huge benefit in the current economy, particularly for publicly-funded organizations.

As we all look for more ways to save money, the increasing usefulness of mobile devices and online connectivity may be our best bet. In fact, there's never been a better time to look into severing your landline phone in favor of Skype, cancelling your cable television for to services like Hulu and Netflix, and selling your house to live in the Matrix. [From WSPA-TV, via Textually]

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Tags: firefighters, text-messaging, texting

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