Vodafone to shut down pager services

Vodafone is shutting down its UK pager business after the competition watchdog stalled the sale of the dwindling division that relied on old technology popular in the 1980s.

According to the telecoms group, it was dropping plans to sell the business to Capita's PageOne, and would instead close it after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced plans to launch an in-depth investigation into the deal.

''Due to the expense involved with a prolonged investigation, Vodafone will not pursue the transaction and has made the decision to close down this business, which is based on ageing, standalone technology no longer supported by network vendors,'' a company spokesperson said.

 ''We will do our utmost to minimise the impact on the 1,000 or so customers still using the service.''

In the 1990s, pagers had come to be associated with status and wealth, but their use rapidly declined in the late 1990s as mobile phones gained popularity and text messaging became a quick and casual way to communicate. Demand for pagers had since, continued to fall with the rise of smartphones and tablets.

However, thanks to their reliability some people still favoured pagers, especially in rural areas.

There will be no effect on jobs, but Vodaone's 1,000 pager subscribers will need to look for another provider.

A Vodafone spokesman said, "We are disappointed with the decision by the CMA to continue its investigation into the transfer of Vodafone's paging customers to Capita's PageOne business.

"This seems to be a surprising decision considering that this market has been contracting for some time and no other country in Europe has more than one wide-area paging network.''

According to the CMA, its initial investigation, launched after the acquisition was first announced in February, found that the deal would result in a "substantial lessening of competition" given that there were only two companies providing the wide-ranging paging services across the UK.