You can still buy them (from Liz Lemon's ex-boyfriend if no one else), but I doubt too many people use them anymore. Maybe some professions where you just need to be summoned to come or call in and don't require or desire a voice message, but you can do that with a text message on a cellphone as well.
Staff in hospitals still use pagers. I believe it's because they are passive receiving devices and thus don't interfere with any equipment.
They are also used by people dealing with emergency or disaster situations because in those situations mobile phone networks tend to get overloaded whereas pagers do not suffer from this problem.
Yes. Doctors still use them a lot. But your average teenager? That tech fad came and went faster than you can say "chicken pot pie."
For emergency calls I have a pager, and a blackberry, and a 2-way radio. Yes, it's redundant, but what ya gonna do?
I carried a pager for 14 years when I worked at BMC. 24/7. There was no escape.... Actually, there was. I work at home now and no pager!
I used to work in a "closed area" where you couldn't bring in anything that transmits. When I went to get a pager (a receive-only pager, mind you, which are even more rare), I swear the guy behind the counter gave me the stupidest "WTF?" look. I don't have that restriction now, but if I went back to another closed area, I'm not even sure I could find such a thing anymore.
I'm so glad I don't have a carry a pager any more. Bloody thing was the bane of my life first year after qualifying. I even dreamed it was going off and so woke up.
I'm sure people who do have the insane need to be in contact with other people 24/7 by having a phone screwed to their ass still use them.
It was only three months ago give or take that we turned all of our two way text pagers in for Nextel push-to-talk phones at my place of employment. The reason for the switch was that the pagers were no longer being made so replacements were becoming scarce. I have not seen anyone using a pager for other than work reasons in quite some time.
God, Nextel PTT phones are the second most annoying device ever made by mankind. The first one being Ann Coulter.
I haven't seen a pager on a non-medical/fire/police professional since the late 1990's! Seems a bit obsolescent these days.