Pagers are set to be finally phased out of use in Japan after its only service provider announced recently that it would terminate the service next September.

Tokyo Telemessage, the country's last remaining pager service provider, said it now has only about 1,500 users, including people working in hospitals who favor the device because it doesn't emit electromagnetic waves.

Beeper services started in Japan in 1968, and reached its peak of popularity in the mid-1990s with about 10.61 million users. As the popularity of mobile phone gradually rises, one provider after another ended its pager service in the years that followed.

Japan is not the only nation where pagers are still in use. According to BBC, one-tenth of the remaining pagers in the world are estimated to be used by Britain's National Health Service for emergency purposes, whose annual cost of 8.4 million U.S. dollars has been criticized as a waste of money.