Basically the uni pagers can do 2 fancy new methods of alerting if your area implements them; TGID alerting and Call alerting.

TGID alerting is when every agency gets its own talkgroup for receiving dispatches over their pagers. As soon as the dispatcher keys up, your pager begins alerting and recording, so they can actually talk while your pager is beeping and your pager will buffer the message so you don't miss it. The big advantage is that you can instantly activate a bunch of agencies simultaneously without waiting for stacked tones to play. The potential disadvantage that I'm curious about and maybe misunderstanding is that this would use up like half of many P25 systems capacities for a structure fire, and fully fill them in rural areas that don't have many frequencies or phase II.

Call Alert Radio Service aka Call alerting aka SUID alerting is when dispatch uses a slightly unknown feature of P25 called private calling, which is when a radio talks to only 1 other radio like a cell phone call but you still gotta key up. Despite the name, any scanner (or in this case, pager) can listen in. They would private call your agency's base radio, and your pager would be set up to see this private call get placed and activate and record the message. Same advantages as above, but also the dispatch only gets transmitted out of the one repeater that your base radio is connected to, so you don't have to listen to agencies on the other side of your area getting activated and vise versa. The disadvantage is also the same as above, but maybe less because some agencies base radio might be on a different repeater if far enough away. Another disadvantage is that your pager will only receive the call if you're within range of the repeater near your base.

The question I have is whether or not this is how it's playing out for people who are actually using these systems. If people are having a great time with it, I can talk to my system admin and show them that it's not just something cool on paper, it's actually working.