U (urgency) 0xC " ", Space (blank) 0xD "-", Hyphen (or dash) 0xE ")", Right bracket 0xF "(", Left bracket BCD messages are space padded with trailing 0xC's to fill the codeword. There is no POCSAG specified restriction on message length, but particular pagers of course have a fixed number of characters in their display. Text paging Alphanumeric messages are encoded in 7-bit ASCII characters packed into the 20 bit data area of a message codeword (bits 30-11). Since three seven bit characters are 21 rather than 20 bits and the designers of the standard did not want to waste transmission time, they chose to pack the first 20 bits of an ASCII message into the first code word, the next 20 bits of a message into the next codeword and so forth. What this means that a 7-bit ASCII character of a message that falls on a boundary can and will be split between two code words, and that the alignment of character boundaries in a particular alpha message code word depends on which code word it is of a message. The side benefit of this is a slightly increased error-correcting code reliability for messages that span more than one POCSAG packet. Within a codeword 7-bit characters are packed from left to right (MSB to LSB). The LSB of an ASCII character is sent first (is the MSB in the codeword) as per standard ASCII transmission conventions, so viewed as bits inside a codeword the characters are bit reversed. National implementations Europe In the UK, most pager transmissions are in five bands at 26 MHz (local pagers, mainly hospital systems, POCSAG and voice) 49 MHz 138 MHz 153 to 153.5 MHz 454 MHz The frequency 466.075 MHz was previously used by Hutchison Paging, but the network was shut down in 2000. The frequency is still reserved for paging but is not used. In Germany, well known transmissions are at 173 MHz range (Fire Departments, Rescue) 439.9875 MHz (Amateur-Radio pager-network) 466.075 MHz (nationwide public paging by emessage) 465.970 MHz (-same-, old frequency of the POCSAG-Service Skyper) 448.425 MHz (nationwide Fire Departments, Rescue by emassage (named e*Bos), old frequency of the POCSAG-Service Telmi) Licensed paging is possible in any other VHF/UHF bands. In Spain, nationwide service was provided by Telefónica Mensatel but the network was shut down in 2012. The Swedish pager network marketed as "Minicall" is encoded as POCSAG and