I like that it's one step closer to having some nominal level of communication ability without a phone. I would love to have a Pebble style watch allowing me to be fully untethered even if it meant being receive-only most of the time.
I don't know much about the pager protocol, but I think it doesn't require transmit power on the endpoint. I'm imagining a mode where the Pebble goes out of range of the Core, and then goes into passive pager mode maybe with some kind of SMS to pager gateway.
Pagers use special frequencies, and are most often transmitted in the open. If you live somewhere that has a pager service provider, you can likely pick it up using a RTLSDR setup.
I don't know much about the pager protocol, but I think it doesn't require transmit power on the endpoint. I'm imagining a mode where the Pebble goes out of range of the Core, and then goes into passive pager mode maybe with some kind of SMS to pager gateway.