You might as well be arguing all cell phones are iPhones, because here's a model which is an iPhone. Sure, some are two-way pagers and do transmit, but most aren't.

Loads of pagers are passive, receive-only devices. There's a reason why there's a common distinction between "pager" and "two-way pager".

Looks like they were using Gold AL-A25 / Apollo 929 pagers which are 100% passive.

Funny enough the Apollo pagers website appears to be down.

What if the company itself was a front? That sounds like Mossad's style of planning, much more so than intercepting shipments or something.