Analog Cell Phone Network Shuts Down Monday 205
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "AT&T and Verizon will be shutting down their old, analog AMPS networks next Monday, and AT&T will also turn off its old TDMA network, with smaller providers expected to follow thanks to a sunset date set by the FCC. After these old networks are shut down, the networks will be all digital. Of course, if you have one of those old fashioned 'just a phone' cellphones and it happens to be analog, you'd best enjoy the last few days before it becomes useless."
Careful with the cheering (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Careful with the cheering (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about the "forbidden" bands? (Score:5, Insightful)
The frequency ban will stay in effect. It even affects us ham operators, unless we buy receivers from out of the country.
Re:Analog has its place (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Careful with the cheering (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully the death of analog will inspire the carriers to finally put digital towers up in rural areas so everyone can enjoy the benefits of digital (rather than merely enjoying the benefits of not being able to call or be called!)
Re:What about the "forbidden" bands? (Score:1, Insightful)
AMPS has FAR more coverage than GSM. (Score:5, Insightful)
You may have a point on most of those issues. But AMPS has FAR more coverage than the digital alternatives.
AMPS was deployed back when the phone companies thought the point of a cellular phone system was to be able to use the phone virtually anywhere. It covers nearly all of the continental US except for some very remote locations.
The digital alternatives were deployed late in the game, installed initially in large population centers and with the rural cells installed or converted largely after the telecom crash, when the tellcos were having trouble getting capital and were cutting costs wherever possible to keep their competitors from eating their lunch. The result is that cells that exist to fill in rural holes but don't generate enough calls to pay for themselves directly didn't get converted - and even some of the more suburban cells didn't get upgraded until the last few months.
If AMPS really goes dark now, much of rural America (at least the part not adjacent to an interstate highway) would have no cell service at all. That would mean that, even if you paid for a digital upgrade for your OnStar it would not work.
AT&T FINALLY converted the cell that covers my retirement home, just a couple months ago. So I just converted my cellphones to GSM. But I do a lot of traveling and vacationing in AMPS-only country - nearby that site and otherwise. In those areas the new handset is just a paperweight, while a car breakdown can be a death sentence if help can't be called. So I'm hanging on to my old AMPS-capable handset in the hope that at least some of the AMPS-only towers will stay alive.
I'm betting on the little carriers to keep theirs going and maybe even buy up some the big carriers are abandoning. But I wouldn't put it past the bean-counters at the big carriers to shut down their own low-traffic AMPS-only or AMPS-TDMA cells rather than spending the bux to convert them. (IMHO if they were really interested in keeping the coverage up they'd have ALREADY converted them (rather than just running ads about what great coverage they have), and their coverage maps show they haven't.)
Legacy embedded devices? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, I said "cya" to my old bag-phone 15 years ago just like everybody else, but there's probably lots of these systems that will need to be replaced.
Re:In Canada? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Analog has its place (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:AMPS has FAR more coverage than GSM. (Score:3, Insightful)
AMPS or not, I'd keep a CB radio in the car too.
Re:Analog has its place (Score:2, Insightful)
no T-mobile for those of us in a third a Wisconsin.
I doubt this will affect most AMPS-only sites (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole purpose of this deactivation is so that the cell phone companies can make MORE money, not less! One person using AMPS in a metropolitan area ties up several digital lines. But until monday, none of those AMPS towers could be turned off (per this FCC mandate)!
Thus, I suspect that the only AMPS towers going offline come Monday are those that were costing them money (the ones in areas that already have digital coverage). Shutting down towers in AMPS-only areas cuts off paying customers, and erodes a nearly ubiquitous and cost-effective last-mile coverage tool.
As a result, those who live in the City -> roam in a Rural area won't be affected (as long as you have a phone with both radios). The ones who will be affected MOST are those who live in Rural -> roam to the City. If their rural AMPS phones don't support both AMPS & the current digital standards, they will not get any reception in that city area.
Disclaimer: IANACPCS (I Am Not A Cell Phone Company Spokesperson)
Re:Analog has its place (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Analog has its place (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Analog has its place (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Analog has its place (Score:2, Insightful)
Can you hear me now? You could hear me then... (Score:2, Insightful)
I was in the cell phone industry in the U.S. in the late 1980s. The systems were analog, and most phones were installed in vehicles and were relatively expensive. The cheapest phones were several hundred dollars and went up to a few grand for the smallest handheld phones. I also recall that roaming rates were as high as $.90 per minute in certain cities. For obvious economic reasons, most people did not have cellular phones.
At the beginning of the TDMA era, I was asked to beta-test the new-fangled digital phones by giving them away to our best customers. My staff installed many of them for our customers...who would turn down such a gift when even the brochure purported 'CD quality'? It wasn't long though before the angry calls came in: hands down, they hated them; most demanding that I reinstall their old equipment. 'It sounds like I'm in a tunnel; it's very echoy.' 'The call quality isn't clear.' 'It sounds like the caller has hung up on me.' Sound familiar? Well I told the customers what my boss told me to say 'they're testing them now, upgrades will come and tuning will occur'.
Time passed... Today, I don't see that digital phones have gotten any better, even 20 years later. For starters, the switch to digital was, in part (if not mostly), to fit more people on the same # of frequency channels. For initial TDMA, three digital calls could be crammed onto one analog voice channel (we even watched it as it occurred on our monitoring spectrum analyzers). That extra capacitiy means more money for the cellular carrier, of course. Now the downside, as you bandwidth banditos already know, is that there has to be a tradeoff; and I'm telling you that the tradeoff was in voice/call quality. The quarter-second processing delay during conversations make you feel like you're talking to a news correspondent in the Mideast. And the sampling rate is so poor, that voices are mere metallic shadows of their original composition. Ever try to listen to someone playing music for you over a cell phone? If not, try it, you'll see what I'm talking about.
So why am I bringing all of this up now? It dawned on me once as to why people just accept such crappy call quality today: they don't know any better. If people bought their first cell phone 15 years ago or more recently, then they probably did not use an analog phone for years so as to compare it to its digital counterparts. Further, if someone HAD an analog phone 20 years ago, a comparison of today's cellular tower coverage/build-out to that of decades ago is also inaccurate, be the phone analog or digital. Heck, I wouldn't know any better either if I hadn't "been there" during the transitional phase, with access to all kinds of these (expensive) phones, etc.
I guess that's why I bring this up now, the ignorance of this is about to be made permanent, with the carriers cashing in all the while. My mom just gave up her bag(!) phone which I got for her decades ago. On its last active day its calls were still indistinguishable from landline calls. Maybe once in a while there would be some static, but the calls would continue through it. It's a shame that the analog systems will not.
As I am still connected the cellular industry, I must post anonymously.
Say what you will... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Justification for shutdown (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all about how many users they can fit into the channels they are licensed.
CDMA is the undisputed ruler of bandwidth but call audio quality suffers in congested cells, though at least CDMA users are almost guaranteed the ability to complete a call even if you cannot hear the called party clearly.
GSM is always good quality at the expense of the bandwidth used per user.
GSM errs on the side of user call quality.
CDMA errs on the side of user call completion rate.
TDMA offers none of this (neither does AMPS for that matter).
Re:Traffic lights will also lose connectivity (Score:2, Insightful)
cdpd had great bandwidth for its time, and solid 14.4k on a cdpd capable handset [such as the mitsubishi t250]. unfortunately, att pocketnet service has been phased out many years ago...
Re:I submit a lot, that's how. (Score:1, Insightful)