All-digital cellphone - is this good? Or OK? [telecom]

Here's my guess.

Many years ago a room full of lawyers sat around a conference table and hammered out that warning. Even though there's no technical reason to keep the warning, the same room full of lawyers are too worried about litigation even to consider removing it. That or it just hasn't dawned on anyone to remove it.

John

The FCC made analog service optional as of February 2008. While most carriers were in a hurry to convert to digital, they weren't required to shut analog down. Some less dense areas would have no coverage if they were digital only as the signal coverage is much smaller, so it wouldn't surprise me if there were still carriers with a few analog towers.

First, he is right. There is no analog service in most if not all places in the US and Canada, so dual mode (analog/digital) phones will no longer be able to switch to analog when there is no digital service.

Second, the statement is technically correct in that when there is no digital service, the phone won't work. It also would not work if there was analog service, but since no digital service now means no service period, then the statement still holds.

They should just state the obvious: "When there is no service the phone will not work...blah blah blah" and just leave out the digital part.

Now there are multi-frequency digital phones that will use different frequencies, which could be useful while roaming outside of a Verizon area, as the carriers don't all share the same channels. If you want maximum coverage, it may still be worthwhile to shop for one of these.

What do satellite phones cost? Is there any scenario where having one sat phone would be cost-comparible to having a separate cell phone for every region/country you do business in?

Bill Horne Moderator

AMPS service hasn't been around for several years now in the US, although it's still available in a couple other countries. I think there is active AMPS in Nigeria, for instance.

These labels are added by lawyers and not engineers.

I think there is still need for a dual-mode phone, but there is no infrastructure to support it and there has not been for several years.

--scott

I'm curious as to why my 7-year old Samsung SCH-a650 still occasionally flashes the "A" for analog and begins to get warm (typical of analog transmitting) when I have spotty reception. I'm in the Bay Area, usually around West Oakland when this happens. It doesn't flip over often, but it did so no more than 3 weeks ago for a brief time.

Maybe something is running analog on that band; not Cellular, maybe alarm systems.

No, I connected to a cell site somewhere. Now, there is a tendency to skip out over water and when in West Oakland my phone has been able to hit places like Sausalito (according to my bill), so I'm not sure where it is, but I definitely have had an analog connection once in a while -- rarely, but as I said it was there about 3 weeks ago. I quickly hung up because it didn't sound very good and I know from the past that the analog mode ran down the battery quickly.

Satellite phone charges and hardware costs vary quite a lot between the different network operators. Globalstar is probably at the lower end, but they do not offer true global coverage (roughly, there is no coverage in southern Asia, Africa and across the large oceans). The cheapest phones start at around US$ 400 and call charges are in the range 1-2$/min depending on your tariff plan, location and where you're calling to. In several countries, this is well below what you would pay for international roaming or even international calls through a local land-based cellular operator.

Tor

It's looking for an AMPS cell. And.... it isn't finding one...

--scott