Re: Analog cell phone equipment

There are still a fair number of cellular networks in the U.S., principally in rural areas, with a large number of analog users. Some folks won't give up their analog phones until they are pried out of their hands. Those networks will undoubtedly continue providing analog service (perhaps even analog-only!) for quite some time.

Bill Horne, the temporary moderator asked:

An analog phone, sans analog network, will become unusable and hence commercially valueless unless it has historical value (such as the very earliest portable handsets). The electronics inside have as much use as those inside a 27 MHz cordless phone, a HomeRF wireless LAN adapter, or a late Betamax VCR. To the recycling center with them, not the landfill!

Rogers Wireless in Canada shut down their AMPS (and 'TDMA' D-AMPS) networks at the end of May, transitioning users to their GSM network in stead. I didn't take the time to compare their AMPS and GSM coverage maps before they were taken down, so I don't know how much coverage was lost, if any.

Bell Canada's Bell Mobility service has not yet indicated any plans to decommission their AMPS service (unlike Rogers they implemented PCS/CDMA) but a quick review of their coverage maps suggests that only a few fringe areas and a couple of strips along highways away from any major city is currently receiving only analog service. I suspect that the number of people whose home area is affected will be very small, but it might result in many miles of highway losing the coverage to call for help.

I know someone who bought a used luxury car that has a cellular phone built-in; its age suggests to me that it must be analog. The folks at Rogers said they couldn't help and I advised the owner that Bell Mobility might be able to hook them up but not to bother since that service will probably end soon. At least they won't be throwing that phone into the trash, but it'll be wasting space inside the car...

I do have another question to add, though: U.S. carriers are required to maintain their AMPS service until February of next year and everything I've read suggests that most major carriers are eager to discontinue it. But, as far as I know, there is no mandated end to AMPS service, i.e., if someone wanted to continue it past February, they may be able to. If I recall correctly, AMPS occupies the spectrum formerly allocated to the highest-numbered UHF channels, right? Given that the FCC and the U.S. congress are pushing television broadcasters to discontinue analog over-the-air transmission in order to free up spectrum for reuse, wouldn't it make sense for a similar priority to exist for the 800 MHz range that AMPS uses?

Picking at nits: Wasn't AMPS (advanced mobile phone system) actually the concept of using cell sites with switch tracking signal strength and doing automatic handoffs based on signal strength? Analog (space division) was used because of available technology at the time.

So, aren't the digital cellular systems of today still really AMPS?

John L wrote:

Those phones are being pried out of their hands, and the customers are NOT happy about it.

I live in an area where wireline phones are impossible to get in some places, and folks buy bag phones for their living room, with a yagi on their roof pointed across the river to the nearest cell tower. The analogue cell system is being shut down in this area and people are up in arms over it.

The problem is that the analogue frequencies are going to be reused for digital cell systems, and therefore the transceiver stuff can't easily be used for anything else unless it is retuned, which is nontrivial.

--scott

The cell carriers are prying pretty hard. I have AT&T here in upstate NY, my sister has Verizon in western Vermont, and both said a while ago that they're turning off everything except GSM and CDMA respectively. AT&T nudged us along by adding a $5/mo nuisance fee to all non-GSM accounts a year ago.

It's not clear why the carriers would want to continue to provide AMPS service rather than forcing the customers to get new phones. You can put at least four TDMA or CDMA subchannels in each AMPS channel, after all, and you can't upsell AMPS customers with all the digital goodies.

R's, John

Yes, but those are the same frequencies they use for CDMA and GSM. Every AMPS channel a carrier turns down frees up that channel to be added to their CDMA or GSM service. Since the digital services handle many times more simultaneous users and offer lots of additional billable goodies, from SMS to pictures to mobile web, the incentive to go all digital is strong.

PCS is a separate band which never had AMPS service, and isn't affected here.

Regards, John Levine, snipped-for-privacy@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be,