By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Aug 4, 2012
NEW YORK (AP) - AT&T Inc. said Friday that the shutdown of its second-generation, or "2G," wireless network will be complete by the end of 2016, a process that will force customers with older phones to upgrade to "3G" or "4G" handsets.
In a regulatory filing, the Dallas-based company said 12 percent of its customers on contract-based plans, or 8.4 million people, have 2G phones.
AT&T said it's shutting down the older network, which doesn't support high data speeds, city by city. It said earlier this year that the process has started in New York City, and it's trying to move the city's 2G subscribers to new phones.
More details, please: what is "2G", and how is it different than 3G or G? Why would AT&T want to retire an architecture that represents billions in sunk costs which are probably not yet recovered?
BTW, does this mean that AMPS is finally going away, that AT&T will phase out TDMA, or that some other branch of the "voice" cellular tree is to be pruned at the same time?
Bill, who has a day off and access to a library and who has been rediscovering books and the postal service and quiet.
P.S. We had to lasso an escaped llama. Everyone has been calling it the "Llama Drama". I can't make this stuff up.
[ Moderator note:
The one-l lama, He's a priest. The two-l llama, He's a beast. And I will bet A silk pajama There isn't any Three-l lllama.* -- Ogden Nash
Thee was much Nashing of teeth, when Ogden Nash ppended the footnote: *The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.
If you had a first generation iphone, you know what 2g is like. It's not a technology like a protocol, it's the hardware and backhaul that supports it. Where did you get the idea that costs weren't recovered? Considering how popular the iphone was even when it ran on that sucky network, I don't think there's any amortizing to worry about. Nobody wants that service now, even as a backup, because it gives an internet experience that is almost worse than useless.
Eh? Those are both retired technologies and have been for quite some time. I don't think anyone even owns the spectrum to run AMPS/TDMA on analog anymore. Dead like the dodo. *
Something is still not clear here, and I need to provide some contextual background.
Several years ago my best friend, the Senior R&D Testbed Manager, Office of the CTO of Nokia (Palo Alto CA), was at my home for a meeting and he immediately identified the noise emanating from my computer speakers as "GSM interference" [from my RAZR V3] and that led me to begin a long thread here in comp.dcom.telecom.
I still have and use my RAZR V3 solely for telephony which is all I need since I have more computers in my home office than do most small offices and businesses. In other words, I have no need for a smartphone or any texting or mapping or app capabilities at.
The GSM interference was so annoying (and my friend commented it's also a big problem in all the conference rooms at Nokia in Palo Alto) that I was forced to leave my RAZR in the kitchen about 40 feet away.
Oddly, approximately a year and a half ago, a new icon appeared on my RAZR's display and I had to look it up in the manual. The icon is that for GPRS. At the exact same time, all GSM interference ceased and I now can sit my RAZR down on the table along the computers without any problems at all.
There's no information in the RAZR manual about GPRS except identifying its icon (e.g., no documentation how to enable or disable GPRS and/or whether it augments, complements, supplements and/or replaces GSM) and the only more-or-less useful info I found is this Wikipedia page:
which states:
"General packet radio service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data service on the 2G and 3G cellular communication system's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was originally tandardized by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet-switched cellular technologies. It is now maintained by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)."
Given AT&T's EOL announcement for 2G service doesn't mention GPRS and that GPRS is also functional under 3G (which I presume AT&T will retain for the foreseeable future), can I presume I will be able to continue to use my RAZR V3 via GPRS beyond the 2G EOL? The phone is in excellent condition and has served me well since 2004, and given I'm now retired I need to be very aware of how I spend money nowadays.
I would appreciate any insight regarding GPRS continuation on the AT&T network.
Sorry, got two things confused. AMPS (analog cellular) is seperately dead from GSM (which does indeed use TDMA multiplexing). They're still both dead or dying though.
In response to Thad's question - if your phone can do GPRS, you should be fine with the 2G shutdown, since GPRS doesn't use the retiring infrastructure, from what I understand. GSM as a voice protocol still exists, but running over the 3G (and 4G if you find some) networks. That is indeed why the interference went away.
On the other hand, you are probably eligible for a free replacement phone
- most carriers let you replace your handset every 2 years or so, and the batteries on your RAZR are probably getting a bit worn out. *
Thanks! Time Division only has so many voice slots per channel. CSMA is more like CSMA/CD in computer networks. It detect collisions and therefore allows a slightly better capacity than TDMA but with the caveat that you don't get a guaranteed time slot.
Not really. CSMA is spread spectrum, pseudo-randomly splatting each phone's signal across a group of channels. Other phones' signals don't appear as collisions, they appear as noise, but in a well designed system the perceived noise is low enough that each station can recover the signal intended for it.
The whole thing is awfully close to magic. I've gone through the math and I see how it works, but it still makes little intuitive sense.
So what's the bottom line? Assuming all the other cellphone providers follow suit, is my Motorola RAZR V3 going to be unusable junk in 4 years? How about if I only care about voice?
I actually haven't used it much since I upgraded to a Blackberry, but it occasionally has been lent out as a 911-only phone. I won't be that upset if it becomes useless, but it seems a waste for people who don't need or want smartphones, apps, web browsing, etc.
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