[telecom] Gadgets affected by analog shutdown

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Who Is Affected by Analog Cell Shutdown

The Associated Press AP News

Dec 21, 2007 15:49 EST

Carriers will start shutting down the country's oldest cellular network, for analog devices, in February. How to know if you will be affected:

_ Cell phones. If your phone is less than five years old, or has features like texting, Internet access or a built-in camera, it's not analog. An unknown number of analog handsets are still in use. Carriers say it's less than 1 percent of all U.S. cell phones. But with 250 million cell phones in use, that could still mean a million phones.

In particular, check phones that are kept around as 911-only phones. Such phones, which don't have a phone number and aren't initialized with a carrier, were given out by some donation programs that collected old phones.

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