Analog Cellular Shutdown To Hit Built-In Devices

Nick Kilkenny sends us an AP article on the imminent shutdown of the US analog cellular network, now 24 years old. The network is scheduled to go dark on Feb. 18, 2008; some users, such as OnStar, are stopping analog service at the end of this year. Here's a list of devices and industries that will be affected by the shutdown. (Cellular telephony won't be affected much.) "The shutdown date has been known years in advance, but some industries appear to have a had a problem updating their technologies and informing their customers in advance... General Motors Corp., which owns OnStar, started modifying its cars after the 2002 decision by the Federal Communications Commission to let the network die, but some cars made as late as 2005 can't use digital networks for OnStar, nor can they be upgraded. For some cars made in the intervening years, GM provides digital upgrades for $15." Update: 12/22 22:25 GMT by KD : Replaced two registration-required links.

Comments

Re:Goodbuy car and brick phones

[sortius_nod]

We had a massive incident here in Australia where a plane came down in the bush, noone for 100's of kms. The pilot had both analog and digital mobiles. The unfortunate thing was that he had no digital coverage and the closest analog tower had been shut down. Pilot & passangers all died from exposure and it came out that if the analog tower was active they could have made a call to get help.

The digital tower had actually taken the spot of the analog tower. This gave us another few years of analog and a dodgy attempt to get the same range as analog out of digital (Telstra call it Next-G, but it's just 3.5g with a massive boosting system). The solution definately doesn't work, not when techs in the bush call me saying "I used to be able to call anyone from within the server room here, now I can't... *dropout* et *dropout*... *click*".

Re:Why

[nacturation]

or QUILTER. OK, you win that one. QUILTER stands for Quilter Uses Iterative Language To Employ Recursion.

Re:OnStar

[tacocat]

Here we go again ladies and ladies. Strap on your aluminum boxers and hide in the basement. Mega-Corp is coming to get you again!!!

I'm so tired of hearing about all this ignorant spew about how evil all this technology is. So I'll just recap what's already been posted a hundred times about OnStar.

• It won't make you sterile.
• It won't put banner ads on the top of your windshield while you are driving.
• It can unlock your car if you want to.
• It won't call the mothership and tell Big Brother were you are.
• It will call OnStar as a 911 Emergency Service call if you activate your airbag via tree or some other appropriate activity (and have OnStar service).
• Once it is deactivated by Onstar (or you can rip it out of the car if you want) it cannot do any of the following:
  1. Call the mothership and tell Big Brother where you are. (Trick question -- it didn't before)
  2. unlock your doors.
  3. Cause you to go sterile -- that's your own problem. (Again, a trick question)
  4. It will let you quietly die in a serious accident because it doesn't work anymore.
  5. In fact, if you know anything about cellular telephony -- it will not register or accept pages after deactivation.

Despite all of these facts being repeated over and over I know that only 0.0001% of the aluminum boxer fan club will take any heed of this information. So kudo's to the one person who thinks.

Now, even though I work at GM/OnStar I should probably state that my opinions are statements are not necessarily a reflection of the opinions of GM/Onstar and as such GM/OnStar can not be held liable for anything I say, real or imagined, factual or fantasy.

So -- I can call you a jerk and get away with it. But I'm only going to call you a jerk after to slam me for working at GM/OnStar and that I'm obviously lying to keep the capitalistic pig corporations afloat despite all the evil things they do to babies and little furry animals. I only say this because I know someone will do just that in the next ten minutes. It happens every time.

Unfortunately, those who run around screaming such falsehoods do more damage for the cause of privacy and personal empowerment than they know -- for they appear as jerks and makes everyone else who says anything about privacy that much easier to dismiss.