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Analog Cell Phone Network Shuts Down Monday
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "AT&T and Verizon will be shutting down their old, analog AMPS networks next Monday, and AT&T will also turn off its old TDMA network, with smaller providers expected to follow thanks to a sunset date set by the FCC. After these old networks are shut down, the networks will be all digital. Of course, if you have one of those old fashioned 'just a phone' cellphones and it happens to be analog, you'd best enjoy the last few days before it becomes useless."
I think that there are still areas that benefit from having analog signal, especially rural area. So isn't there any benefits of keep a least one analog network alive? I'm jut curious.
Digital is not the end-all solution. Notice how your digital broadcasts take longer to change channels--deltas must be accumulated in the compressed stream. Notice how long your cellphone takes to connect. I like binary as much as the next geek, but I think the elegance of the bit can be slightly overrated.
Not that there would be anything interesting in those frequencies now, but it always bothered me in a way that my radio had holes in its coverage.
Poorly maintained, bad coverage, iffy signal, rotten roaming (and occasional charges)
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Honestly, 1-3 times a day there's a story approved from I Don't Believe In Imaginary Property. Thankfully, unlike Beatles Beatles Beatles, he's not using his URL to boost his search engine results but it does beg a question, how does that happen? Or are other submitters just submitting crap lately?
No reasoning behind this, just curious.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
3rd world Grandmas are probably using digital networks. The odd thing is that a lot of 3rd world countries that didn't have phone service at all got digital wireless phone service because it's relatively cheap to build out, while the US (for example) was slower to adopt wireless service because we had landlines.
But analog phones - ugh. I remember the three hours of standby battery life, and 30 minutes of talk time, or having a phone the size of a brick. My first two cell phones were dual-mode or tri-mode; they'd work on analog networks as well as digital, and I remember that if it had to use the analog network, the battery life would drop from a day or two to hours.
Poorly maintained, bad coverage, iffy signal, rotten roaming (and occasional charges), it's ready to go.
You may have a point on most of those issues. But AMPS has FAR more coverage than the digital alternatives.
AMPS was deployed back when the phone companies thought the point of a cellular phone system was to be able to use the phone virtually anywhere. It covers nearly all of the continental US except for some very remote locations.
The digital alternatives were deployed late in the game, installed initially in large population centers and with the rural cells installed or converted largely after the telecom crash, when the tellcos were having trouble getting capital and were cutting costs wherever possible to keep their competitors from eating their lunch. The result is that cells that exist to fill in rural holes but don't generate enough calls to pay for themselves directly didn't get converted - and even some of the more suburban cells didn't get upgraded until the last few months.
If AMPS really goes dark now, much of rural America (at least the part not adjacent to an interstate highway) would have no cell service at all. That would mean that, even if you paid for a digital upgrade for your OnStar it would not work.
AT&T FINALLY converted the cell that covers my retirement home, just a couple months ago. So I just converted my cellphones to GSM. But I do a lot of traveling and vacationing in AMPS-only country - nearby that site and otherwise. In those areas the new handset is just a paperweight, while a car breakdown can be a death sentence if help can't be called. So I'm hanging on to my old AMPS-capable handset in the hope that at least some of the AMPS-only towers will stay alive.
I'm betting on the little carriers to keep theirs going and maybe even buy up some the big carriers are abandoning. But I wouldn't put it past the bean-counters at the big carriers to shut down their own low-traffic AMPS-only or AMPS-TDMA cells rather than spending the bux to convert them. (IMHO if they were really interested in keeping the coverage up they'd have ALREADY converted them (rather than just running ads about what great coverage they have), and their coverage maps show they haven't.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Those 1-3 submissions come from 5-6 submissions per day as you can see in the Firehose. Sometimes, you'll have some I submitted yesterday mixed with those submitted today as you can see right now. I submitted the earlier story about printers yesterday, but this one was submitted this afternoon. Again, you can see all this on the Firehose, which date stamps them when I submit them.
.DOC) files, naming unnamed 'researchers' who discover things, giving you the original story where possible (rather than some sites re-re-re-report of whatever), linking to Wordpress and similar blogs via Coral Cache (and seeding the cache by visiting the site BEFORE I send it to Slashdot). Not to mention whichever other random ideas that come up periodically when someone writes a (+5, Insightful) saying "Why the HELL didn't you do X???" I've had to rewrite more than one headline to fit in the length limits without a damn ? at the end, bite my tongue to avoid hilarious and snarky quips I would like to add as the last line, and find those damn typos that manage to sneak past me even though I spell check my submissions.
Although someone replied to you that I was Zonk's sock puppet, I have no link to any of the Slashdot editors as far as I know. Heck, I'm not even in the top 10 submitters or all that close. As you can see, there are many who have even less of a life than I do (or something) and have hundreds of submissions. New York County Lawyer keeps flirting with the #10 spot, and I think you guys know how much he posts.
As for my motive, well, it's mostly just for fun while I slack off from my work as a sysadmin for a place that makes windows (the glass kind, not the Microsoft kind). Sure, I have an agenda to push, but I'm just some guy who fits entirely too many Slashdot stereotypes, which is why I link to the EFF donate page, or to that "I Wouldn't Steal" page the EU folks made. I should probably link to the US Pirate Party more often, too.
I use an unregistered account for a number of reasons. One is that I'm doing this from work. Another is that anyone who believes as I do is free to share the ID and post stories to Slashdot.
Unlike the others who dump as many submissions as they can, I try to cull what I think are the best stories of the day. I frequently ignore stories that later appear on Slashdot anyhow. An example from today would be how the UK ISPs put out a statement that they're against policing users. The statements are new, but the story isn't. I just covered it yesterday, so I felt it was too much of a rehash and ignored it. When I think there's something new, I try to link to the previous stories and give better coverage.
Also, you may have noticed that I try to be diligent in marking PDF (and
So, that's it in a nutshell. If you don't like me, I'm sorry, but there's not much I can do about that, though I'm open to reasonable suggestions. I have no idea when I'll get too bored or busy to continue. I have no idea if people will ever take up posting in "my" name. But that's who and what I am and I'm always trying to find ways to make better submissions.
In other words, except for the attention-grabbing name, I'm a pretty typical Slashdotter.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
Has nobody mentioned all the legacy devices that will go dark as part of this? It's not just the brick phones, but the first-gen OnStar (etc) systems, cellular backups for burler and fire alarms, even some remote telemetry systems and/or SCADA systems.
Of course, I said "cya" to my old bag-phone 15 years ago just like everybody else, but there's probably lots of these systems that will need to be replaced.
AT&T and Verizon, huh? They probably just want to phase out analog because it is easier to store digital phone calls to sell to the government.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
This also means that some traffic lights will lose connectivity.
The CPDP data protocol, used by many embedded system modems like those in traffic control will also be shut down since it is part of the AMPS network.
Good thing it's Presidents' Day on Monday!
Kriston
"There is one big advantage to an analog phone"
Yes you wont be mugged for your phone!
~Dan
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"