Is your local Analog cellular network turned off yet?

If your talking about Verizon their network was always overloaded here in LA. My phone was always falling back to analog during prime time, morning/evening commute. I was so glad when Alltel moved Sprint up above VZW in the prl. The VZW network just seems to be overloaded.

If anything, I would think the analog control channel would add to desensitizing the cdma receiver at the tower and now that thats gone cdma should work better.

It seems like att us fading away. Im now getting only 1 bar and its a different control channel. Something has changed.

 

jerro, you talking about 850 or 1900. everyone on verizon 850 noticed it to, evan all digital phones were afected...i realy realy realy need ATT

 

Hi,
At&t bought out CellularOne in this area in West Virginia.
I have a bag phone for my Dad which he needs. They sent me a notice on my statement that it will no longer work as of February 18th, 2008. I checked it Monday, it still works.
Today I talked to a great person at At&t (I wish all customer service people could be like her) and she told me they would be down August 31st, 2008 "No exceptions"!

 

Your talking about the main drawback to CDMA which in the industry is know as Cell Breathing or Cell Shrinkage. The more people that are on a CDMA tower the actual coverage area will shrink because the site will cut back power.

 

it cant because of all the people, its been like this for a little over a week now, 24/7! not many people use the phones at night, right, so why is this signal dergration constantly happening, at work, down in albany, i could get full strengh analog on my microtac, and full strengh on my a-310. now, the brick is useless, for now, and the a-310 gets 2-3 bars i might get 4 if im on the highway. im not sure what the rx is because i dont know how to get into service mode on a samsung

 

I assume you mean 7.5 miles. I have picked up a nextel signal from 15 miles away with my boost phone. When i am using boost loopt, the screen will display a map of the cell site location. I think thats a pretty good range considering that i dont live on a mountain top.

 

just curious, how hard would it be to convert a cdma or gsm signal to work on an analog reciever? i know some of you guys are saying JUST GET A NEW PHONE FOR CHRIST SAKES, but onstar systems arent easy to replace and there are no 3watt phones curently in cdma, not evan the motorola m-800. just curious, it be a fun little project to waste a few hundrend bucks on.

 

I dont remember if it was the FCC or not but back in the TDMA and Cdma ONE days there was a big push to limit cell phone power from 3 down to 1/2 watt. All of this is controlled by the network, more than likely all of your analog phones were only running 1/2 watt transmit.

The additional power for TX will not help how much signal (bars) your phone recieves. The extra power was so that the tower could hear the mobile phone better.

The bag phones tend to get better signal due to the recieve characterisic of the analog single, better reciever and the use of external antennas.

Your better off getting a different CDMA or GSM phone that have better a better reciever.

 

Is this now a religious forum too? This type of language had nothing to do with the topic. It is very offensive to many.

 

Hi,
At&t just bought out CellularOne in my area in West Virginia. I have a bag phone for my Dad which he really needs to have. They told me there would be no service as of February 18th, 2008. I checked it on Monday and it still worked.

I talked to a customer service person at At&t yesterday(really great customer service) and she told me I should be able to use the bag phone till August 31st, 2008. After that, nothing!
They are giving us a little more time because of the switch.

 

With cdma all the users must be hitting the tower with pretty much exactly the same signal level. If someone was putting out 3 watts cdma the tower would disable the phone or shut down. You would block the tower from hearing any other users. The tower sends power commands to the handset something like 600 times per second.

Making an amp out of a 3 watt phone is totally unpractical because a cellular amp has to be bi-directional and the electronics/filters are not there in a 3 watt phone.

 

hmm, i could knock out other phones if the tower doent give me power commands! thats scary. well i still need to find a use for all these microtacs, uh, boat anchor?

 

The best way to meet your local FCC rep is to boost a digital signal....
Trust me you do want to do this unless you have lots of cash to burn to pay your fine.

 

By the way, have you tried a phone that was made in this century? ie post 2007, evdo chipset??????????????
no right to complain with old as ____ electronics designed to last less than 24 months.

 

A lot of the Alltel Lucent Auotplexes & 2M's are being turned off in NV. They're just keeping enough on that are sharing w/ GSM.
Many sites are duplexed to the antennas through the AMPS/TDMA/GSM.
I'm hoping to get involved w/ the removal of the equipment later this year. Cha-Ching :browani:

Curt
Nevada Microwave & Tower

 

i know there is no altel os us cellular around here, but im still getting a signal of some sort. in testmode on an old microtac, comand 45 see how strong the signal is. before febuary, i got a signal strengh of 32, now im getting 12. when the phone is under normal operation, it gets no service. very interesting, wonder i hooked up and amp...

 

I just picked up USCC's analog on SID 309 atop Crowders Mountain in the Gastonia / Charlotte, NC area.

I had a 16-minute successful, clear call (Rx Power was -104)
while looking at the Charlotte Skyline, the Rock Hill, SC area, and the Werstern NC mountains..

The USCC analog tower was at least 60 miles away, north of the Charlotte area, near Wilkesboro, NC.
USCC does not cover the Charlotte area at all.

Crowders Mountain rises about 800 feet above average terrain,
the call dropped as I got closer to the bottom of the small mountain.

 

50 miles! dang! did u get digital to?

 

yep i noticed this with some of my friends VZW phones. when we goto ATL or a big city, VZW suffers from it bigtime. it definetly seems CDMA is alot better in rural, far out areas, or areas of lower usage/per tower.

i havent ever really had that problem with my GSM phones but maybe one or 2 times, but ive noticed the weather plays a factor as well, wether its hot or cold, rainy or clear.

 

Nope not on SID 309.

It was pretty hard to maintain any digital call at the elevation I was at due to pilot pollution.

Since Verion removed analog, it was easier phone my phone to see USCC's analog
(which would be on the same band as Verizon, the 800 MHz A-Carrier).

All I had to do was set the phone to NAM2, and analog only.
I programmed NAM2 on my phone to only search for non-Alltel signals.

SID 309 is in the NW NC area, and continues into Western VA.
The minimum distance to the nearest USCC analog tower was 50-60 miles,
but the tower I was using could've been 80-100 miles away!

 

It also depends on the system. Many large cities do very well with a well built CDMA system.

 

If the user has a yagi digital is good for well over 40miles. I dont know what these people are talking about. and the fcc is not requiring any conversion, but they do state no coverage can be lost...but interesting

 

CDMA does very well in cities as long as it is build well and has the capacity available to it.

Verizon has been adding the capacity to sites for EVDO but may have neglected to add more for voice.

Where did they get that 15 mile crap from. GSM and CDMA can do 30-40 just with the handset.

With a Repeater and a yagi you could extend that as the tower would believe the mobile is actually closer.

 

The AMPS service was running in the city until early March. I was still able to make calls up until about the 25th, then they just got the busy signal. I think the towers finally went dead the first week of march.

 

that sucks, well, i still plan to use my microtac, evan without AMPS running, any guesses how?

 

The Alltel AMPS is still going in Alabama and Georgia. I picked up the AMPS on SID 302 in Atlanta, which is about 30 miles fron the nearest Alltel site in Newnan. However, the reading was at -114 dBm and I was not able to connect.

 

I had one of those DynaTAC 6000 carphones built into the center console of my car... the beast had a fax modem too! You could imagine the dissapointment when that thing stopped picking up a signal and my faxing-while-driving capabilities were gone!