Is your local Analog cellular network turned off yet?

I live by the LAX airport in LA and I still got a weak att analog signal at home. Its not like it was, this one is very crunchy sounding. Almost cant hear over the static, but I can still place calls on it. No where else in the city, only in the area of the airport. Funkacydal.......

 

so there is still hope

 

Not much... I haven't picked up a analog signal in a long time except when up on some mountain tops.

 

sure, crush my hopes and dreams

 

I charged up a MicroTac battery, and checked with both a TDMA Motorola M-77a and a CDMA SC-725. I found no analog in Memphis on cellular A-band (Verizon) or B-band (AT&T).at my home.

COtech

 

Well the ALLTEL analog network here (Northwest LA) seems to be much worse quality wise. I turned on my old Kyocera with analog to check it out.

There is still a full analog signal, but where previously a call was pretty clear on ALLTEL's analog, now all I get when I try to place an analog call is a whole lot of buzzing/static and I can only faintly hear the American Roaming Network message through all the static and buzzing.

I guess they're ramping it down for the March 31 shut off date here?

 

Many people are reporting no analog. Some are detecting far off weak signal. In the North perhaps some are left on in Canada and In the South some in Mexico. With the local analog going down, many radios (aka phones) are able to hear farther away sites.

As the air clears of the powerful analog transmissions, at least for a time the rf pollution should decline making for a better environment for the digital transmissions on the same and adjacent frequencies. Anyone agree or disagree?

 

USCC is all analog only on SID 1643 in the Pee Dee region of SC.
I was just down there earlier today.
There is absolutely no digital USCC in their entire SC coverage area.

The only digital CDMA available is Alltel, from north of Darlington to Chesterfield.
No Sprint, No Verizon, and USCC is all analog-only on SID 1643,
so it would be stupid to shut it down, there is no digital in place at all in the entire SID region.

 

by law the must have digital in the same area as analog before they shut analog of, but the fcc hasn't been inforcing that like they should.

 

Alltel's analog signal here in Gaffney & Upstate South Carolina is still on and working like always (SID 114 & 116),
even though they said it would be shut off by yesterday 3-31.

Also, US Cellular's analog is also still on and working in Western North Carolina.
Just yesterday evening, I went up to Thicketty Mountain here in Gaffney,
where I had a 10 minute successful, clear call on analog USCC from a tower near Forest City, NC, 15 miles away.

 

Verizon analog is still on in some areas in Vermont too.

 

Really? I thought Verizon was off nationwide within a few days of the original sunset date...

 

Wirelessly posted (Quint's Pearl: BlackBerry8130/4.3.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I wonder how long will Alltel to turn their analog towers in these parts. Yesterday was the announced shut down day but it is still up and running.

 

I dialed *611 again today and it said welcome to verizon wireless, I even checked my voicemail using analog. For some reason analog doesn't work here first thing in the morning, but in the middle of the day i can connect with no problem.

 

I was just visiting some relatives in the Greenville, SC area (Mauldin).
I put my phone on analog only, and I found 2 different analog signals,
one was Alltel (SID 116 on AMPS B).

The other was an unknown dead analog signal (SID 117 on AMPS A)
I just looked on Mountain Wireless and it says 117 belongs to AT&T TDMA for Rochester, NY.

This is unusual, 117 was never there, if Verizon was still up, it would be SID 139.
Verizon owns the 800 mhz carrier A for this area, but they shutdown analog (on SID 139).

SID 117 was only in the Mauldin, SC area, but it's a dead signal, I couldn't even connect to it.

Anyone know why it seems analog SIDs are being used in multiple locations.
or any other info (owner) / or why this signal is all of a sudden there?

 

Alltel is going to remove the Lucent equipment and leave the antennas & lines in place, in most cases here in NV. These will be used for future expansion or spares.

Curt
Nevada Microwave & Tower

 

Right. As I mentioned somewhere in the forums, that as sites are shut down the air clears so to speak and far away stations (sites) become readable because of the lack of clutter. Make sense?

 

The term you are looking for is "noise floor".

Its the same reason CDMA starts having problems when more people are using it. As more transmitters are on the "noise" increases. As the Noise climbs the weaker the signal becomes as the phone is not able to weed its call out of the background noise of other calls.
Analog at the towers was always on and transmitting even if a call was not in progress. Digital technologies like TDMA and GSM burst transmit so they are not as effected becasue at any given time the noise floor is lower then CDMA.


I'm "in the Business" I was installing phones when half duplex hands free was a $250 option.

Its been a wild ride seeing the end of IMTS, the rise and fall of AMPS, The rapid install of GSM for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and now all of it turned off.


"TDMA Sunset"

AMPS and TDMA digital was turning off about 6am 3/5/08 and completely turned off in the SE US about 10am for AT&T. The towers were still powered till 3/13 but the control channels were idle not allowing phones to register.

Yesterday I sent a semi full of TDMA and AMPS spares off and its "final" destination the shredder where the base metals will be recovered. AT'T's cell site power bill dropped by 3/4. Making a call in a cell site was difficult at best with the shear volume of all the cooling fans on the Lucent gear without a Bones head set...now its no big deal that all the Lucent cooling fans are off.

Strange. :loony:

 

error deleted

 

Grimreaper;wrote The term you are looking for is "noise floor". Actually I wasn't looking, I was trying to break it down.

See my signature below as to IMTS. By the way I liked IMTS. You explanation is very informative. Thanks

 

20 years ago I was dragging IMTS and piggy backs out of trunks of cars like there was no tomorrow. It was a pretty neat system if you didn't mind anybody listening to your call like it was a old party line. LOL . Always good for a hoot with the kid to get them to touch the antenna while it was in a call.

I had one customer that had a 450SL Benz. that had a IMTS unit in it piggy backed to 2 Way his construction company used.. I replaced it with a Motorola 3000 with full duplex hands free,. So it had two of those 45lb transmitters in it. Basically he had about enough room for a small carry on in the trunk.

I charged him $180 labor and he paid $1300 for the phone. The rear of that car came up a full 3 inches when I dragged those two beasts out. He could not belive the size of the transmitter when I got done. :lmao:

 

$1300? What a deal I paid 4100 for my 450 Pulsar 2 installed. And at least 200 to move it car to car. The only thing I have left is the cable. That is some heavy duty wire that went to the battery. And right, it was a party line and that was fun too. On the pulsars I had the " line grabber option" so I would not have to keep pressing the switch hook to get a green light. That Motorola trunk unit lasted years unlike todays radios.

 

That 450 Pulsar system was top notch stuff. Oddly enough, up until about 6 months ago I had a complete 450 Pulsar base station in my garage, fully functional. Best part about it was I got it for free! Now it lives on, slightly modified, as an amateur radio repeater.

 

I have a photo from the Motorola Archives of the Pulsar yet I don't know how to paste it here.Any advise other than the link above? Thanks

 

Thanks to Jay, for posting my photo (credit to Motorola who emailed it to me). The phone head on the left ( with a dial) was my first in 1977 and the head unit in the center ( was pulse dial) I converted to in 1981. It was black not the gray shown. It had a external speaker and a line grabber circuit to hunt for a free channel. And of course it was analog.

 

They had them, the question was just how fast they could transmit.

By the way. Is it possible to cut and paste photos directly to posts? I tried, no luck.