Long live analog

I have an all DIGITAL VZW Phone and it works where Analog works; Without the ANALOG STATIC/CLONING of course.

 

I didn't know VZW had coverage in Australia!

 

The advantage of analog in remote/rural areas is not purly power related. Digital cellular has a hard 15 mile (IIRC) radius of coverage from the tower to handset, due to timing requirements. Increasing power of a digital handset may improve reliability but will not increase range beyond this timing related limit.

In sparsly populated areas, the reduced number of towers is a serious economic advantage. In such areas, the increased bandwidth of digital would be underutilized, so does not offset the capital cost of the additional cell sites.

Many users in such areas are not served (or poorly served) by copper lines, and are willing to pay premium rates for ANY service at all, thus it is unlikely that providers will abandon this market even beyond the 2007 (or is it '08?) FCC mandate.

Tri-mode capability is, and will continue to be useful for those who are at risk of getting stuck in truly remote areas. The more remote the area (hence, the more serious the plight), the more likely that only analog service (if any)will be available. It is a shame that many handset makers are opting to serve only the 90% of users that will not utilize or appreciate this.

 

Let's remember kevbo that 15 miles is not set in stone. I have seen the documentation of trials, and seen the implementation of sites, CDMA especially, that cover well beyond 15 miles. I am not trying to flame, just correct something that should be pointed out. The technology exists to extend the coverage of a cell (notice I did not say ANYTHING about increasing mobile output power) by unlocking formerly hard coded algorithms in the software of the base stations. As far as the timing issue goes, it is well documented that with the use of "service rings extending from the cell", you could have a CDMA cell (as has already been done in an Australia Nortel demonstration) that can cover 30 or 40, even 50 miles on the ground. The timing issues are addressed by shifting the timing of each of the rings. Again, not trying to flame or admonish, just correct information based upon real world experience. You'll find some pretty good network guys hiding in here......

 

SNSE,

thanks for the info, your post was very informative

 

Glad to share......

 

Well, as long as Analog stays around, then it won't occur to Sprint to change their phone firmware to have a digital roam setting!

 

Well TKR to be fair Sprint is moving in the right direction now for roaming. You got to give them credit for that.

 

The only reason to stay on analog... The Motorola Ultra Classic, aka The Brick Phone, aka The Zach Morris Special, etc...

 

It's funny, when those came out, I didn't know anybody that had a cell phone (except for law enforcement, government, business types, richies or on tv, my dad had a bag phone at work (US Postal Inspector) though, the big ones in a suticase, like on Lethal Weapon, the first one), not even that many had pagers (this was the 80's, I started Junior High in 1984, High School in 1986, grad class of 1990), now I see kids with phones everywhere, times have sure changed! Those bricks by the way are virtually indestructible, I think they could go through a 10 megaton blast and still work lol

 

Yeah, we had phones when I was in school... $0.25 my mom gave me to call from a pay phone if I was going to be late or something. Kids are sort of spoiled these days. If/when I have children I don't know if I will get them a wireless phone until they have a job and even then, maybe just have them use it for emergencies and take it away from them if they give the number out to anyone. I've had too many parents call me about huge bills when their 14, 15, 16, etc. year olds used way, way too many minutes. Either that or go prepaid.

 

Yep, us too, it was the payphones or the phones in the office. I remember when they were 10 cents though, and I remember the day vividly when I found out they had gone up to 25 cents, it was when I was at a church function (sometime in the early 80's I think) and I called my mom to come get me, and I had to borrow another 15 cents, the phone let me know in nice terms "ya dingbat, phone calls cost 25 cents now" lol

 

My wife and I are still on Verizon analog. My wife hates the heavy phones but at $35/month for 300 (I think) shared minutes, I don't mind the extra weight.

Steve O

 

But still, it's analog

 

Hey, just to hit on Kevbo's post above (and analog as well), you're right on the button about areas who may be dependent on cellular for any phone at all. Perfect example is Bucks Lake (east of Quincy, CA). Its an summer cabin tract area up in Plumas National fores that I get up to a couple of times a year. You can only get in either by snowshoe or snowmobile in the winter - its a pretty remote area. Anyhow, most of the cabins on the west side don't even have copper phone service. They've been trying for 13 years to get SBC to run lines and the homeowners are probably going to have to foot a good piece of the bill. Compunding the whole problem is forest regulations and maintanance. A lot of trees go down in the winter and often lose power for days or weeks at a time. Its a perfect opportunity for a cell company to grab some fixed customers. Throw up a tower on a mountaintop, microwave the signal over the hills, bury the power and bam - you're set. There's been some talk, but not much action as of yet that I'm aware of. I think Edge Wireless has a license up there. ILUVSOCAL or Dad - might be worth looking into.

Onto the analog bit - I remember growing up in detroit and my dad having one of the first car phones (he worked for Michigan Bell at the time). It had a regular handset, and switches you had to flip to transfer to another tower. I remember him telling me that he was getting signal from an Ann Arbor tower - which was a good 20 car miles away. Im sure it was less 'as the crow flies'.

Ahh. Relics of the past....

 

And lets not forget that analog connectivity is just alot simpler. Once I was trying to call a friend while on the road. Each time in digital mode I would connect and get nothing but the LOUD echo of my own voice, while they heard nothing 3 or 4 times. I switched to analog and everying went normally. It also seems digital calls are slower to connect in general as well. The only reason I don't run analog 24/7 is battery life.
Sound quality: Analog doesnt cut the low and high tones as much as digital
Static: minor flutters are barely audible. At the point where you have to strain to hear the other person through static, a digital call would have blanked out or dropped long ago.

 

you know what i remember?

when i was about 5 (1982) i remember my father had a pager. but this pager had no screen, it actually had a speaker. so what happened was that in order to get a message, an operator (most of the time a woman, if not always) would actually say the message through the speaker on his pager!! everyone in the room would hear it!! this was sort of like what you can do with push to talk phones today...

2nd thing:

around the same time, no one had digital phones, so my father's friend could actually tune his car phone to hear goverment officials talking on their own analog phones, and he would actually say some vulgar comments to them!!! crazy...

now, this was in costa rica, where i was born. pertaining to the pagers, were there any of them here in the US? and about the cell phone conversations: the level of security is not as tight as the one here on the US, even today, but there are no analog phones over there so this is not possible anymore...

hehehehe, just some funny stories for your enjoyment

 

i really dont know what it was. all i know is that, for example, my mother would call the operator and tell them to send a message to my father. she would say something like "i want you home early after watching that soccer game with your buddies", then hang up. right away the operator would send the message to my dad, and her voice would be heard on the actual pager, just like if you did it with a PTT phone... it was pretty weird and embarrasing, just like PTT is in my opinion.

but i dont really know what the technology was... was there something like that here in the USA?

 

The "can u hear me now Guy" from what I read is really testing the GSM Network and is no Longer Testing their ANALOG network.

 

CDMA network.

 

I still use an analog phone. I live in a rural area and digital service isn't available everywhere here. Analog is however. I never have problems with call quality or signal strength!

 

I just noticed this, so sorry for the last posting on my part.

I had one of these pagers. After getting out of grad school in 1990, I started my first job as an engineer for a company doing R&D for the manufacturing of computer chips. Every person in the department was given one of these "audio" pagers. You called a internal company number (5 digits) and at the beep, speak your message and hang up. A few seconds later, the person's pager would beep and he would hear the message. I agree that it was not very good for personal messages - don't want to be in an important meeting with the boss and hear your wife reminding you to pick up a gallon of milk on the way back from work :biggrin:

We still have pagers, but it is the digital kind now. We are not allowed to have cell phones in our lab because the RF from the cell phones messes up some of the electronics on our lab equipment. 2-way pagers are not allowed either for the same reason.

 

>>Since old analog phones have a much higher wattage output than new digital phones

Not quite true anymore when it comes to 850 Mhz GSM....the new GSM850 digital phones now output 2 watts directly from the phone. These are new PC4-class cellphones, and they make a big improvement.

GSM850 is becoming widespread in Canada (since the huge Rogers deployment began in November 2003) and has made a mammoth difference in reception quality.

 

Great, in an already noisy wireless world, they now want to make sure that there's plenty of interference to go around........even with frequency hopping, that's still going to make an already noisy RF world even more fun.....Joy..............