Larry wrote:

> Notice how blacked out Verizon's responses are. What are they hiding,
> the truth again??

The big question is what the major carriers with AMPS are _really_ going
to do, not what they are saying publicly.

Since they're definitely turning off AMPS in urban areas, they can't go
around saying stuff like, "but we'll leave it on in places where we
can't cover the same area with digital."

There's two possibilities:

1) They have no intention of complying with the FCC rules, and will turn
off all of their AMPS service even in areas where it results in loss of
coverage.

2) They will leave the AMPS network running in areas where they cannot
provide equivalent digital coverage, but they won't publicly admit what
they're doing.

In any case, the subject of this thread is definitely incorrect. Some
AMPS will be shut down as soon as legally permissible. In terms of
numbers of subscribers losing urban AMPS coverage, the numbers are
large. In terms of overall area, the loss of AMPS coverage is a
relatively small percentage of the total area now covered.

You can understand why Navas has been lying about this whole thing for
years. As long as AMPS exists, Verizon will continue to enjoy an
enormous advantage over his beloved Cingular/AT&T in terms of coverage.
You can see the results in the latest Consumer Reports survey, where
AT&T fared so poorly.

What surprised me was that at the Verizon store the employees actually
understand what's going on with AMPS. When I was in a store earlier this
month to replace my wife's phone, they were explaining to an older
couple about the trade-offs of getting a digital-only phone versus one
of the two tri-mode phones that they still offer (one was a Samsung and
one was an LG).