On 2008-05-05, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> AMPS is gone, but no digital coverage was added to replace it (what
> about the FCC mandate that the carriers could turn off AMPS if no loss
> of coverage would result?). I could get one bar of digital outside the
> hostel, but some other Verizon users with handsets with poorer radios
> got no signal at all. AT&T users had no signal at all, but they never
> had coverage before (except in the olden days of TDMA/AMPS).

I suspect you may have answered your own question. Pretty much
all the AMPS-only coverage I've seen in the bay area has been
AT&T AMPS; Verizon seems to have added digital service everywhere
they ever had a tower. As such, AT&T GSM customers never had
coverage they could use in those locations (Verizon ACII customers
also wouldn't have had coverage for that matter), and if AT&T
customers aren't losing coverage when AT&T AMPS is switched off
I think that might be sufficient to satisfy the FCC mandate.

What I've never quite understood is why AT&T never got around to
adding GSM to those towers (there was another AMPS-only site in
94020 which seems to be gone too), though the fact that no competing
carrier ever extended service into those places may say something
about the economics of building and maintaining facilities in those
particular locations.

Dennis Ferguson