Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 14 Nov 2006 15:26:46 +0000 John Navas wrote:
>
>> You don't get AMPS with Cingular, but you probably wouldn't get it for
>> long with Verizon either, as the FCC mandate will soon expire. In other
>> words, it's not a good longer-term criteria.
>>
> In a world where people change handsets on a annual basis, and wireless
> contracts are one or two years, I'm not sure one NEEDS "long term
> criteria" to select a carrier.
>
> And, franlky, I'm not sure your implied "Verizon's coverage is better
> now, but might be downgraded to Cingular's level in a few years when AMPS
> is phased out" is exactly the cloth that sales brochures are cut from!
> ;-)

What John doesn't understand is that the FCC is not mandating that AMPS
be shut down, it's merely _permitting_ it to be shut down.

One indicator of AMPS coverage in the Santa Cruz mountains are the
roadside call boxes. While there is a program in place to convert the
AMPS call boxes to CDMA, this would require a lot more towers, so it may
be more economical, in the rural areas, to keep them as AMPS for now.
It's in the urban areas where the carriers are chomping at the bit to
turn off AMPS, because it's so inefficient in terms of spectral efficiency.

In other areas, including parts of the Sierra Nevada, AMPS is the only
coverage provided by the smaller carriers along long stretches of state
highways. These carriers have little incentive, and no money, to convert
these portions of their network to digital.

John has been claiming that AMPS will degrade Verizon's coverage to the
same level of Cingular's coverage for a couple of years now. In the long
term he may be right, but it's more likely that a lot of AMPS will
remain on, by choice, until there is something available to replace it.

Personally I think that the government should fund construction of
towers for rural coverage, and offer carriers the option to lease space
on the towers. No carrier is willing, on its own, to make the tremendous
investment to get ubiquitous digital coverage in rural areas.