At 14 Nov 2006 09:15:23 -0800 SMS wrote:

> 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.

John understands it just fine. Cingular will shut off analog the morning
the FCC allows it, because they get to kill two legacy technologies with
one stone. Verizon has far less of an incentive to squash analog because
any of their current customer base (with a dual-mode phone) can use it.
Only a _very_ small pc of Cingular customers (that haven't been bullied
into switching to GSM or leaving Cingular altogether!) can utilize
Cingular's legacy analog service.

> 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.


Agreed- if a rural tower is not utilizing anything close to it's
capacity, there's no incentive to shut of the "bandwith wasting" analog
channels
> 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.
Unless there's roaming revenue to be had- arguably there's not much
reason to leave them analog only if "nobody" has a phone that can use them.
Adding GSM would make sense, since that would open them up to T-Mo and
Cingular roaming, whereas Verizon and Sprint customers with dual-mode
handsets can already use them as is...
>
> 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.

Agreed- why would Verizon reduce coverage in low-usage rural areas, or
spend money updating the system when the leaving the status quo costs
nothing?

> 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.

Agreed- it would be a reasonable use of Universal Service Fund fees
collected from cellular customers.



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