On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:51:57 -0800, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com>
wrote in <45c81774$0$69008$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:

>When the FCC permits AMPS to be shut down in 2008, it will almost
>certainly immediately be shut down in areas that are covered by digital
>service, because it uses a lot of bandwidth unnecessarily.
>
>However, remote areas, where AMPS is the only service, will almost
>certainly not have AMPS shut down, at least by the rural CDMA/AMPS
>carriers. There are several reasons for this. First, a lot of emergency
> call boxes are in areas with no digital coverage, and these call boxes
> use AMPS. Second, a lot of the AMPS coverage is by smaller carriers in
> rural areas, and AMPS represents roaming revenue. Third, AMPS provides
> the only coverage for locals in a lot of the area covered by these
>carriers. There is no cost savings in turning off AMPS unless there is a
> capacity issue, and the rural carriers don't have capacity issues.

In fact there's considerable cost in maintaining AMPS coverage, which
will probably be turned down in rural areas as well, in part because the
spectrum can be more profitably migrated to high margin digital roaming.
Conversion of emergency call boxes is a non-issue.

>Metro areas with rural areas surrounding them, will suffer when AMPS is
>permitted to be turned off. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area,
>there are a lot of areas outside the urban core, sometimes only a few
>miles from the urban core, where AMPS is the only coverage you're able
>to get.

In fact digital coverage is quite good over most of the Bay Area,
including areas with no AMPS coverage. There are relatively few areas
with AMPS but no digital coverage, and even fewer as digital coverage is
expanded.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>