On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 08:50:50 -0800, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com>
wrote in <45cb54ef$0$68951$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:

>Don Udel (ETC) wrote:
>
>> Dennis here is an example of people still using AMPS bag phone for rural
>> farming applications. The bag phones have higher power and range than
>> digital handheld units. There are lots of farmers who use this to monitor
>> pivot irrigation systems. Sometimes we are so focused on our own personal
>> situation that we fail to understand that others are still finding use for
>> an older technology that, in this case, works better than the newer.
>
>Good points.
>
>I would also point out, that even though a high-power AMPS bag phone
>would provide better AMPS coverage than a tri-mode CDMA/AMPS phone,
>there are still a great many places where the tri-mode phone provides
>AMPS coverage where there is no digital coverage at all.
>
>I can go about three miles from my house, in a suburban part of Silicon
>Valley, up into the surrounding hills, and have no GSM or CDMA coverage,
>but good AMPS coverage.

There are actually relatively few places in the San Francisco Bay Area
with only AMPS coverage. The number of such places continues to decline
as digital coverage increases, and there are now many places with
digital but no AMPS coverage, including parts of those same hills near
your house.

>In the Sierras, there are a lot of AMPS-only
>coverage areas, even with a tri-mode handset.

There are some AMPS-only places, but only off the major highways, which
now have very good digital coverage.

Regardless, the issue will soon be moot, because AMPS will almost
certainly go away rapidly when the FCC mandate sunsets in about a year.

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