Marin Headlands Loss of Coverage due to Loss of AMPS

I was out in Marin Headlands, across the bay from San Francisco this
past weekend. We stayed with my son's scout troop out at the hostel
("http://i31.tinypic.com/i3rihj.jpg"). I used to always get good AMPS
coverage out at the hostel, but there was always very poor CDMA
coverage, and no GSM coverage. The hostel is in a valley with no towers,
though if you climb a hill behind it you can see San Francisco.

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 didn't care that much, but two different parents had restaurants that
they own in the south bay (both pearl tea places) and had to resort
(OMG) to using the single pay phone to contact their managers.

What was strange is that both my wife's and my handsets (V325i) were
fully charged, and completely discharged over the course of a few hours,
even with no coverage. They must have been continually searching for an
AMPS signal.

Anyway, that's my rant. The carriers turned off AMPS, and in a lot of
areas nothing replaced it at all. It wasn't supposed to work this way.
But for AT&T it worked out well, since now they have almost the same
coverage as Verizon in a lot of places, which is none.

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

Dennis Ferguson wrote:

> 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.

I'm pretty sure that the AMPS coverage in the Marin Headlands came from
outside the area, either from San Francisco or Sausalito. Either the
Park Service (and prior to them, the military) wouldn't allow the
carriers to put towers out in the headlands, or the carriers didn't want to.

It's a pretty busy place out there now, with a lot of organizations
taking over the former military buildings, so I think the carriers would
want to cover it. It's certainly not a wilderness area, and there are
lots of structures out there a lot more intrusive than a cellular tower.
We visited the restored Nike missile site which was pretty cool, and
they've brought back some old missiles and have the elevator and the
thing that raises the missiles operational.

SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote in news%uTj.2295$J16.214
@newssvr23.news.prodigy.net:

> The carriers turned off AMPS

I've just replied to another South Carolinian on Alltel, here, too. AMPS
has been shut down on both Verizon and Alltel, now, across South Carolina
where it provided great coverage to the rural areas of the state.

Luckily, I have a 3 watt repeater in my work van with high gain antennas
to boost the toy sellphones up to a better signal level in the
country.....

Goodbye AMPS, we miss you already.....(snif)

OK, the joke's over! Put my IMTS Carphone back under the dash with its
powerful transmitter in the trunk and all will be forgiven....
My IMTS-equipped friends TOLD me Sellular wasn't going to work back when
the first two towers on 800 Mhz were erected and I jumped ship to them.

Dammit, they were right!

On Mon, 05 May 2008 05:03:11 +0000, Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:


>OK, the joke's over! Put my IMTS Carphone back under the dash with its
>powerful transmitter in the trunk and all will be forgiven....
>My IMTS-equipped friends TOLD me Sellular wasn't going to work back when
>the first two towers on 800 Mhz were erected and I jumped ship to them.

But with IMTS, you shared very few channels. You were lucky if you
were able to even make a call.

And of course these calls were all in the clear. I lived a mile from
the local phone company with a huge IMTS tower in the back of the lot.
My scanner had a preset on 152.66 MHz. Hmm...

Diamond Dave <dmine45.NOSPAM@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:f85v145odhkh9ob64ltjtc3b4tnjbistko@4ax.com:

> But with IMTS, you shared very few channels. You were lucky if you
> were able to even make a call.
>
> And of course these calls were all in the clear. I lived a mile from
> the local phone company with a huge IMTS tower in the back of the lot.
> My scanner had a preset on 152.66 MHz. Hmm...
>
>
>

Yep....all true. We had 8 channels, 4 on Bell$outh and 4 on DialPage.
Plenty of channels except during the "Real Estate Primetime"...(c;