Why Do They Make You Give Up Your Old Phones?

I am in the market for a new cell phone and service plan. Currently, I
am with Cingular and the guy at the store said if I extendeded I would
get new phones and my old ones would no longer work. A similar thing
happened to my son-in-law. Why do they not let you use your old
phones? And what about the phones I see on eBay? How can they be okay
to use?

In <7k1472pi3btmgfpl131fh7epjcr44gogce@4ax.com> Cyrus Afzali <pnsmnyv@lnubb.pbz> writes:

>On 22 May 2006 11:20:05 -0700, jMon54@gmail.com wrote:

>>I am in the market for a new cell phone and service plan. Currently, I
>>am with Cingular and the guy at the store said if I extendeded I would
>>get new phones and my old ones would no longer work. A similar thing
>>happened to my son-in-law. Why do they not let you use your old
>>phones? And what about the phones I see on eBay? How can they be okay
>>to use?

>If you were with a carrier that used a different type of technology
>(e.g. not GSM) then your previous phone wouldn't be of use on
>Cingular.

The other big reason is for location determination (that is,
using GPS or the super-enhanced triaangulation stuff).

Under FCC mandates, umptity percent of a carriers telephones
must be able to give out a (more or less...) location
when calling 911, with the percentage going up as
the years go by.

Hence, the companies want very much to get rid of the
older phones.

(Location stuff is also a long term financial boom
for the telcos. If they know where your phone is,
then they can offer all sorts of other services...)

--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

danny burstein wrote:
> In <7k1472pi3btmgfpl131fh7epjcr44gogce@4ax.com> Cyrus Afzali <pnsmnyv@lnubb.pbz> writes:
> The other big reason is for location determination (that is,
> using GPS or the super-enhanced triaangulation stuff).
>
> Under FCC mandates, umptity percent of a carriers telephones
> must be able to give out a (more or less...) location
> when calling 911, with the percentage going up as the years go by.

The FCC mandate requires that cellular 911 callers be locatable to
within specified tolerances, but doesn't specify the technology. The
CDMA providers like VZW are using "gpsOne" which uses both triangulation
and GPS, which requires assistance from the phone. The GSM providers are
using a location mechanism based solely on triangulation, with no GPS or
anything else in the phone itself. The triangulation technique is less
precise, so their accuracy targets are somewhat less than for the
providers using GPS. Triangulation is problematic in rural areas, where
the cell sites are strung out in a line along major highways. But this
is the situation that really favors GPS (no obstructions to the GPS
satellites).

Somewhere around 22 May 2006 11:20:05 -0700, while reading alt.cellular, I
think I thought I saw this post from jMon54@gmail.com:

>I am in the market for a new cell phone and service plan. Currently, I
>am with Cingular and the guy at the store said if I extendeded I would
>get new phones and my old ones would no longer work. A similar thing
>happened to my son-in-law. Why do they not let you use your old
>phones? And what about the phones I see on eBay? How can they be okay
>to use?
If you are simply extending your existing service plan (Cingular to
Cingular), you can usually use your old phone. But there is no reason to
sign up for a new term unless you want a new phone, or you are switching
from the old AT&T wireless plan to the Cingular plan. You can always change
an existing plan without signing up for any terms.

When you get a new phone for the same service, your old phone can still be
used as a backup, by switching the sim card from one to the other. I still
have some old phones that work fine if I need them.

--
Marty - public.forums (at) gmail (dot) com
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...
well, I have others." - Groucho Marx