DTC wrote:
> DTC wrote:
>> Am I going to have to look for my prized "Notes on the Network" and scan
>> the pages that say that?
>>
>> You have heard of that book, right?
>
> Hint...it was a baby blue one and a half inch thick book with AT&T on
> the cover.
>
> Considered by hackers twenty plus years ago to be a very valuable resource.

Are you talking about the Blue Book, aka as the Bell System Technical
Journal from Bell Labs? It was where the MF signaling tones were first
disclosed, which led to all the phreaking with the Blue Boxes. An
Esquire article on phreaking revealed this little secret, and Oui
magazine also had them.

Ramparts (now Mother Jones), had an article on building a Black Box,
which was very simple, it was just a resistor, a capacitor, and a
pushbutton switch. It let you receive long distance calls at no cost to
the caller because it made it seem as if the called party never picked up.

Good article at
"http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/the_merry_pranksters_of_microcomputing.php"
with a great picture of Jobs and Wozniak.

DTC wrote:
> John Navas wrote:
>> We'll just have to agree to disagree.
>
> Translation: "I can't Google for any citations to back up my statement"

LOL. It goes get amusing to see people, not just Navas, base their
entire knowledge of a subject on what little information they are able
to Google. When confronted with the facts, they back down with the
"agree to disagree" schtick.

Don Udel (ETC) wrote:

> BellSouth and AT&T for two. Of course those may be "tiny locals" in your
> world.

GTE used to do it as well. I presume that now that Verizon has the GTE
locals that they do the same thing.

I remember when I worked for GTE, one of the employees, very dedicated
apparently, came in with his vacation pictures. He had driven across the
U.S. and Canada in his RV, and had taken pictures of the outdoor mounted
GTE Lenkurt transmission equipment along the route. I worked for the
division that made digital switches, transmission equipment and digital
radios. It was quite an operation in San Carlos, we even made our own
transformers, inductors, and capacitors. Alas, with deregulation we lost
our captive GTE operating company customers, and that was the end of that.

DTC wrote:

> Am I going to have to look for my prized "Notes on the Network" and scan
> the pages that say that?
>
> You have heard of that book, right?

Delivering telephone directories is his concept of "working in the
industry."

My first job out of college was working in for an operating company
(GTE). My first assignment was debugging a timing problem in Strowger
switches that was causing pay phones in Orange County to refund coins,
rather than collect them, after a completed call. Unfortunately, there
was no solution, other than to wait for the few remaining Strowger
switches to be replaced (this was in the 1980's).

Scott wrote:

> Anything to back that up, like a quote or press release? Of course not-
> you're making it up.

Standard Navas procedure.

In any case, urban AMPS will likely be shut down as Dennis stated, with
RIP (retire in place) since no carrier is going to waste resources
rolling a truck out to every tower to disable a service that at worst is
not being used, and at best is providing some roaming revenue.

In rural areas the situation is different.

"But experts say that even after the FCC law expires in 2008, not all
wireless providers will drop AMPS coverage in rural areas just because
they can. Most likely, they will have a solid business case for keeping
AMPS service in rural areas.

In general, our expectation is that in urban areas, AMPS will be turned
off, says Bob Schoenfield, senior vice president of business development
for Aeris.net. In rural areas and highways, the smaller regional
carriers will continue to carry AMPS for another few years (beyond
2008). There are economical reasons to do that."

This is from "http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=51944"

John Navas <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
\
> AMPS almost certainly will go off very rapidly after sunset --
> carriers are eager to phase out the costly AMPS coverage and redeploy
> the spectrum into profitable digital coverage, as evidenced by both
> their actions and their words.
>

Anything to back that up, like a quote or press release? Of course not-
you're making it up.

DTC wrote:
> Todd Allcock wrote:
>> AMPS equipment will be like the 5-1/4" floppy drives sitting in stacks of
>> older computers in businesses nationwide. No one uses them, they
>> aren't hurting anyone, and we're certainly not going to pay anyone to
>> remove them unless they're already servicing the equipment for a more
>> important reason anyway... ;-)
>
> In telephone company lingo, its called R.I.P. - Retire In Place.

The 5¼" drives are only a problem when someone that has never seen one
before thinks that it's a slot-loading CD-ROM drive.

At 06 Mar 2007 19:28:04 +0000 John Navas wrote:

> The carrier simply can't afford to do that due to negative backlash from
> users. If the AMPS network is to be left up, then it has to be fully
> maintained, a process that becomes more costly as it ages, components
> become more difficult and expensive to get, and trained personnel become
> less available.

Only if the carrier commits to allowing AMPS-only customers. I suspect
the vast majority of even very rural customers have been converted to
digital or digital/analog nits long ago. A roamer who is delighted to
find he has service in East Undershirt, IA isn't doing to notice or
complain that service wasn't available in West Cupcake, 30 miles back
down the road, even if both towers were part of the same network.


> As AMPS revenues go down, and the opportunity for digital revenues goes
> up, the case for shutting down and migrating the AMPS spectrum becomes
> ever more compelling. Spectrum is an expensive and finite resource.

In San Fran, yes. On a tower along I-70 in rural Kansas that processes
80 calls at peak times, spectrum isn't an isue- maximizing how many
different types of technology can use their service, is.

Look at Alltel- they're a CDMA carrier that left GSM capacity on their
rural midwestern networks just to service roamers. If spectrum was that
tight, they'd change everything to CDMA to better service their own
customers. Fortunately for me (who has roamed on Alltel quite a bit, in
both GSM with T-Mo, and Beyond Wireless in AMPS) they have capacity to
spare for CDMA, GSM, AMPS, and probably even a channel or two dedicated
to relaying smoke signals... ;-)

> >Sure, removing any traces of AMPS in urban/suburban areas MIGHT make
> >sense for increasing capacity (but even then, not much- most
> >urban/suburban installations are down to one or two channels of AMPS
> >anyway- digital can get what, 3 or 4 calls per channel instead of one?
>
> Eight with GSM. Roughly the same with CDMA. The difference is almost
> an order of magnitude. Huge.

Huge, IF a tower is running 100% analog. Switching the last two channels
of AMPS to digital is a net gain of 14 calls using your numbers.


> I disagree -- both carriers and major users (e.g. AlarmNet, OnStar) have
> already announced plans to rapidly phase out AMPS.

Officially, for their customers use, perhaps. My point is that the
actual AMPS capacity itself will likely remain operational (for use by
roamers or 911 calls) until techs are dispatched to those towers for some
other more compelling (and economical) reason, like a repair. Outside of
urban/suburban sprawl, towers are just not running anywhere close to full
capacity, so there is no urgent, (or cost-effective) need to convert a
handful of analog channels to digital to shoehorn in a little more
calling capacity.

I'm not even suggesting that there is a need for AMPS coverage beyond the
sunset date- I'm just suggesting that the inertia and economy of wireless
companies will see to it that change happens slowly.

Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 06 Mar 2007 16:36:42 +0000 John Navas wrote:
>
>> AMPS almost certainly will go off very rapidly after sunset -- carriers
>> are eager to phase out the costly AMPS coverage and redeploy the
>> spectrum into profitable digital coverage, as evidenced by both their
>> actions and their words.
>
>
> I sill take issue with the concept of "costly AMPS coverage." Taking low-
> usage rural towers in consideration for the moment, how is leaving
> working AMPS equipment in place to rot more "costly" than replacing it
> with additional unneeded digital capacity?

For rural carriers, the loss of AMPS coverage will be costly because of
roaming revenue. In several industries, including trucking, AMPS is
still widely used.

In urban areas the carriers will likely remove the little remaining AMPS
capacity when their crews are at a cell site for some other reason.
There is very little AMPS capacity left at each site, and replacing it
with digital or just removing it, isn't going to affect capacity very
much at all.

Cingular has an incentive to turn off AMPS as after TDMA is shut down
the only users using AMPS will be subscribers from CDMA carriers. No
sense improving the network coverage of your competitors. So I'm sure
that I'll lose that nice AMPS coverage out in the Everglades where
Cingular has both the A and B side 800 MHz networks. Maybe Cingular will
install Extended Range GSM, LOL.

Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 06 Mar 2007 08:30:23 -0800 SMS wrote:
>
>> There is still a great deal of AMPS coverage in the greater Bay Area,
>> and it will remain on even after the FCC sunset date until digital
>> coverage replaces it, though unfortunately there is no way that digital
>> will cover the vast open areas that AMPS currently covers.
>
> Why do you think that? I understand that the distance limitation of GSM
> makes overlay a bit of a challenge, but why would CDMA overlay be
> difficult? Even in the rural midwest, where flat terrain and low usage
> are ideal for AMPS, I've found very few areas with AMPS-only service,
> although I've USED AMPS due to technology incompatiblities (i.e. roaming
> on Verizon or Alltel AMPS with a TDMA phone, etc.) but I believe we've
> reached a point where a dual-band 800/1900 CDMA phone has 99% of the
> coverage of a tri-mode, (certainly in POPs if not in actual geography.)

Yes it's the "actual geography" that's the issue. I doubt if there are
any non-rural AMPS towers that don't have some sort of digital. But just
in the past three months I've been in several areas of North America
where there is no GSM or CDMA coverage, just AMPS coverage. One AMPS
network I used was a Cingular AMPS network in Florida. One was a Telus
AMPS network in Canada. One was Golden State Cellular in California.

When I go around the Santa Cruz mountains and East Bay hills I can often
get AMPS but no CDMA or GSM. Sometimes this is away from the road, but
often it's on the backroads in remote areas.

At 06 Mar 2007 08:30:23 -0800 SMS wrote:

> There is still a great deal of AMPS coverage in the greater Bay Area,
> and it will remain on even after the FCC sunset date until digital
> coverage replaces it, though unfortunately there is no way that digital
> will cover the vast open areas that AMPS currently covers.

Why do you think that? I understand that the distance limitation of GSM
makes overlay a bit of a challenge, but why would CDMA overlay be
difficult? Even in the rural midwest, where flat terrain and low usage
are ideal for AMPS, I've found very few areas with AMPS-only service,
although I've USED AMPS due to technology incompatiblities (i.e. roaming
on Verizon or Alltel AMPS with a TDMA phone, etc.) but I believe we've
reached a point where a dual-band 800/1900 CDMA phone has 99% of the
coverage of a tri-mode, (certainly in POPs if not in actual geography.)

It's not like all of these rural carriers with AMPS service are still
selling Nokia 100s and Motorola MicroTACs to their customers. They've
all migrated to digital and overlaid substantially portions of their
networks. Their AMPS coverage is for roamers and their older "bagphone"
users.

At 06 Mar 2007 16:36:42 +0000 John Navas wrote:

> AMPS almost certainly will go off very rapidly after sunset -- carriers
> are eager to phase out the costly AMPS coverage and redeploy the
> spectrum into profitable digital coverage, as evidenced by both their
> actions and their words.


I sill take issue with the concept of "costly AMPS coverage." Taking low-
usage rural towers in consideration for the moment, how is leaving
working AMPS equipment in place to rot more "costly" than replacing it
with additional unneeded digital capacity?

Sure, removing any traces of AMPS in urban/suburban areas MIGHT make
sense for increasing capacity (but even then, not much- most
urban/suburban installations are down to one or two channels of AMPS
anyway- digital can get what, 3 or 4 calls per channel instead of one?
So shutting off the last two AMPS channels adds a 6 call capacity? "Wow!
Let's pay the techs time and half and double-shift them all to rip all
of this obsolete stuff out- it's killing us!")

Realistically, rural AMPS equipment will likely be phased out as it dies
of natural causes and not before. There is no real cost benefit to
rolling out a fleet of trucks and technicians to tear down the AMPS
network just because the Feds say you're allowed to.

AMPS equipment will be like the 5-1/4" floppy drives sitting in stacks of
older computers in businesses nationwide. No one uses them, they
aren't hurting anyone, and we're certainly not going to pay anyone to
remove them unless they're already servicing the equipment for a more
important reason anyway... ;-)

jeremy wrote:

> Can one still get new AMPS service? It's been a long time since I dumped my
> bag phone.

You can't get AMPS-only service from Verizon. It's still available from
some rural carriers, especially up in Alaska.

"SMS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> There is still a great deal of AMPS coverage in the greater Bay Area, and
> it will remain on even after the FCC sunset date until digital coverage
> replaces it, though unfortunately there is no way that digital will cover
> the vast open areas that AMPS currently covers.

Can one still get new AMPS service? It's been a long time since I dumped my
bag phone.

Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 06 Mar 2007 00:40:45 +0000 John Navas wrote:
>> On Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:25:27 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
>> wrote in <[email protected]>:
>
>> Not true, as I proved in my previous posting on this myth of yours using
>> Verizon's own coverage data.
>
> "Proved?" That takes the huge leap of faith that the Verizon maps are
> accurate. Regardless of the accuracy, they also lack the detail level of
> Cingular's maps, making direct comparisons between the two carriers
> difficult.
>
> Also, Verizon's site shows different maps for different rate plans .
> There seemed to be plenty of AMPS coverage on the NSR plans, as well as
> some on AC I.

LOL, Navas's definition of "proof" is certainly amusing. Don't forget
his "proof" of extended range GSM.

However you did point out a major issue with Verizon, in that
non-Verizon AMPS coverage is very limited for subscribers that are not
on AC1 or NSR, two plans that new subscribers can't get.

When Verizon accidentally (or accidentally on-purpose) moved me to AC2
for a while, they acknowledged the AMPS advantages of AC1 when they
switched me back. What prompted AC2 with no off-extended-network roaming
was that subscribers were complaining about roaming charges on AC1.
Personally I'm perfectly happy to pay roaming charges when the
alternative is no coverage other than 911 coverage.

There is still a great deal of AMPS coverage in the greater Bay Area,
and it will remain on even after the FCC sunset date until digital
coverage replaces it, though unfortunately there is no way that digital
will cover the vast open areas that AMPS currently covers.