OT: RE: [aprssig] D-710 at FCC test site

[Drew Baxter]

At 04:42 AM 8/7/2007, Stephen H. Smith wrote:
>In more populated areas, carriers will complete the phase out of 
>analog systems in 2009, when the FCC drops the "must support" mandate.

The must support mandate has bounced around a little, but it seems 
your date of 2009 may be incorrect.  I do think all analog cellular 
services will be pretty much dead by 2009, however.  I highly doubt 
they'll take away this receiver cellular blocking rule nonsense after 
that, which is unfortunate.

"In 2002, the FCC decided to no longer require A and B carriers to 
support AMPS service as of 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_18>February 18, 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008>2008. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPS#The_future_of_AMPS

I believe that means the 'Must Support" mandate ends Feb 18th 2008, 
not 2009.  These carriers will strip the AMPS hardware off the towers 
in record time to use the rest of their spectrum and probably to 
shift their digital racks up (if applicable).  This problem will be 
dead and over with by mid/late 2008.

AT&T (and others) have already said expect analog to go away starting 
at that February date.  Onstar was the leading user of analog and 
they've already sounded their own death whistle for the analog 
customers.  They won't even be waiting until equipment gets removed 
by the sounds of it, they'll just throw away the analog customers in 
mid-late February.

>However, phones sold by the smaller carriers in regional markets do 
>often still have an analog mode.

A few years ago this was true.  However, because of requirements as 
of the end of 2005 for Cellular E911, most of those phones would 
likely be out of compliance (several of my CDMA/Analog phones from my 
2003-2005 former US Cellular days definitely are).  Existing 
customers can use them, but they cannot be re-activated or replaced 
with non-compliant hardware if they break.

In our land of rural carriers, they converted to digital back in the 
early part of this decade (TDMA) and then switched standards yet 
again (one to CDMA, one to GSM).  Even those small carriers like 
LongLines Wireless (Dakotas), Pioneer Cellular (Canton OK) have 
evolved as digital carriers in some form or another.  They had a lot 
of time and incentive to do that, since they could benefit directly 
from higher revenue/site, extensive roaming revenue, and rural 
telecom grants/government funds.  In most cases, the first objective 
was to overlay the existing network and then evolve new coverage areas.

--Droo, K1XVM