[BC] Cell phone activations

[Dave Karr]

At 12:16 PM 10/28/2005, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:


>There was a FCC cutoff date for analog phones of 8/8/2006 but its been
>extended, not all of the analog phones had died yet, the system is after all
>20 years old. The Major carriers quit turning on subscribers on the old
>networks 4 or 5 years ago.
>
>They don't want to activate the old phones, Analog/IS-136 TDMA because they
>are trying to turn off that system. It using 33% of the spectrum and is down
>to less than 10% of total users, almost all of which are low air time usage
>or rural. Your only choice is to switch to digital the issue of finding a
>solution that will work for you. One that sounds decent in operation because
>of codex issues.

In as much as there is truth in spectral efficiency motivations (and who 
can really blame them), the overriding factor here is compliance with 
47CFR20.18 particularly (g)(1)(v) which requires the carriers to have 95% 
of subscriber units (handsets) Phase II compliant by 12/31/05, that is for 
carriers that are relying on 'handset-based location technologies'.

If anyone is aware of a carrier that employs 'network-based' location 
technology that can pinpoint the location of an AMPS phone, please speak 
up.  From what I've seen, none of the carriers were able to come up with 
triangulation or time-of-arrival based techniques that satisfy Phase II 
requirements, and if I remember correctly early on, T-Mobile had gone down 
this path, couldn't make it work, and ended up getting fined by the FCC for 
non-compliance as a result.

Carriers are asking for extensions to various deadlines, for a variety of 
reasons, See: 
<http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-79A1.pdf> as one 
example, yet the FCC continues to push for compliance even for carriers 
that may only have one or two sites and a handful of customers that 
indicate that meeting the deadline requirements will bankrupt them... as is 
mentioned in the 05-79 order.

With that in mind, and the 95% deadline approaching and carriers still not 
at that level of subscriber penetration/compliance, how is it any surprise 
that the carriers would refuse to increase the number of subscriber units 
within their systems that are going to negatively impact the FCC mandated 
goal?  Now if you can find a carrier that has already met the 95% 
requirement, then perhaps you stand a chance of getting a new AMPS 
activation out of them.

I suggest that the public outcry over the death of AMPS will be a dull roar 
(if that) when compared to the outcry when the masse' NTSC vidiot boxes are 
no longer able to directly receive terrestrial broadcasts.


--Dave