GSM WORLD

A mate of mine has just arrived at his dads in Chicago... he was saying
something about mobile phones being analogue as it would take to long to
upgrade the entire country to digital. Is there any truth in this ? No SMS
or MMS or anything fancy... infact no modern phones, surely this isnt true.

--
Nathan D Higgins

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On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 16:04:37 GMT, Nathan Higgins
wrote:


The US still uses analogue widely. Digital (in its various formats)
has been available for some time and is gaining ground. Unlike in the
EU where analogue had a switch-off date in most Countries, there does
not seem to be a corresponding cut-off for analogue in the US.

As my brother says (Detroit based) - I use the phone to speak with
people. If I am out of coverage that is my bonus. Smigital,
smanalogue, who cares. And I think he is very typical of a member of
the most powerful Country on Earth.

--
Hiram Hackenbacker

So is the UK one of the most advanced countries when it comes to mobile
phone technology ?

--
Nathan D Higgins

Website: http://nathan.link9.net/
Email: nathan[at]link9[dot]net
Hosting: http://www.link9.net
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[dot]NET: nathan[at]link9[dot]net

Forgot the Japs ;o)

--
Nathan D Higgins

Website: http://nathan.link9.net/
Email: nathan[at]link9[dot]net
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Nathan Higgins wrote in message
news:pOzRa.1330$rl3.10892415@news-text.cableinet.net...
true.

Not in Chicago, theres digital there including GSM 1900, so someone with a
tri-band from the UK could roam there.

Nathan Higgins wrote in message
news:wZzRa.1348$Ue3.10784985@news-text.cableinet.net...

Well, yes, along with virtually every other country except the USA.

Nathan Higgins writes

They have a wide variety of digital options; GSM [1,] TDMA and CDMA.
Analogue (AMPS) is still going strong over there and many digital phones
have AMPS functionality as a back-up.

Compare the Nokia 6310i (which has GSM900/1800/1900 functionality) with
the 6340i (which has GSM850/1900, TDMA850/1900 and AMPS800
functionality)

http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/6310i
http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/6340i

[1] But on different frequencies to us; 850MHz & 1900MHz instead of
900Hz & 1800MHz.
--
Dave

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 16:04:37 GMT, Nathan Higgins
wrote:


Its worse than that! We just hold tin cans to our ears (without the
string of course!) and just shout.

In reality the situation is that first generation cellular/mobile
systems were introduced in the early 80s (around 83 IIRC) and this
system was the AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service) analogue service.
This service of course was not secure at all and at one time there was
a lot of cloning of ESNs so someone could just run a scanner and
capture ESNs from a freeway/motorway overpass.

Digital systems were introduced in the mid-nineties. The first
digital system was the TDMA (IS-136) system. A little while after
that the CDMA (IS-95) system was introduced. Also around the same
time a GSM system was introduced (first system was a Sprint system in
DC and later became VoiceStream and later T-Mobile), but the larger
players went with TDMA and CDMA systems. At present the largest
players are Verizon (CDMA) and AT&T Wireless (TDMA and overlaying
their system) and cingular (mostly TDMA but now overlaying GSM with
some native GSM coverage on the west coast and on the east coast in
the Carolinas.)

There is no system even the analogue AMPS system that has universal
coverage. The land mass of the US is simply too large to have
complete coverage. Operators arent going to spend lots of money to
cover places where theyre not going to get a return on their money.

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