There is some confusion about analog and 911. All the carriers warned their
customers that 911 won't work once analog is turned off. It appears only
AT&T and Verizon have made the switchoff. Alltel has kept theirs on even
past their own deadline (3/31/08). Some, including Golden State have no
plans to turn analog off yet.
"Gordon Burditt" <gordonb.vmz8i@burditt.org> wrote in message
news:13srsl2pocbpi6d@corp.supernews.com...
>>> How do you determine which coverage you have in an area, and who it
>>> comes from?
>>
>>You have to read the SID numbers off the phone's hidden data pages.
>>Sometimes they'll let you see them buried into the PHONE STATUS pages.
Bill Radio wrote:
> There is some confusion about analog and 911. All the carriers warned their
> customers that 911 won't work once analog is turned off. It appears only
> AT&T and Verizon have made the switchoff. Alltel has kept theirs on even
> past their own deadline (3/31/08). Some, including Golden State have no
> plans to turn analog off yet.
Yeah, I used Golden States' AMPS up in Yosemite in March. What sucks is
that a lot of areas in the Bay Area that used to have AMPS coverage, now
have no coverage at all.
Todd Allcock wrote:
>
>
> "Gordon Burditt" <gordonb.vmz8i@burditt.org> wrote in message
> news:13srsl2pocbpi6d@corp.supernews.com...
>
>> I can, however, go to Settings | Network | Available Networks, and
>> see a list: AT&T and T-Mobile. AT&T is given as 310-410 and T-Mobile
>> is 310-260. What are these numbers? Cell tower numbers? (I'm in
>> Fort Worth).
>
> The numbers are the GSM Network operator codes. They identify the
> carrier. The first 3 digits are the country code (the USA is 310 and
> 311) and the last three are the system: 260 is T-Mobile's current code
> (one of the dozen or more they and their predecessors have used through
> the years,) 410 is Cingular/AT&T, 380 was the old AT&T Wireless, 590 is
> Alltel's GSM roaming service, etc.
>
> There's a pretty good up-to-date list here:
> http://www.howardforums.com/archive/topic/657335-1.html
Cool. Interesting that Alltel has some GSM networks.
My V195 on SpeakOut shows "SpeakOut" at 310-410 (AT&T) and "Other" at
310-260 (T-Mobile). Is the network number to name translation in the SIM
card?
My other V195 on T-Mobile shows "T-Mobile" at 310-260, and "Cingular" at
310-410.
What's strange is that the T-Mobile phone works at my house, whereas it
never did with other 850/1900 handsets. Either it's roaming onto AT&T,
or this handset is able to get a T-Mobile signal where other handsets
cannot. The T-Mobile coverage map shows almost no coverage at my house,
though they recently got approval for a new site that would give me good
1900 MHz coverage.
"SMS" <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote in message
news:KS8Qj.3237$26.2380@newssvr23.news.prodigy.net ...
> Cool. Interesting that Alltel has some GSM networks.
I believe they inherited them when they bought Western Wireless. I don't
know if leaving some GSM capacity up was part of an ingenious plan to milk
roaming revenue or just a contractual obligation they inherited with WW's
system.
> My V195 on SpeakOut shows "SpeakOut" at 310-410 (AT&T) and "Other" at
> 310-260 (T-Mobile). Is the network number to name translation in the SIM
> card?
>
> My other V195 on T-Mobile shows "T-Mobile" at 310-260, and "Cingular" at
> 310-410.
This is probably a question for John Navas or Dennis Ferguson, but the way I
understand it is that name translation tables are in the SIM, but can also
be in the phone which can override the SIM if the phone chooses to.
My first T-Mobile phone (back when they were Voicestream) said "Voicestream"
with it's original VS SIM in it, but "T-Mobile" with a newer SIM. Either
SIM reports "T-Mobile" in any of my newer T-Mo phones. I assume the old one
(a Nokia 8290) had no table of it's own, and relied on the SIM to "tell" it
what network it was on, where the newer phones have a table designed to
override any legacy T-Mo name with "T-Mobile."
My favorite confusing naming was last year in California, where my T-Mo
phones reported both GSM networks (AT&T's current "Blue" and Cingular's old
"Orange" they sold to T-Mo) as "Cingular."
My WinMo phone allows me to override any network name with any text string I
want via a registry edit, so I renamed the California nets back then to AT&T
and T-Mobile West.
> What's strange is that the T-Mobile phone works at my house, whereas it
> never did with other 850/1900 handsets. Either it's roaming onto AT&T, or
> this handset is able to get a T-Mobile signal where other handsets cannot.
> The T-Mobile coverage map shows almost no coverage at my house, though
> they recently got approval for a new site that would give me good 1900 MHz
> coverage.
Congratulations- maybe we can lure you back from the dark side one of these
days... ;-) When T-Mo launches "Talk Forever" (currently in beta)
nationwide, you can add an unlimited domestic VoIP line (a UMA VoIP router
that takes a T-Mo SIM) to your T-Mobile cellular account for just $10 extra
per month.
In <bEbQj.49106$oQ4.11509@fe113.usenetserver.com> "Todd Allcock" <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> writes:
>"SMS" <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote in message
>news:KS8Qj.3237$26.2380@newssvr23.news.prodigy.ne t...
>> Cool. Interesting that Alltel has some GSM networks.
>I believe they inherited them when they bought Western Wireless. I don't
>know if leaving some GSM capacity up was part of an ingenious plan to milk
>roaming revenue or just a contractual obligation they inherited with WW's
>system.
Whoaaaaaaa... I thought D.T. bought up Western Wireless.
Was it a split up, with some going to one and the
rest to another?
Oh, and another reason to "leave some GSM capacity up"
is to prevent the FCC, on behalf of a competitor, pulling
a "you didn't use it, now you've lost it" line.
--
__________________________________________________ ___
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
> Congratulations- maybe we can lure you back from the dark side one of
> these days... ;-)
I doubt it. Verizon still has far better coverage in Northern (and
Southern) California than T-Mobile (or AT&T or Sprint), even without
AMPS. I only bought the T-Mobile phones because I needed some newer
900/1800 MHz phones for traveling to Europe and Asia to use with prepaid
SIM cards. The quad-band V195 was a good deal from T-Mobile Prepaid, and
I can have them unlocked inexpensively if I don't want to wait 90 days.
> When T-Mo launches "Talk Forever" (currently in beta)
> nationwide, you can add an unlimited domestic VoIP line (a UMA VoIP
> router that takes a T-Mo SIM) to your T-Mobile cellular account for just
> $10 extra per month.
I never spend $10 per month in long-distance, between my 8 p.m. off-peak
Verizon account, and my OneSuite account. In fact I rarely use up $10 on
OneSuite in six months.
> > When T-Mo launches "Talk Forever" (currently in beta) nationwide,
> > you can add an unlimited domestic VoIP line (a UMA VoIP router
> > that takes a T-Mo SIM) to your T-Mobile cellular account for just
> > $10 extra per month.
>
> I never spend $10 per month in long-distance, between my 8 p.m.
> off-peak Verizon account, and my OneSuite account. In fact I rarely
> use up $10 on OneSuite in six months.
The idea is to replace your landline with it.
My local Qwest number costs me $36/month including taxes and fees for
voice. I've hesitated porting it to VoIP both for reliability reasons and
fear of being able to port it out again. I wouldn't mind porting it to a
cellco, though, and saving $20/month.
At 25 Apr 2008 03:07:25 +0000 danny burstein wrote:
> Whoaaaaaaa... I thought D.T. bought up Western Wireless.
> Was it a split up, with some going to one and the
> rest to another?
IIRC, Voicestream and Western Wireless were run by the same guy. He sold
Voicestream to DT who renamed it T-Mobile, and a few years later sold WW to
Alltel.
> Oh, and another reason to "leave some GSM capacity up"
> is to prevent the FCC, on behalf of a competitor, pulling
> a "you didn't use it, now you've lost it" line.
Alltel is already using the bandwidth for CDMA. But, as a rural carrier,
they have more capacity than they need, and from what I understand, just
leave a few channels of GSM running for roaming use alongside their CDMA
system.
Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 24 Apr 2008 20:34:24 -0700 SMS wrote:
>
>>> When T-Mo launches "Talk Forever" (currently in beta) nationwide,
>>> you can add an unlimited domestic VoIP line (a UMA VoIP router
>>> that takes a T-Mo SIM) to your T-Mobile cellular account for just
>>> $10 extra per month.
>
>> I never spend $10 per month in long-distance, between my 8 p.m.
>> off-peak Verizon account, and my OneSuite account. In fact I rarely
>> use up $10 on OneSuite in six months.
>
>
> The idea is to replace your landline with it.
Yes, if naked DSL was the same price as bundled DSL it would work.
> My local Qwest number costs me $36/month including taxes and fees for
> voice. I've hesitated porting it to VoIP both for reliability reasons and
> fear of being able to port it out again. I wouldn't mind porting it to a
> cellco, though, and saving $20/month.
My local AT&T line is under $17 per month, including taxes and fees.
On 2008-04-25, Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote:
> At 25 Apr 2008 03:07:25 +0000 danny burstein wrote:
>> Oh, and another reason to "leave some GSM capacity up"
>> is to prevent the FCC, on behalf of a competitor, pulling
>> a "you didn't use it, now you've lost it" line.
>
> Alltel is already using the bandwidth for CDMA. But, as a rural carrier,
> they have more capacity than they need, and from what I understand, just
> leave a few channels of GSM running for roaming use alongside their CDMA
> system.
All available evidence I have says there's not a lot of money to be
made providing roaming service these days, however. As far as I can
tell the trend now is to drive intercarrier charges for roaming down
close to nothing and to make your money not from other carriers'
customers' use your network, but rather from your customers' use of
other carrier's networks. That is, the value of roaming agreements isn't
the revenue from other carriers, it is the cheap access to other
carriers' networks that you can sell to your own customers.
What this means is that providing roaming service using a technology
your own customers don't use doesn't usually make sense. You won't
make much money from other carriers' customers, and you won't make any
more money from your own customers since they can't use the other carrier's
network. I'll hence bet that Western Wireless may actually have
had some GSM customers or other contractual commitments that are forcing
Alltel to keep the network up.
Also as far as I can tell (and it isn't what I would have guessed)
running a dual-technology network actually seems to add significant
costs. I know Movistar shut down the CDMA half of the network they
acquired in Mexico (taking pretty much all CDMA coverage along highways
in rural northern Mexico with it), and the amount Telefonica claimed
in their financial reports to have saved by doing this was surprisingly
large. I also know that the difference between the highly profitable
China Mobile and the never profitable China Unicom, two companies which
started out at pretty much the same place, is widely blamed on the additional
costs China Unicom took on to build and maintain their dual-mode
CDMA/GSM network. It seems to cost real money to do that.
analog sunset & 911 access
Linear Mode
