at&t Wireless and Alltel finally are shutting down their old analog and first-generation cellular (TDMA) networks in February 2008. Verizon Wireless says on its Web site that it will retire its analog network on Feb. 18, 2008, and will not provide analog service after that date.
Almost nobody will notice. The carriers say a million phones out of 250 million in use might be affected. No phone capable of text messaging uses analog technology. No Sprint or T-Mobile phones use analog, either.
Carriers have been telling analog customers about the shutdown and offering them new digital service plans and phones, so it isn't clear that any active users will experience issues. There might be some "phones sitting in drawers" that users keep around for emergency 911 calling, without plans, that could be affected.
But at&t, which had the largest number of analog customers at one time, has been phasing analog out since 2001, and with the high rates of phone replacement, can't still be supporting many users on the older system.
Separately from the analog shutdown, Alltel and AT&T will finish phasing out networks that use a first-generation digital technology known as D-AMPS or TDMA (for Time Division Multiple Access).
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Bye Bye TDMA
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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3 comments:
You are mistaken. None of the carriers are shutting down their TDMA network. TDMA is a digital network, not analog. The network you are referring to being shut down in February is the AMPS analog network.
In fact Verizon and Alltel never had a TDMA network. They have a CDMA network - which is a competing (digital) technology.
Thanks for the comment. See http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/articles-resources/tdma-notification.jsp.
at&t is shutting down both TDMA and the AMPS networks.
Okay. But not all TDMA carriers (namely the regional wireless carriers) are discontinuing TDMA. TDMA is a digital service.
Verizon and Alltel which use CDMA (and never used TDMA) are continuing that service uninterrupted.
Virtually all the carriers will be discontinuing AMPS, which is the analog network dating from the 1980's, in February.
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