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Stephen Sprunk

On 03-Apr-12 11:51, wrote:
When they switched from analog to digital, some people said remote
areas would have problems. People in those areas retained their older
bag or car phones because they were higher powered and needed to work
in remote areas. How that was handled by digital I don't know.

That's why DAMPS (aka TDMA) was designed to be compatible with AMPS: it
used the same frequency slots and calls could be handed back and forth,
so there would be a gradual transition from analog to digital. None of
the new handsets were "high-powered", though, so they covered rural
areas with high-altitude towers and, where necessary due to topography,
denser towers. When coverage for low-power digital phones neared parity
with high-power analog phones, they turned off the AMPS network.

Other carriers, who were not constrained by backwards compatibility,
were all-digital (using CDMA, GSM or iDEN) from the start and served
only metro areas, where they could cover the most potential customers
for the least amount of money. As their customer base grew, they
extended coverage outwards and/or formed roaming agreements, but mainly
to serve customers from metro areas who wandered, eg. on freeways from
one city to another. They weren't, and still aren't, interested in
serving rural customers.

It does seem that anywhere there is a tower of any kind (high tension
line, water tower, building, etc) there are cell phone antenna
attached to it. Some old water towers are covered with antenna, kind
of freaky looking.

It's ugly, but it is unavoidable to an extent due to the different
technologies in use: you need, at minimum, one set of antennae for each.
However, in metro areas, there will often be one set of antennae _per
carrier_, even when they use the same technology, because there is
enough customer density that having their own is cheaper than paying
roaming fees--potentially to a competitor.

Also, rental of space on tall structures provides their owners with a
new income source, and it's arguably less of an eyesore than having a
cluster of separate mobile phone towers nearby.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking