Any ideas on why someone would have a new TDMA/AMPS phone?
svartifoss2.fcc.gov
NPQTDM-3100 branded AUDIOVOX.
Also, what is this wireless service from Sprint that does not work?
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Glitches short-circuit Sprint's wireless Net service
By John Borland
Special to ZDNet News
April 12, 2001 5:01 PM PT
Frustrated residents in a pocket of Silicon Valley are experiencing a powerful sign that high-speed wireless Internet service could have trouble going mainstream: It isn't working very well.
Customer complaints about Sprint's new broadband wireless Internet service, which is making a strong showing in the San Francisco Bay Area and a few other cities, is a sign that wireless broadband is stumbling over similar hurdles as its high-speed predecessors. The technology is thought to be an alternative to digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable service.
"The first feedback (Sprint) got was pretty positive, although now they're beginning to hear some horror stories," said Chris Whitely, a broadband analyst for Insight Research. "But it's certainly not as bad as the DSL stories over the last year."
The ability to navigate these initial speed bumps is a critical test for Sprint and will represent a critical moment for the broader high-speed Internet market. The wireless service is one of the strongest alternatives to the cable and local phone giants, which are increasingly cornering the consumer broadband market.
snip
zdnet.com
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Are these the neat red ones we see in pictures of Old England? What will superman do when he finds it full of transmitters and receivers with big cables to the power company and the local phone switch?
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BT to increase mobile coverage with pay phones
From...
April 13, 2001
Web posted at: 10:02 a.m. EDT (1402 GMT)
By Pia Landergren
(IDG) -- If you can't beat your enemy, join them. That seems to be the reasoning behind British Telecommunications PLC's Thursday announcement that it would make space available for mobile phone transmitters in its public phone booths.
In a move to save its 140,000 pay phones around the U.K., telephone giant British Telecommunications (BT) is now offering mobile phone operators the possibility to rent space for small mobile phone base stations in pay phones, to get better network coverage in urban areas. BT also plans to use the space in pay-phone booths for the future rollout of 3G (third generation) mobile phone networks.
(sneaky insert here. Nokia phones incompatible with new U.S. mobile networks
Nokia is urging network operators to update their networks before launch so the handsets will still work. Alternatively, each individual handset needs to be reprogrammed, Nokia said. Affected are phones in the popular 2100, 5100 and 6100 model series.
"It is a software glitch that affects the synchronization channel of the phone, which is used when the phone registers with the network. When the phones were designed, the specifications of the cdma2000 1x standard weren't done yet, and (as such) we didn't take into account the synchronization-channel issue," said Keith Nowak, a spokesman for Nokia in the U.S.
"There is a software patch that needs to go into the network. Reprogramming all phones, where customers would have to bring the handset into the store, is not a viable solution," he said.
Several U.S. mobile phone operators, including Verizon Wireless Inc., plan to rollout cdma2000 1x networks later this year.
The upgraded mobile networks will allow faster data transmissions and are considered a step towards full 3G (third generation) services, which offer even faster wireless data transfer rates. Subscribers interested in these new services will need to buy a new handset. But subscribers who don't need to use the new services should be able to continue using their old handsets with the new networks and at least be able to continue using their phones.
"We are aware of the issue and will work with Nokia to ensure that our customers have a quality handset and get a quality service," said Brenda Raney, spokeswoman for Verizon, one of the largest mobile operators in the U.S.
Nokia's Nowak said the glitch is "not a big deal" and part of the "normal course of business". He couldn't specify how many phones are affected, saying only that "it's a lot of phones" and assuring that all handsets Nokia is shipping now are unaffected. idg.net
"Our public pay phone network is suffering because people are making more calls from mobile phones," said David Orr, spokesperson for BT, while adding that the number of calls made from public phones in the U.K. have dropped by a third during the past two years.
"This is obviously a way to bring new revenue stream to our pay phones," Orr said, although he wouldn't say how much BT is expecting to make from renting out base station space in phone booths.
BT first announced its intention to try this out in December last year. Orr said BT is expecting to have about 5,000 mobile phone transmitters up and running in phone booths by the end of BT's current financial year, which ends March 31, 2002.
Orr said BT has been in contact with mobile phone operators such as its own BT Cellnet Ltd, Vodafone Group PLC and Orange PLC, and that they "are expressing interest."
It looks like a win-win situation. BT earns money, the famous red phone boxes in London are saved, the mobile phone operators get better network coverage and the mobile phone users might not have to suffer the common "black spots" while talking on a mobile phone in big cities like London.
"I think it's quite ingenious," said Jason Chapman, senior analyst at Gartner Dataquest Inc., a part of Gartner Group Inc. "This really gets the mobile phone coverage down to people on the street."
Another advantage for mobile phone operators is that the base stations are already set up for them and they will not have to face the usual problems with building permission to raise tall masts on top of buildings, Chapman said.
There seems to be only one small problem.
"There's always going to be some people who are concerned about the health side," said Paolo Pescatore, senior research analyst in wireless mobile communication at International Data Corp. (IDC) in London.
Pescatore added that until studies have been done there is no way to tell whether these small base stations in the middle of the cities will pose any health risk to people on the street.
cnn.com |
