03-08-2004, 03:00 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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AT&T Wireless Replacing Phones Due To New GSM 850 Coverage
"Attention AT&T Wireless customers: your phone is about to become obsolete. If you own one of the cellphones listed below and live in the New York metropolitan area, Northern New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Las Vegas, or Seattle, there�s a good chance that AT&T doesn�t want you to use it much longer."
Peter Rojas, in his new job at Engadget, has written up an excellent article summarizing AT&T's troubles in their network transition. First off, TDMA is slowly getting phased out of their network, so its coverage is likely to slowly shrink. Second, perhaps half of the GSM phones they've been selling all this time are not compatible with wide new swaths of their network, which run at 800MHz ("GSM 850"). This includes the Siemens SX56, the Sony Ericsson T68i, and even the Motorola MPx200 Smartphone. Therefore, at the current moment, Pocket PC Phone users and Smartphone users are out of luck -- they won't be able to access most of AT&T's new coverage. AT&T has a handset trading program, but the replacements seem to be strictly average at best. Nice going, AT&T. :?
Worse, I don't know of a Pocket PC Phone that even supports GSM 850 right now. :| The Motorola MPx is eventually supposed to be available in two versions: an 800/1800/1900 (supporting GSM 850) and a 900/1800/1900 (supporting European bands), and the rumored iPAQ 6000 series might have quadband (800/900/1800/1900), but I've heard no official confirmation on that. What I really want to know is why carriers and handset manufacturers can't get their act together and just make all of their phones quadband. :roll:
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03-08-2004, 03:02 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,819
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Makes me feel all the better leaving this mess this weekend for Verizon. No cool Motorola phone, but the service at least here in the west for AT&T is so bad, I can't stay.
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03-08-2004, 03:12 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 248
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I left for T-mobile back in June of last year and haven;t looked back. It's amazing to have a company now that seems to know what a customer is. And low and behold, they actually sent me a letter saying that they ahd been workingon towers in my area and to my surprise, I actually noticed an improvement in coverage area. It's sad what has happened to ATTWS, they used to be a decent carrier. One can only hope that Cingular will keep their networks and fir their mgmt.
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03-08-2004, 03:17 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 332
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It would be nice to be able to buy one phone that was portable between all carriers. Now that it's easier to switch, I'd be surprised if that doesn't become reality.
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03-08-2004, 03:23 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Re: AT&T Wireless Replacing Phones Due To New GSM 850 Coverage
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
What I really want to know is why carriers and handset manufacturers can't get their act together and just make all of their phones quadband. :roll:
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What I want to know is why are there so many bands? Why can't carriers just get together and use one low and one high band instead of a few of each? :confused totally:
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03-08-2004, 03:27 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 276
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by FoldedSpace
It would be nice to be able to buy one phone that was portable between all carriers. Now that it's easier to switch, I'd be surprised if that doesn't become reality.
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Not if the government/FCC makes a law/rule prohibiting operators from tieing phones to an subscription. We've had this since GSM was young and nowadays, people are switching operators as "often" as socks (ok, maybe not that often... :lol: ). But, the downside is that the phones become more or less expensive but the phone bills should at least be cheaper...
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03-08-2004, 03:28 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 258
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A few weeks ago I found my old StarTAC 85 bought in 1997. Inserted a spare prepaid SIM card (still in full credit card size) and it worked! Ah...the beauty of European mobile standardisation...
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03-08-2004, 03:31 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 276
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Re: AT&T Wireless Replacing Phones Due To New GSM 850 Coverage
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Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
What I really want to know is why carriers and handset manufacturers can't get their act together and just make all of their phones quadband. :roll:
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What I want to know is why are there so many bands? Why can't carriers just get together and use one low and one high band instead of a few of each? :confused totally: |
Simple answer: US Defense Forces. More complicated: FCC regulated frequency bands reserved for government agencies. It should be listed in a "Info Porn"-section in an old Wired issue... now where is that issue? *searches*
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03-08-2004, 04:23 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Nov 2002
Posts: 75
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This doesn't surprise me one bit. ATT sucks IMO. Completely. I left them 2+ years ago as a result of one of the biggest nightmare billing fiascos I've ever had the misfortuned of being a part of. It rose all the way to then Chairman C. Michael Armstrong's office. His office made a feeble effort to make things right with me, but it was way too little, way too late. I switched to TMo (then Voicestream) and have been a super happy camper ever since. I said it then and I'll say it now: I will never again spend one red cent with ATT for the rest of my life.
This nonsense about the handsets is not remotely surprising to me given what a POS organization they are.
TM
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03-08-2004, 04:40 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 194
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ATT COVERAGE
Is this some hysteria about devices becoming obsolete? My understanding from ATT is the 850 is an overlay (to improve indoor reception) and 1900 will remain intact and functioning and not be eliminated.
What is so great on TMobile in terms of coverage and reception?
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