The biggest U.S. mobile operators, AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless, will close down their analog networks on Monday.
Friday, February 15, 2008; 12:19 AM
You may think of sunsets as something nice to look at, but if you have an older cell phone or a home alarm system, there's one coming up on Monday that may not be so pretty.
That day, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will let mobile operators shut down their analog networks. It's called the "analog sunset" because those AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System) networks, which were first deployed in the 1980s and brought cellular service to millions of Americans, will finally disappear behind the digital networks that serve almost all mobile phones in use today.
The biggest U.S. mobile operators, AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless, will close down their analog networks that day. At the same time, AT&T will turn off its first digital network, which uses TDMA (Time-Division Multiple Access) technology. (Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA don't have analog networks.) Calls to some small, rural mobile operators indicated that most of them plan to shut down AMPS, too.
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