TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Service Ending Soon For Analog Phone Devices

ADVERTISEMENT

By RICHARD MULLINS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 15, 2008

Updated: 01/15/2008 12:17 am

The cellular phone industry is about to hang up on potentially millions of customers with older analog style telephones, and turn off analog systems that support potentially hundreds of thousands of home alarms and vehicle assistance links such as General Motors' OnStar.

Come Feb. 18, cellular phone companies no longer will be required to run their older, analog cellular networks now that nearly the entire industry has upgraded to digital phones.

Just as VHS gave way to DVD, and analog TV broadcasts are quickly giving way to digital TVs, digital cellular networks soon will be the standard and the only networks operational after the cutoff.

The sunset date for analog has been known since 2002, though many companies have not yet finished upgrading their customers to digital systems. As a result, an estimated 4 million to 6 million phone customers could see their analog service end soon.

"Mainly, this affects the curmudgeons who haven't given up their really old phones," said Daniel Longfield, a cellular industry analyst with the research firm Frost & Sullivan. In the case of phones, however, a wide swath of people may not know they rely on analog cellular links for devices other than phones.

For example, owners of some General Motors, Lexus and Mercedes cars already have seen their wireless vehicle assistance systems stop working, unless they took their cars in for an upgrade.

Also, some home alarm systems installed more than four years ago use analog cellular antennas as a primary or backup method of reporting fire or burglar alarms. Home security giant ADT expects to spend $40 million to $50 million in the first half of 2008 to upgrade remaining analog system to digital.

Rural areas also could see gaps in coverage if cellular carriers turn off analog signals outside of metro areas, Longfield said.

"I know a guy who goes hunting way out in the woods and has one of these old phones, and way out there it's the only one that still works," Longfield said. "So you're going to see some problem areas, especially rural areas affected negatively."

Although major carriers such as Verizon and AT&T plan to shut down all their analog links, some rural carriers say they plan to keep their analog systems running at least for the foreseeable future.

In a sense, the end of analog cellular is the lesser-known cousin of another planned obsolescence: the end of analog television when digital TV signals become the standard in 2009. Older analog TVs not hooked up to satellite or cable TV service will require a new converter box.

Why is the cellular industry ending analog service? In the past several years, cellular phone companies have converted nearly all their customers to new digital networks that can handle voice calls, text messages, E-mail and Internet traffic - as well as more accurately locate 911 callers.

Analog systems, by contrast, are less reliable and tend to have lower sound quality than digital phones on calls.

Still, in the hyper-competitive cell phone market, cellular phone companies are going to great lengths to retain customers who have analog service. Verizon Wireless, for example, is sending free digital phones to "the very few remaining analog customers," said spokesman Chuck Hamby, and asking them to "please start using this phone instead."

Sprint/Nextel phone service started off as digital, so their customers should not be affected, the company says. AT&T, which acquired Cingular in 2006, said it has contacted its analog customers no less than 18 times since 2006 to ask them to upgrade.

There is a side benefit to ending older systems, Tampa-based cellular industry analyst Mark Beccue said. Analog phones, he said, were easy targets for "cloning," a tactic in which hackers electronically capture and copy the identity of a mobile phone onto another. Hackers could then use the cloned phone to make calls illegally billed to the owner of the stolen phone number.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT