[Discuss-gnuradio] AMPS retirement date 5 years away

[ed]

Last fall the FCC announced that its long-standing requirement that all 
U.S. 800MHz cellular carriers must carry AMPS traffic will "sundown" 
(expire) in five years.  It's likely that nearly all 800MHz cellular 
carriers will eliminate AMPS as soon as they legally can because digital 
modes are more profitable, so expect AMPS to virtually disappear in the 
fall of 2007.

Still, that's a long time to be able to experiment with AMPS signals.  If 
you need a test unit, (monitoring one's own signal violates nobody's 
privacy) used 3-watt transportable AMPS "bag phone" transceivers are 
commonly available at yard sales and flea markets for next to nothing, and 
can be used make free test calls to *611 (carrier info) or 911 
(emergencies) thanks to FCC regulations.  Even if the old NiCd batteries 
are dead, these transceivers will run on 12VDC @ approx 1-2 amperes.

-Ed


At 07:23 PM 3/12/03 +1100, you wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 09:55:32AM -0800, address@hidden wrote:
> > (1) What SDR implementations are going to be ready first?
> >   It sounds like HDTV is on the way soon... but what cellular standards 
> will
> > be available first?  AMPS seems like an obvious choice, because its just a
> > simple FM modulation, low BW, etc.
>
> Just a couple of comments/questions here, if I may:
>
> Is AMPS still being used much? We have a totally digital network here in
> Australia (both GSM and CDMA); AMPS was closed down a year or two ago.
>
> Secondly what is the modulation format etc behind HDTV? In my
> understanding HDTV is a fairly vague term which includes a number of
> different picture formats (varying numbers of lines, interleaved or
> progressive scan). Then it's carried on top of a modulation like 8VSB (?
> North America) or COFDM (most of the world). PAL and NTSC are probably
> in there somewhere too. The 8VSB/COFDM difference is probably the
> biggest. What's the initial target of HDTV support?
>
>
> Cheers,
> Hamish
> --
> Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <address@hidden> <address@hidden>