howardk111 said:
Some areas within the Verizon network are analog today, whether those towers are owned by Verizon or not. Other than to state that, I don't understand your question. Would you elaborate?

Who's mandated that Verizon must go digital?

The FCC, as I understand it.

If they MUST go all digital, wouldnt coverage are shrink for them drastically or would it not make a big difference in coverage?

This is what I'm trying to figure out. I'm not sure how it will work, and am not sure if anyone knows yet.

My understanding is that the FCC has mandated that carriers are no longer required to support analog after February 18, 2008. I don't know that it means that they are required to shut down all their analog towers on/by that date, but I could be wrong.

No, you're correct. The FCC has set the date of February 18, 2008 to be the day that carriers no longer are required to support analog service. This DOES NOT mean that carriers will be required to shut down their analog network. However, the date was set to give carriers adequate time to rebuild or expand their networks.

This date is still quite confusing to me though, because companies like Cingular or Verizon don't run analog networks of their own anymore, the simply use smaller companies through roaming agreements. Both networks are absolutely 100% digital networks. So my question is, why weren't Verizon and Cingular required to keep their own analog networks up and running?

I'm told that the smaller carriers will not be bound to go digital as of that date. That leads me to wonder what will become of Verizon's roaming agreements with these small analog carriers who will not have the money to invest for purposes of converting to digital coverage.

RUFF you are correct, they do not have to abandon analog, but what is important to note is that any carrier that has a license for the old cellular band frequencies (800 or 850 Mhz, depending on what you wish to call it) must offer analog service until Feb 18, 2008. That means that Cingular, Verizon, Alltel etc still must still allocate some of that spectrum to provide Analog signal. They just don't market it anymore. So while they are all digital as far as offering digital signal on 100% of their native networks, they still provide analog signal on their native networks also. They also can't wait until 2008 when they can turn off the analog and free up the spectrum for more efficient digital use.

Oh, ok, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up, Albie. 🙂

Mr.PIR said:

muchdrama said:

howardk111 said:
Does anyone know the date by which Verizon must go all digital? I have heard conflicting dates.

Also, once that date comes, what will happen to Verizon's roaming agreements with small carriers who still operate on analog? I understand that those small carriers won't have to go all digital by the same date as Verizon. Assuming that such is the case, will Verizon be allowed to continue roaming agreements with these small carriers while they remain analog?

Must go digital? Where'd you get that from?

Government is gonna shut down analog towers and takeback the spectrum, to have the re-used in GSM and CDM

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