How long will AT&T digital TDMA be around?

[guapo337]

Im planning on getting a basic cell phone, so I saw ecallplus.com. I plan on buying time through them, and using a Nokia 6360. How long will the AT&T TDMA network be around with GSM now out?

 

[Kelvrick]

Just coming in to rant. Don't think to get another plan from them on their GSM network. For some reason they can't send you one combined bill and send you two seperate ones. Ahh... Just thinking about this makes me wish they went out of business, but then Cingular would just buy them and I hate them too.

Oh well, I think it should last a while, since a lot of people still use their old TDMA phones and they're still selling them.

 

[beer]

From an engineering standpoint, GSM and TDMA both use the method of Time Division Multiple Access. I think it's fair to assume that the technologies are similiar enough that both will be supported for some time.

 

[AMDMaddness]

As far as I know (being in the cellular biz) that all of the major suppliers (nortel, Lucent, ericsson, etc) will stop supporting TDMA all together. most of the suppliers have stopped all further development of the technology and most have even stopped producing the parts/equip so by 2007ish most if not all of TDMA is the US will be gone AT&T will probibly make it last more in some markets than others till they cant (2008). 2008 is the cutoff date from all of the vendors that I have talked to so if some company wants to run TDMA past 2008 they better have a stack of spair parts and a bunch of smart unix programers.

Pete

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: AMDMaddness
As far as I know (being in the cellular biz) that all of the major suppliers (nortel, Lucent, ericsson, etc) will stop supporting TDMA all together. most of the suppliers have stopped all further development of the technology and most have even stopped producing the parts/equip so by 2007ish most if not all of TDMA is the US will be gone AT&T will probibly make it last more in some markets than others till they cant (2008).

Pete

That's 4 years away, more than the life any any cell phone you'd buy. Most of my phones develop battery problems around 18 months and the batteries for an outdated, no longer produced phone cost as much as a new phone does

 

[SSibalNom]

AT&T GSM is poo, their TDMA service is usually better, at least around here... why even go with AT&T at all?

 

[WobbleWobble]

Does AT&T in the US have the 850MHz GSM band? It's used to fill in the holes in the network and has better building penetration. It's the next big thing with Rogers AT&T in Canada

 

[guapo337]

Originally posted by: SSibalNom
AT&T GSM is poo, their TDMA service is usually better, at least around here... why even go with AT&T at all?

It seems to be pretty good around here. Secondly, eCallPlus is a sweet service.