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That's correct. However, he said you could call 911 without a carrier. No way.
Yep, my bad, I left out the word active..
Wow, and I thought I was pedantic about technical details.
All wireless phones and providers in every first world country that I know of are required to process an emergency call using any available signal. They also get priority on channels and signal strength. Bear in mind however that right now we are under a massive change of cellular infrastructure here in the US, and older phones may simply not be able to connect to the newer systems at all. Verizon, for example, is shutting down everything that is not LTE. So you can't assume that your old flip phone is going to keep working.
That's the major fallicy in the "all phones can call 911" rule. CDMA only phones will not work on GSM networks, for instance. Now with all carriers moving to VOIP/VoLTE services though, it will be less of a problem. There will still be the issue of phones that aren't capable of using the frequency bands on an available tower though. Fortunately, there's enough band overlap among carriers that it shouldn't be a major problem.
Fortunately, there's enough band overlap among carriers that it shouldn't be a major problem.
Depends on where you are. I'm in a place with little overlap, and if you're not on Verizon or AT&T, you can't count on making calls. If you have an old CDMA phone, you're not getting anything (tried it). So the important part to remember is that the old "spare emergency phone" is becoming less useful. I think it's important for people to know this since it's the first time we've done a fast, radical cellular tech change like this in the US. Verizon plans to have ALL non-LTE service gone by end of year.
Good point Carlos, we still have DW's old bag phone from AT&T, it's only use is a paperweight or museum piece.
Ray, fire that phone up, wait for it to search for networks (say five minutes), and then dial 611. Old GSM phones MIGHT still be working, even for some years. LTE is an enhancement of GSM, basically, while CDMA is now just dead tech.
Hmm, I'm sure I have some ancient GSM phones in my old tech pile...
Depends on where you are. I'm in a place with little overlap, and if you're not on Verizon or AT&T, you can't count on making calls. If you have an old CDMA phone, you're not getting anything (tried it). So the important part to remember is that the old "spare emergency phone" is becoming less useful. I think it's important for people to know this since it's the first time we've done a fast, radical cellular tech change like this in the US. Verizon plans to have ALL non-LTE service gone by end of year.
Yes, the older phones are becoming less and less useful, just as the old bag and other analog phones became useless some years agp. Fortunately, many people upgrade their phones fairly often, and hopefully they're updating their spare with their previous phone at the same time. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all have band overlap in many areas, primarily on bands 2, 4, 5 and 66. And many towers have more than one carrier on them as well. Sprint is the only outlier with no overlapping bands in use.
Ray, fire that phone up, wait for it to search for networks (say five minutes), and then dial 611. Old GSM phones MIGHT still be working, even for some years. LTE is an enhancement of GSM, basically, while CDMA is now just dead tech.
Hmm, I'm sure I have some ancient GSM phones in my old tech pile...
Can't, the 12V SLA battery died long ago. Analog phones will not work on the digital towers. Shoot, even the GM Onstar relay in my 2002 Dually stopped working, GM sent out a recall notice to have a dealer pull the fuse to deactivate it to prevent accidental battery run-down.
GSM is not analog. The Onstar in your old truck was, and they were still installing 2G/3G digital until just a few years ago, which is also going to stop working. There's some sort of swap-out program in place now.
+ 911 may be called without a carrier.
this. place a cell phone someplace with a good charger for said. as they can call 911, by law the phone company's can not lock them out.
can not call aunt sally, but you can call the police
but in this digital age the better analog phones are locked out. as no backward compatible in the system.
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