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Identifying your mobile phone service type
Available cellular service also dependes on your location, your area of the country, rural or urban, preferred types of service and terrain. Yes, terrain! Some services perform better on wide open spaces like the central prairie states like Kansas while others perform better in mountain regions like Colorado. Want to find out where the cell phone service tower is in your area? Click here! Here's the different types of service!IDEN. This means Integrated Digitally Enhanced Network. Nextel used it first and if you have Nextel service, then you are likely on IDEN. Nextel got the ball rolling on Push To Talk service for their customers on the first coast to coast walkie talkie service available. Others offer it now too.GSM. This means Global Systems for Mobile and this service has about 600 million customers worldwide. Companies like T-Mobile have international service for their customers travelling to foreign countries. Most world band phones have GSM capabilities of 800/850/1800/1900 MHZ. PDA type phones are an example of a World Band Phone. Most of these have a qwerty keyboard, camera and internet access utilising GPRS/EDGE and 3G networks! These types of phones are becoming more common and coming way down in price compared to just a few years ago! Buy the Dash and receive a free 512MB memory card!
Currently the US is mostly 850/1900 but some newer phones are on the 850 MHZ band as well and are listed as 800/1800/1900. The 1800 MHZ band is used mainly in Europe while in Asia some phones operate in the 900 MHZ band making them worthless in the States! Most people refer to the 850 MHZ band as the 800, but that is mistaken a lot and they usually mean the 850 MHZ band! I know this ounds confusing, but not all GSM phones operate the same way! Most phones in the US will work in Europe and Vice Versa. Saian phones are the exception to this since they use an entirely different band altogether! If your not sure what band you will need and do a lot of travelling, then I would suggest a Quad band phone! These are going to be more expensive, but if you need one and you don't have one that will work on any band in your area, then your cell phone is worthless anyway! A quad band phone will haqve 850/900/1800/1900 MHZ capabilities and will work everywhere, including Asian countries and this would be a must have for travellers would move around internationally who need access to all types of mobile phone service. There is a link below called the Travel Insider that has a great chart for service type by country!
GSM signals are handed off from tower to tower all at once. This is where most calls are dropped. If your antenna strength is low you will experience more dropped calls because of this.
TDMA. Time Division Multiple Access is a type of GSM service that is slowly being fazed out for faster mostly because this service can only handle about 3 callers per frequency. TDMA was the first type of mobile phone service to compliment AMPS in the early 1990's. Callers are separated by the amount of time they spend on the phone. After 30 minuts, your call is disconnected. You have to call back to reconnect and some think this is a dropped call. It isn't. Since the system is not capable of handling so many users at once and at the same time, calls are removed from the system after a certain amount of time has passed, hence why it is called Time Division Multiple Access. UMTS. Universal Mobile Telephone Service has propelled ATT forward with the capabilities of the Iphone. It is a new type of digital service called 3G, for 3rd Generation service. This is a new version of GSM wich will be available soon from more companies like T-Mobile and will be making more headway in the next few years! UMTS promises faster download speeds and more data transfer at higher speeds. HSDPA. High Speed Download Packet Access is the new enhanced version of GSM that, according to rumors and rumbles, T-Mobile is working on based on UMTS, but will feature blazing speeds of 14.4 Mbps! Fasten your seat belt! CDMA. Code Division Multiple Access is in wide use in the U.S. today. CDMA is nothing like TDMA. Digital codes allow up to 15 users on the same channel at the same time. Alltel is one provider of CDMA type of service. CDMA service works a little better in some areas because instead of handing off your phone call all at once, it is handed over to another tower gradually. this is supposed to help avoid dropped calls, the number one complaint of mobile phone service users. However, when you are between several towers at once and your moving, the towers are all getting a little piece of the signal and not all of it. When the towers are competing for it, some just give up and your call will be dropped because no one tower will be sure of who has it to handle in simple terms. AMPS. Advanced Mobile Phone Service is going to be gone soon. Rumors have it that it will be gone in February of 2008. This service was started in 1983 and has survived because it travels so well in rural areas. Even though only one caller can use a channel at a time, it has proven it's usefulnes over the last 25 years! First responders want these frequencies because they can all talk to each other in emergencies. This includes police, fire, emergency medical, building safety and emergency evacuation. WAP. Wireless Access Protocol is included here because it's used a lot by those with PDA devices like Blackberry, Palm Sidekick, Dell and so on. It is also used by those with laptops that have their computers plugged into a cell phone with a mini USB cable using their cell phone like a modem. WAPdoes not move around well however and this is one reason that WAP is measured in terms of feet and not miles. A computer sending and receiving data takes a lot more bandwidth at multiple bands than just a phone call. PCS. Personal Communication Service is for those who are using PDA devices requiring digital service on the 1900 Mghz band for transmitting data, faxes and special text messages. PTT. Push To Talk is walkie talkie and even though Nextel was the first to offer this, others are offering it now too. PTT was the first to use IDEN for coast to coast walkie talkie! WiMax. This is WiFi's next generation of service and although it's not available yet, it will travel for miles instead of feet and approach the speed of gigabit Ethernet! Some RV parks for instance have already started using WiMax in limited areas because it adds a great convience for those on the road! A lot of RV'ers do not have a home location to be a base anymore, like retired people for instance, as well as those who make a living travelling a lot. As with any open over the air frequency, it is a good idea to have the best firewall software you can get and be careful of sending and receiving financial information over these frequencies! It is best to avoid sending ANY kind of financial information at all, like credit card, bank statement inquiries, and online bill payment services from an unsecured line or open frequency. Click here to look at the Travel Insider website! Whew! We got through that one!Now that you are armed with some really valuable information, you are ready to go shopping for mobile phone service! The link below is an invaluable tool for shopping for the best rates and services for both land lines and especially cell phone service! Be sure to bookmark this page! You will most likely need to refer to both while shopping for the best plan.This site will give you the latest information on wireless phones and mobile phone service as well as plans at the best rates from all the major service providers! Best rate guide at the link below is one of the best I've found and the only one I know of where you can compare mobile phone service and land line service at your specific location side by side with all goodies and facts. Just provide your location and phone number or zip/post code and it will show you everything you could want to know. Best rate guide is one of the best sites available for finding the best rates for cell phone and land line phone services! Now if all this seems confusing, don't worry!You can just call your customer service representative and ask them what type of service you have. I did not try to show service types by service provider here because service is evolving fast and information listed here would be outdated quickly!Yes, it's that easy! Knowing what mobile phone service you have is important because next we are going to talk about antennas! Wifi antennas, cell phone antennas, mobile phone antennas and more! Don't let the terms "mobile phone" and "cellular phone" confuse you. A cell phone is one you can drop into your pocket or purse and a mobile phone often includes cell phones, but also includes bag phones which are larger and heavier and have their own carrying bag with batteries and a handset. They are most often referred to as mobile phones, you can take them anywhere but they are not compact like a cell phone. Click here to read about mobile phone service if you skipped the previous page. Click here to see more about cell phone info. click here to look at some typical pictures of antenna and amplifier installations The link at the very bottom of this page will take you to the next page of mobile phone service. That page is very important because it concerns your antenna needs and is a compliment to this page. Antenna and amplifier technology has made remarkable advances in the last several years! The antenna manufacturers are well aware of the rapidly evolving services and are providing the best equipment available. Wilson Antennas is one of these that I would call "Best of breed" types of antenna and amplifier makers! These products are made in the USA to tough standards and it has been my experience that these systems made by wilson offer the most bang for the buck and are where your money will be best spent. Click here to go to the next page of mobile phone service.
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