Icom makes a couple of units that connect to the PC--they are models
IC-PCR100 and IC-PCR-1000. They go up to 1.3 GHz. There's also the
WinRadio series, but I don't know anything about them.

Cell phones are still where you used to monitor them when it wasn't illegal,
although they are mostly digital now. Nowadays, you are more likely to find
cordless phone activity on the 900 MHz cordless phones in the range of 902
to 928 MHz. Cordless phones in the 2.4 GHz band and above tend to be
digital, but even if they are analog, you'd need a more expensive receiver
the reach up that high (Yaesu VR-5000 and AOR AR8600MkII are two examples in
the $700 to $900 range that are very versatile DC-to-Daylight receivers).
You might still find some 46 MHz cordless phone activity around, too. Of
course, listening to cordless phones and cell phones is illegal, and
generally quite boring, I'm told.

Any newer model of scanner bought in the US will be cell blocked, so you
would have to import an unblocked model from another country (from places
like Bandercom in Finland or Javiation in the UK and possibly even some
Canadian distributors), which is, of course--say it with me-- illegal. If
you're willing to risk importing one, you can get most any receiver or
amateur transceiver in an unblocked version.

Just about all (if not all) newer models sold in or to the US are impossible
to unblock because the blocking is done in firmware rather than in hardware,
and US models generally use a different version of microcontroller than the
international versions so that there's no chance of fooling it. On the
other hand, there are still plenty of older models of scanners that are
either already unblocked or are easily modified (one example is the Sony
ICF-SC1, also known as the "WaveHawk", which is a damn fine scanner, but
hard to find now). Can you say "eBay"?

A few minutes in Google will yield more sites for self-education in radio
scanning than you could possibly have time to look at. Here's one to start
you off: http://www.fordyce.org/scanning/

- Doug


"Billy" wrote in message
...
I want to be able to monitor cellular and cordless phones using a scanner
device that attaches to my PC. Can you tell me what is available and what
frequency range I need to search to listen?

FYI - I'm an old 80's scanning hobbyist back when I believe the waves were
more free and I used to capture cells on the 800 MHz, and cordless phones
on
the 40 or 48 MHz ranges, from what I remember. With all the newer
frequencies since then such as 900 Mghz, 2.4 and 5 GHz ranges, I'm a bit
out
of date as to how capable we are of capturing these frequencies today. I'm
also inquisitive as to what my wireless laptop devices are capable of,
since
I have a 2.GHz router (transmitter?) and laptop wireless card (receiver?).
I
wonder if these can be utilized for scanning as well. Can you tell me
where
the ranges fall for cordless and cell phones today, and if there exists
such
a device to scan using PC hardware and software? If you can guide me to a
updated lesson on the web, I'd appreciate that too.