"Did you ever go somewhere and realize it used to be a different place? And
it dawns on you that some things are not here anymore...and nothing seems to
be where it used to be? Sometimes I think if we could just put everything
back where it originally was, we might be alright." -George Carlin

As I sit here listening to crummy, watery digital cell phone audio on a
radio station call-in show my mind wonders what the hell was so bad about
analogue?

Smokey W9STB

Smokey:

Analog cellular was the first generation, and as such worked just fine in a lot
of situations. Sure, as you got to the edges of range you experienced noise,
but I actually preferred that to the current method of just being dropped
without warning...

A more direct answer to your question was the cost of providing the service.
With Analog, you had a limited number of channels available. Period, end of
story. More channels meant more equipment, and so on. Profit was not great
enough for some of the providers... Enter the Digital Cellular processes... With
a single channel, they could simultaneously deal with a number of virtual
circuits through the wonders of TDM (Time Division Multiplexing). Because we
don't really need a full spectrum signal for audio, with a decent TDM ratio, it
sounds as good as Analog. However, what makes the phones sound like crap are
twofold. First, the cheap phones don't necessarily care as much about the
actual sound as the "features" like text messaging, color displays and custom
ring tones that sell the phones. Second, and most important, the carriers are
either too greedy or using systems that are too overloaded, and as a result are
slicing the same second among many subscribers, instead of a relative few. For
example, let's say that a given TDM channel has 100 slots available, that means
each slot gets roughly 10ms of data time per second. When the channel is
lightly loaded, the computers may be set to give you 10 time slots per second,
which means you get 100ms of data time per second, and the phone sounds pretty
good. However, as the number of active conversations on a single channel
increases, the number of time slots you get is fewer, so the relative
compression of the signal needs to go up. In another way of putting it, the
bitrate you receive goes down as the channel is more heavily loaded. Given a CD
sounds good at 44khz bit rate, if you could transfer this rate to the cellular
phone, it (within limits of the speaker and mic of the phone) would provide near
CD quality. If the bitrate is only 8khz, it's not going to sound near as good.
As the number of active conversations on a channel goes up, the equivalent
bitrate you are provided has to go down, often to ridiculous levels. The cell
phone companies tend to move towards insanely low bitrates to maintain the
connection as they add more active circuits to the channel, instead of denying a
new connection to the same channel. This makes some people happy, because they
can (almost) always get a connection, and makes the provider happy, because he
can get by with less equipment which makes his profit higher.

Unfortunately for some of us, this means we are unhappy because we know how it
could really sound if we weren't being cheated out of the bandwidth we [pay for
and deserve. Of course, the providers don't look at it this way, because they
"make no guarantee of service (level) in any particular area".

The increasing number of people using cellular technology, and their relative
inexperience with quality communications only exacerbates the problem, as they
really don't know what they are missing. Hell, I've had many a long distance
QSO on SSB that had much better audio than the typical conversation with my
wife a few miles away on what passes for "Cellular Service" here. (I live on
Hawaii Island, also known as the big island, the southernmost island of the
Hawaiian Chain. As it is large, mountainous and with relatively low population
density, cellular service here is spotty at best, no matter which provider you
use, and they all tend to overload their systems to avoid equipment upgrades and
expansion).

Good Luck!
-_Rick AH7H

Smokey wrote:

"Did you ever go somewhere and realize it used to be a different place? And
it dawns on you that some things are not here anymore...and nothing seems to
be where it used to be? Sometimes I think if we could just put everything
back where it originally was, we might be alright." -George Carlin

As I sit here listening to crummy, watery digital cell phone audio on a
radio station call-in show my mind wonders what the hell was so bad about
analogue?

Smokey W9STB

All of the below (good, clear info, BTW) is exacerbated by the cellular
companies pushing wireless imaging, data transmission and (god forbid)
streaming video...instead of concentrating on their core service: giving us
intelligible, reliable voice transmission.

How many voice channels will have to be sacrificed to provide one channel of
streaming video?

jak

Rick Frazier wrote:
Smokey:

Analog cellular was the first generation, and as such worked just
fine in a lot of situations. Sure, as you got to the edges of range
you experienced noise, but I actually preferred that to the current
method of just being dropped without warning...

snipped for brevity