Michelle_Williams's Blog

Do you have OnStar or an analog cell phone?

I want to hear from you!

Why?

Read on..... then email me if you are in this situation!

Thanks!

NEW YORK (AP) -- When Adele Rothman bought her 16-year-old son a

car in 2003, she made sure to pick one that had OnStar, the onboard

communications and safety system.

What the Scarsdale, N.Y., resident didn't know was that the

OnStar system in the car was already doomed to die. The federal

government decided in 2002 to let cellular carriers shut down

analog cell phone networks, used by Rothman's Saab and about

500,000 other OnStar-equipped cars, after Feb. 18, 2008.

It's the end of the nationwide network that launched the U.S.

wireless industry 24 years ago, and it leaves a surprising number

of users like Adele Rothman in the lurch.

OnStar told Rothman in March its service would stop at the end

of this year, in anticipation of the network shutdown in February.

"I was really upset," she said, "because that was my tieline"

to her son.

Perhaps a million cell phones will lose service, but those are

cheap and easy to replace. The effects will be felt the most by

people who have things that aren't phones but have built-in

wireless capabilities, like OnStar cars and home alarm systems.

The shutdown date has been known years in advance, but some

industries appear to have a had a problem updating their

technologies and informing their customers in advance, which raises

the question of whether the effects will be even more widespread

the next time a network is turned off, given the proliferation of

wireless technology.

General Motors Corp., which owns OnStar, started modifying its

cars after the 2002 decision by the Federal Communications

Commission to let the network die, but some cars made as late as

2005 can't use digital networks for OnStar, nor can they be

upgraded. For some cars made in the intervening years, GM provides

digital upgrades for $15.

In 2006, OnStar said it had let customers know of the shutdown

with a posting on its Web site. This year, it said it had notified

all affected customers. Spokeswoman Cristi Chojnacki said she was

unable to comment beyond those statements. General Motors and other

car manufacturers with similar systems, including Daimler AG's

Mercedes-Benz, are facing a potential class-action lawsuit over the

analog shutdown.

When Rothman complained, GM sent a $500 coupon toward the

purchase of a new car. To compensate for the lack of OnStar, she

outfitted her son's car with a handsfree system and a Global

Positioning System.

A week before the end-of-year shutdown, the analog coverage map

is still the first one presented on OnStar's Web site. The digital

coverage map, showing large areas of "limited" service in

out-of-the-way places, is available on another page.

On the home alarm side, about 400,000 systems still use analog

service, according to Lou Fiore, chairman of the Alarm Industry

Communications Committee. In most of those systems, the wireless

link to the alarm center is a backup to the landline. But some

homes lack a landline, so the wireless link is the only connection

to the outside world.

Fiore doesn't know the current number of systems that only use

analog wireless connections and no landline, but a survey by the

AICC a few years ago put the number at 138,000.

"The larger (alarm) companies are in pretty good shape," Fiore

said. "There are so many smaller companies out there that are

probably, I'd say, in denial. They just don't know about it."

To complicate things, some alarm systems advertised as

"digital" actually use a digital subchannel of the analog

network. True digital alarm system modems did not become available

until 2006, according to the AICC.

According to the FCC, many analog alarms that have not been

replaced by the time the network is shut down will start beeping to

warn that they've lost the connection to the alarm center.

The Central Station Alarm Association, an alarm industry group

and the parent of the AICC, tried to get the FCC to delay the

analog sunset.

The FCC turned away that request this year, saying digital

networks are a much better use of the airwaves. The same spectrum

can carry about 16 times more traffic using digital technology

compared to analog.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. and Alltel Corp. are the largest

carriers that still have analog networks. Alltel will take more

time than Verizon and AT&T to close its network, shutting down in

three stages ending in September. Each carrier will keep its

portion of the newly available spectrum, and will use it to boost

their digital services.