call boxes on I-5 California

What exactly did the call boxes do? What was their purpose?

"The Office Jet" > wrote
> What exactly did the call boxes do? What was their purpose?

In the days before there were cell-phone towers marching down
every interstate and covering most urban/suburban towns, they
were phones that directly connected you to the state patrol or
other emergency agency.

In the Seattle area, there are call boxes in the tunnels, because
cell phones don't always work so great in them.

Floyd

>> What exactly did the call boxes do? What was their purpose?

> In the days before there were cell-phone towers marching down
> every interstate and covering most urban/suburban towns, they
> were phones that directly connected you to the state patrol or
> other emergency agency.

You've got it backwards. Before cellular, only metro LA had call
boxes because they had to be hard wired. Now the call boxes ARE
cellular phones, usually with solar panels at the top of the pole
to power them so they don't have to be wired to anything.

(Several years ago when the cellular boxes were new, cellular
service thieves cloned some of them; this was discussed at the
time on comp.dcom.telecom. Since then, the call-box numbers were
flagged so that each one will only operate in its own cell.)

From this it should be obvious that the boxes aren't going away
because of the spread of cellular phones. They are for people
who don't have them.

This thread started because there is a stretch of I-5 between
roughly I-580 and CA-152 which has no cellular coverage. There
aren't any call boxes there because they couldn't function for
lack of a cellular tower to talk to.

I guess I'd never really taken notice of the call boxes. I have
definitely seen them, but I really didn't think twice b/c I've always
had a cell phone with me.

"The Office Jet" > wrote
>I guess I'd never really taken notice of the call boxes. I have
> definitely seen them, but I really didn't think twice b/c I've always
> had a cell phone with me.

Obviously a gen-xer ;->

Floyd

> What exactly did the call boxes do? What was
> their purpose?

I had to use one once. It connected me to, I think, a California
Highway Patrol-operated dispatch center.

They asked various questions to get a mental picture of the situation
and ascertain the type and urgency of response that would be needed.

When they figured out that it was just a more or less routine
breakdown, and that I'd horsed it completely over to the side of the
road before running out of momentum -- i.e., not an emergency and not
likely to cause one -- they called the auto club for me. They probably
get some level of priority on the tow truck.

I'm pretty sure they could tell which box I was calling from. This
information is also posted on the box, and obviously is good for the
caller to know, both for subsequent communications and for morale, in
case he's three miles from the middle of nowhere and it's an unfamiliar
corner of nowhere at that.

I wonder how many people keep track of more or less where they are,
especially when in unfamiliar territory. (On a longer trip, it's also
good to note the size and facilities of towns as you pass them, which
added to distance and terrain and the nature of the problem, helps you
decide whether it'd be better to double back to the last one or press
on to the next one, or what.)

It'll be a while before the ability to localize cell calls becomes
ubiquitous, and even then I'd expect the function to be fallible, in
all the ways that both technology and tech users are. Observing useful
things as you go along is always going to be a good idea. It might
only be plan B, but we have plan B for a reason...

Cheers,
--Joe

Steven M. Scharf wrote:

> The bottom line is that you should not buy a phone that doesn't
support
> AMPS, if you care about ubiquitous coverage.

Is there a website or some other way to get info about which cell
carriers and phones support AMPS? I know that with my previous cell
phone if I couldn't reach a local site, it could call up to about 20
miles away and reach a site. The call sounded like Radio Moscow circa
1938, but it worked. I literally was in SF and connected with Novato
on several occasions.

But I don't know if my new cell phone works with AMPS or not. And
nobody at Verizon so far seems to be able to tell me much about what
kinds of service my phone gets.

"David Kaye" > wrote:

>Steven M. Scharf wrote:
>
>> The bottom line is that you should not buy a phone that doesn't
>support
>> AMPS, if you care about ubiquitous coverage.
>
>Is there a website or some other way to get info about which cell
>carriers and phones support AMPS? I know that with my previous cell
>phone if I couldn't reach a local site, it could call up to about 20
>miles away and reach a site. The call sounded like Radio Moscow circa
>1938, but it worked. I literally was in SF and connected with Novato
>on several occasions.
>
>But I don't know if my new cell phone works with AMPS or not. And
>nobody at Verizon so far seems to be able to tell me much about what
>kinds of service my phone gets.

PhoneScoop will usually tell you which phones have AMP. Verizon
Wireless supports AMP in some of its calling plans. Cingular, Verizon
Wireless, and Sprint do, I think T-Mobile does not.

Which phone do you have, and did you purchase it from the carrier or
elsewhere? If you went for a small fashionable phone it probably
doesn't handle AMP. The owners manual will tell you.



--
Jack Hamilton
Sacramento, California
--
<> Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.
<> François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld

"David Kaye" > wrote in message

> But I don't know if my new cell phone works with AMPS or not. And
> nobody at Verizon so far seems to be able to tell me much about what
> kinds of service my phone gets.

The Verizon web site for handsets will tell you if it is tri-band or dual
band. The third band is AMPS.

"Jack Hamilton" > wrote in message
...

> PhoneScoop will usually tell you which phones have AMP. Verizon
> Wireless supports AMP in some of its calling plans. Cingular, Verizon
> Wireless, and Sprint do, I think T-Mobile does not.

AT&T supported AMPS with its TDMA system, but there were only two phones on
their GSM network that also supported AMPS, the Nokia 6340, and the
Sony-Ericsson t62u. AT&T would sell you one of these handsets
(GSM/TDMA/AMPS). Cingular, in California, would not, because they didn't
have a TDMA or an AMPS network (AT&T had GSM, TDMA, and AMPS, while Cingular
in the west was GSM only (the old Pacific Bell wireless). These phones,
called GAIT phones, were intended to bridge the gap as the conversion to GSM
took place.

What is really needed, is a GSM/AMPS phone, without the TDMA. At one time
Nokia had an "Analog Sleeve" that you could attach to your GSM phone to get
AMPS, but this is no longer made. It actually was a good solution, since
most of the time you don't need AMPS, but when traveling outside the urban
area, it is useful. Even out in the Marin headlands, the Santa Cruz
mountains, and stretches of the coast, you only get AMPS.