AMPS (1983 to 2010)

Advanced Mobile Phone System(AMPS). This system was introduced in 1983 by Bell Systems, the phone introduced by Motorola in 1973 and released for public use in 1983 with the Motorola 8000. AMPS also known as 1G and cellular, should not be confused with its European counterparts such as NMT, ETACS/TACS or JTACS.

In 1983, the first ever Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was developed by Bell Labs. This analog mobile phone system was first introduced in North America and was the main mobile phone system throughout the “80′s” all the way into the new millennium.

However, in 2008 AMPS was no longer a mandatory requirement, therefore larger phone companies like Verizon have stopped using the service all together.

Getting back to the more technical aspects of AMPS; it uses a considerable amount of bandwidth in order for large groups of people to use their cell phones. In AMPS, main call centers have the ability to assign certain phone channels to certain cell phones strictly based on signal strength and the quality of phone reception; this enables the exact same signal to be used multiple times in multiple locations without any type of static or interference with the phone call.

Basically this idea pioneered the ability to have a large number of mobile devices all supported over a large geographical area. Some of the downfalls of AMPS are things like the lack of protection from outside listeners… It is very susceptible to pick up annoying static and also makes it very easy for people with scanners to listen in on conversations. There was also a big problem in the 1990′s with what is known today as ‘cloning’. This is where someone with the right equipment could steal your cell phones serial and mobile id number and basically make calls for free at your expense.

As you can imagine, this little problem turned into an epidemic and cost the major phone companies millions of dollars; the problem was quickly fixed with the birth of RF fingerprinting… This allowed phone services to see subtle differences in the phone’s signal and therefore shut down any suspicious calls being made.

This did however give some hassles to legitimate phone users. For instance, if they had to replace an old battery or antenna. AMPS was eventually rendered obsolete with the birth of digital AMPS which tightened and improved security on mobile phones. Even with all of the new technology today cloning is still possible; however it is rarely if ever used anymore because of the cheap prices of today’s cell phone plans.

Another reason analog AMPS was weeded out of existence is because of a FCC decision made in 2002. This ruling allowed phone providers to use services and systems other than the analog AMPS. Before this the FCC only allowed two networks per carrier; one was a wireline side and the other was a non-wireline side for wireless devices. Because of the growth in popularity of mobile devices the FCC allowed for an increase in the amount of channels that carriers could have.

Not requiring the AMPS standard allowed for newer and better technology which meant less static noise and overall better phone performance. Some services rely heavily on AMPS such as OnStar. When this technology was first developed, AMPS was the best communication technology available so that’s what was used… When the FCC changed its policies about the use of AMPS companies started to switch over quickly but with millions of subscribers, this is no easy task.

ADT, a home security service also used AMPS and had to go through the arduous task of switching over every one of its users to newer technology… This involved so much work that ADT actually had to ask the FCC for an extended deadline on the AMPS switchover. In early 2008 the vast majority of companies that used basic analog systems for communication quickly switch everything over to digital.