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January 14, 2005

When carriers convert their TDMA networks to CDMA they'll be tempted to reuse their cell site antennas to cut costs. Bad idea. Although we think of antennas as being technology independent they really aren't in cellular radio. And there's a different way to work with CDMA antennas. Mark van der Hoek (internal link) relates:

"I haven't worked on GSM systems myself. As to antennas, the main thing is to CONTROL YOUR PROPAGATION!!!! The GSM operators of the world are going to find out the hard way that they cannot use the same antennas for W-CDMA that they have used for GSM. You cannot frequency plan around bad sidelobes in CDMA! Be sure that you understand the different behavior of sidelobes when down tilting antennas -- few do! There is a widespread notion that down tilting an antenna causes the sidelobes to increase. This is false.

The sidelobes do NOT increase relative to where they were before. They SEEM to because the main lobe decreases, so the side lobes increase RELATIVE TO THE MAIN LOBE. But in truth, the energy at 90 degrees is NOT traveling any farther than it was.

Also, understand the difference, especially with sidelobes, in electrical vs. mechanical downtilt. And don't be afraid to combine electrical with mechanical tilt.

When mounting antennas on a rooftop, be careful to pay attention to the shadowing (and possible upward reflections) of the rooftop itself. I've seen a lot of antennas pointed into a roof, and engineers wondering why the site doesn't cover like it should!

Know your pattern, and know where you want to serve with a given sector or site, then choose an antenna that only goes where you want it! You can't adjust parameters enough to make up for poor design, especially in CDMA. Do a good design, and default parameters will work well enough. Do a poor design, and you're sunk.

More on antennas and patterns and some neat looking graphics from Mark here (internal link)

January 13, 2005

3:14 a.m. Who else is up in the middle of the night, revising pages, all to bring you a Quality Website Experience? No one! Okay, maybe a few. But darn few.

Excellent progress yesterday. Less than 20 broken links remain to be fixed. Alexa.com says privateline has 3,156 links but I don't know how they determine that. I can't imagine that many external links but internal links would total over 4,500. Hmm.

Secret Service Reveals Its Records Stolen By Hacker

Do you know what the difference is between a hacker and someone who tracks them down? You have to train an investigator to hack. But a hacker lives the life. The hacker doesn't go home at the end of each day to watch T.V. and drink a beer. No, a hacker drinks a beer and watches T.V. and hacks at the same time. While at home. Or at work. Or school. Wherever. Whenever. It's a lifestyle, not an occupation. Something loved, not learned. That's why the SS and the FBI are sometimes so clueless and often one step behind, despite their expensive computers, fantastic wiretapping tools, and huge budgets. You can't buy cleverness with a checkbook. Anyway, from the AP . . .

WASHINGTON (AP)--A hacker broke into a wireless carrier's network over at least seven months and read e-mails and personal computer files of hundreds of customers, including the U.S. Secret Service agent investigating the hacker, the government said Wednesday.

Nicolas Lee Jacobsen, 21, of Santa Ana, Calif., a computer engineer, has been charged with the break-in in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Court records said an online offer in March 2004, traced to Jacobsen, claimed hackers could look up the name, Social Security number, birth date and passwords for voice mails and e-mails for T-Mobile customers.

Cherry, the Secret Service spokesman, said the agency's own e-mail servers were not affected by the T-Mobile break-in. "The account was a personal account of a Secret Service agent that was for a time compromised," Cherry said.

January 12, 2005

Scores of pages revised yesterday. mostly by pulling dead links as described in yesterday's notes. I've tried to leave the old URL, such as:

http://www.agcs.com/aboutv2/history/index.htm

By using the Internet Archive, their so called Wayback Machine, you might be able to find the old page, although probably without images. Worth trying if you are desperate to find an old file. As they describe the process:

"Browse through 30 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter."

Click here http://www.archive.org/web/web.php or on the graphic below to go to their site:

January 11, 2005

Site maintenance

I'm revising scores of pages at this site with dead links. This is link rot, I provide a link to another site and then after a few months they kill the page I am referring to. They take it down or put in under another file name. The result? You click on a link at privateline and "Boom", you get a "File Not Found" error. Again. A third of all external links die each year. I'm now putting in far fewer links. The following shows just three of these dead links, I have at least 100 more to correct. The worst problem? This site maintenance work takes away from any new writing. Very discouraging:

1. 404: www.agcs.com/aboutv2/history/index.htm

Source: www.privateline.com/dailynotes/index9.html

2. 404: www.agcs.com/supportv2/techpapers/gateway.htm

Source: www.privateline.com/issues/pl.No.12.html

3. 404: www.alecbell.org/BellvGlobe.html

Source: www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistoryA/refute.htm

Telecoms and babes

I've recommended Ericsson's On magazine for years. They're out with a new issue but they haven't put it on-line yet. Bookmark this URL for when they do: http://www.ericsson.com/about/publications/onmagazine/

Besides the great articles, you'll sometimes see pictures of impossibly cute and healthy Swedish women. Like photographer Frida Hedberg:

Speaking of women, an on-line test told me that I am most attracted to the type of woman pictured below. Duh! You think? Is the sky blue? Probably 100% of men would find such a woman attractive. The test also said I was more concerned about looks than 93% of men, that I was exceptionally choosy. Well, okay. Guilty.

January 10, 2005

*228

Q. I am a Verizon customer and am having problems with my cell phone. Customer service says to dial *228 to reprogram it. That doesn't help. Just what is *228?

A. From Mark van der Hoek

"*228 updates the mobile's PRL, the Preferred Roaming List. That's a list of what channels and what operators the phone can use, and affects your ability to roam. If the PRL isn't right, you can have problems. Unfortunately, updating the PRL has become the 'One Size Fits All' solution for customer service reps who really don't know anything technical. They've had just enough training to think they do, so you won't get anywhere arguing with them. Telling you to do a *228 gets you off their back, so their call times look good to their boss. You must go past the tier one people to get anyone with any real knowledge, and even then they usually know a lot less than they think they do."

Have a problem with a specific make and model of cell phone? Check out http://www.howardforums.com (external link) to search for more information.

January 9, 2005

I'm cleaning up the 30+ pages of my telephone history series (internal link). Let me know if you want to contribute or send me an error report (internal link) for any dead link or graphic that doesn't load.

January 8, 2005

What happened to Telephone Number One?

The following quotation is from The Meaning of Everything: The Story of The Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester. It's an excellent read. James Murray was the OED's most important editor and its chief architect. I can't yet confirm this story but most details seem consistent with Bell biographies. One note, Bell's original telephone consisted of two separate parts or pieces, the transmitter and the receiver. The story suggests a single instrument:

"Murray's already-mentioned childhood friendship with Alexander Graham Bell -- Bell had been best man at Murray's wedding to Ada -- continued to flourish when Murray lived in Oxford, with the consequence that after Bell had invented the first working telephone he presented it to Murray in gratitude for teaching about acoustics and electricity back in their younger Edinburgh days. Murray found the wood-and-bakelite arrangement somewhat uninspiring, and consigned it to the attic."

"In the 1980s the present occupant of 78 Banbury Road found himself at the AT&T museum in New Jersey, where the curator was bemoaning the fact that Telephone Number One had never been found. A search of the Oxford attic turned up nothing; but the elderly gentleman who had bought the house from Murray's widow was found, and reported that during the Second World War soldiers had been billeted at the house and, during one exceptionally frigid winter, had used all available bits of rubbish they could find in the attic as firewood."

"If this story is to be believed, the world's first telephone appears to have gone up in smoke, to keep a party of ice-cold infantrymen from freezing."

January 7, 2005
Heavy rain in the northern part of the great central valley of California. Good news for us gold prospectors. Sustained rain shifts gravel in river bars around, often exposing new pockets of gold to be dredged in late spring. How are the rain forecasts in your area? I wonder. How far would telephony and radio have advanced if these fields were no more certain than weather predictions?

The ride to Rio Vista with the cat was indeed beautiful but Montel's performance was not. Poor guy, he threw up in his cat carrier and had a nasty bowel movement on the ride over. His digestive tract problems continue at home, I follow him now with old towels and rags, cleaning up as I go. I am fortunate to have a carpet steamer, I'll have to use it today. Arrgh . . .

Ken Schmidt of SteelintheAir.com (internal link) has started writing a blog, current comments on the tower lease trade. Click here to go there (external link)

It's Friday. Time to print something out to read during the weekend. Try this, Telnor's magazine, Telektronikk, their 100th anniversary issue entitled Perspectives in Telecommunications (external link.) Great reading. Arcane and essential information from Norway. More exotic than reindeer goulash. GSM, HF radio, and Inmarsat history. A social impact of the telephone piece. Hmm. I suggest you start reading this at work. What's more important?

I set my advertising rate (internal link) and put in a PayPal method for people to donate to privateline.com. Thanks in advance.

Was the first telephone that Bell and Watson made thrown into a fire? What happened to Telephone Number One? I'll have the details tommorow. . .

Selected Daily Notes Archive (Home Page has current notes)

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Free Telecom Magazines through TradPub.com. Click here to go there