Is it time to lift the cellular coverage ban?

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MStep

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As I think I mentioned in another thread, unless you like listening to digital hash noise and other anomalies, there is nothing to listen to on the cellular bands. These are not the early days of cell phones and cordless devices-- and boy, THOSE were the days. The AT&T Bell 152 MHz frequencies were hopping, the early 900 MHZ cell band was full of great convos, and those cordless devices that neighbors were using were quite an earful of information. (I recall one neighbor who did not have a cordless phone, and I "graciously" made her a gift of one on a Christmas eve. Guilty as charged!!!)

I've got plenty of pre-law radios capable of monitoring cellular. There ain't nothin' to hear there folks. It would be a battle not worth fighting.
 

KC3ECJ

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As I think I mentioned in another thread, unless you like listening to digital hash noise and other anomalies, there is nothing to listen to on the cellular bands. These are not the early days of cell phones and cordless devices-- and boy, THOSE were the days. The AT&T Bell 152 MHz frequencies were hopping, the early 900 MHZ cell band was full of great convos, and those cordless devices that neighbors were using were quite an earful of information. (I recall one neighbor who did not have a cordless phone, and I "graciously" made her a gift of one on a Christmas eve. Guilty as charged!!!)

I've got plenty of pre-law radios capable of monitoring cellular. There ain't nothin' to hear there folks. It would be a battle not worth fighting.

I got some Russian wireless over the air television transverter that I fed into a USB SDR receiver that shows the big wideband digital signals on the waterfall from some GHz LTE band.
 

trentbob

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For a time in those days, I lived near a professional office complex. Cell phones were expensive and so was airtime. Aside from the salacious, there were attorneys bad mouthing clients, colleagues and judges, physicians discussing medical conditions and procedures with other medical professionals, realtors bragging about commissions and offloading problem properties, etc.

Of course, there were the constant complaints about spouses, children, neighbors, etc.
I used to listen to the cordless phones. You quickly found out what your neighbors really thought about you.
I agree I did enjoy all that stuff and it all happened. For me it never got old until it was gone.

I got a kick out of the baby monitors especially when the baby slept in the parents bedroom. They would leave it on all the time for when they went to the kitchen or somewhere else in the house but left it on all the time so... it was always on in the bedroom LOL.

At my job, the thing I got the biggest kick out of was... since police communication was not encrypted at that time. The cops/ public officials would say, call me on the bag phone, we have company. Yeah. Of course being old school, held to strict ethics, which is a joke today, I was very careful about ever using what I heard. Different world.
 

bearcatrp

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I figured the government would quietly use the old cell phone band for there own use. Will have to check it out sometime to see if I hear anything.
 

mikewazowski

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No point wasting any time. It’s all pretty much wideband digital except the old 2G channels and their not listenable to either.
 

217

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The RS pro51 out of the box. I instantly recognized some of the voices because all the NASCAR drivers had the old cellphones. Good old days for sure.
 

gary123

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Its nice to reminisce about the good old days. I am getting the general feeling that most of us would like to have the frequency range back even if there is nothing listenable on it. Those who will say if there is nothing listenable on it why do you want it? There is nothing on 25.000 mhz either but that does not mean it should be removed from the scanners range.
 

Randyk4661

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I was more of a cordless phone person. I had a 24 hour monitoring post set up on the neighbor nextdoor because she would call the city for the smallest infraction on the street.
When I would listen to cell phones Saturday and Sunday mornings were great as the boyfriends were calling the girlfriends and apologizing for the night before.
As for repealing the law, do you want to slow down congress even more? Both parties will instantly take opposing sides regardless of what they think should happen.
 

StoliRaz

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"Let sleeping dogs lie" You might open a can of worms and the Cancel Culture might ban the entire activity on monitoring everything!
True, the stupidity of the cancer culture crowd is limitless. I'd rather not listen to them whine about things they know jack spit about
 

danesgs

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Heard my first cell call on a TV tuner on UHF. Later a PRO-2006 listening to all the same caca. Those were the days. Even had some guy on the cell tell his girlfriend/lover/cheater how secure their call was. THAT really broke me up laughing.
 

PACNWDude

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Back in the early 1990's I had a Radio Shack/ Realistic Pro-2006 scanner. Living in a military dorm and on a small base, meant lots of cordless and cellular phones, as many people had enough money for some luxury items, and phones were cheaper than large CRT TV' sets and component stereo equipment. Like other's have said, that was an interesting time. My Pro-2006 came in handy right up until about 1998, then I migrated to Rhode and Schwarz test equipment. Now, in 2021 that Pro-2006 still gets use as one great air band receiver. I now use test equipment, radio service monitors for "scanning" now, but wish consumer gear was not restricted, as there are some things to see and listen to in that band.....all the old tricks are new again, and encryption is still a hassle, sometimes expensive, and takes some skill to set up. A lot is still in the clear, to include lots of unmanned aircraft, that have wide open transceivers, software defined equipment, and much of it is for testing propagation or RF signals. Much like WSPR but at higher than Hf freqs. Do miss the late 1980's to mid 1990's and the heyday of the Pro-200X scanners (Bill Cheek mods too) though.
 

ladn

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I'm a big supporter of so called "sunset provisions" in laws whereby the law expires at a certain date and must be actively renewed. The ECPA of 1986 unfortunately did not include such a provision and I doubt it will ever be changed due to Federal inertia and (probable) instance from the cell phone lobby that such regulation is still necessary.

I remember in the early days of cell coverage listening to conversations on my "clipped' RS scanner. Like @trentbob ,it was extremely helpful to me as a news photographer for gathering on scene information. While I never owned one, I recall Bill Cheek (aka "Supersparks") designed and marketed an add on board that would interface with a RS scanner and track a phone's ESN which made it much easier to follow a phone call as it moved through the network of cell sites.

VHF low band baby monitor frequencies were fun to monitor, along with the old MTS/IMTS mobile telephone systems. Most of the local/state systems had only a few channels and the Fed systems (think SS/FBI) were wide open.

Good times!
 

N8YX

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Laughs in R7000.

I have a bank of these which can run in search -> handoff mode. All have been modified for much better AM/SSB performance via swapping their stock IF filters for CFJ455K equivalents (which Icom could have used in the first place). When they're not being used for ham or low-band monitoring I'll let the S/W run them in trunk detection/analysis mode. If DSD Plus can ever pick LTE or similar streams apart they're ready to go.

As this "law" stands, it's pretty much worthless and should be sunsetted. We may blame Billy Tauzin for the mess.
 
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