Radio Shack Is Back

[_jabber_]

GREAT NEWS!!!

July 1st, 2005 was a great day for RadioShack as we are once again using our brand in Canada – a brand that has been held in the highest esteem by Canadians for more than 30 years.

Now that this milestone has passed, we are proud to be heading into a new chapter with our brand in Canada. We are vigourously finalizing our plans to expand our chain of specialty consumer electronics stores in Canada as part of our North American expansion strategy. Our model in Canada will be to supplement dealer-operated stores with company-owned stores.

These new Canadian stores, together with existing RadioShack dealers, will tap into a vast and powerful network of sales channels, including: nearly 7,000 company and dealer stores in the U.S.; over 100 RadioShack locations in Mexico and more than 600 Sprint & SAM'S CLUB wireless kiosks in the U.S.

RadioShack remains 100% committed to Canada. RadioShack has pioneered many new concepts and products in retail and we will continue to do so, offering Canadians the very best in selection, quality and expertise in consumer electronics.

We plan to enhance and improve upon the customer experience that Canadians have already enjoyed for more than 30 years by tailoring products and services for the Canadian consumer in a new, fresh environment and store format. Stay tuned for great things.

 

[drew6553]

so hey radioshack can you come up with a competitor to the uniden 396 and also can you tell us if your scanners will be able to come into compliance once the US frequency rebanding takes place?

 

[mciupa]

hey radioshack can you tell us if your scanners will come into compliance once the US frequency rebanding takes place?

I think the latest two will , Pro-96 and Pro-2096.

GRE / RadioShack's R & D team are hard at work trying to better Uniden as we speak...

Have a look

 

[drew6553]

well the us radio shack already has the 96 and 2096 but they cannot garuntee or seem to be looking ot see if they will work after rebanding and the 96 and 2096 has been out for a year of since compared to the 396's short carrer which has been like 2-3 months

 

[SCPD]

Well, I hope it won't be like the final years of Radio Shack here. They just sold junk. No scanners, CB's, antennas, nothing like the good old days. Hopefully they will give us a way to find things easier so we can actually walk into a store to buy an antenna instead of always having to go online here and pay insane rates for shipping.

 

[hypersight]

well the us radio shack already has the 96 and 2096 but they cannot garuntee or seem to be looking ot see if they will work after rebanding and the 96 and 2096 has been out for a year of since compared to the 396's short carrer which has been like 2-3 months

This maybe a silly question, but I hope you will answer it, but what exactly does "rebanding" mean?
Thanks.....I'm a bit of a noobie.

 

[hypersight]

This maybe a silly question, but I hope you will answer it, but what exactly does "rebanding" mean?
Thanks.....I'm a bit of a noobie.

Ok I finally found a good a link on rebanding http://www.wpascanner.com/reband/reband.htm

I guess my next question is will it have any affect to us here in Canada if we buy a scanner from the USA that has been rebanded?

 

[drew6553]

the reason rebanding is causeing a problem is because since those freq were designated as cell phone freq it's illegal for a us scanner to pick up those frequencies so we cannot program those frequencies.the only problem you will have with a scanner from the us is that you wont be able to program however when rebanding takes place there will hopefully be an update for us scanners allowing us to hear those freqs. for all i know canada allows their citizens to monitor cellphonee conversations on frequency the us rebanding will probably have little effect on candain scannist

 

[mikewazowski]

the reason rebanding is causeing a problem is because since those freq were designated as cell phone freq it's illegal for a us scanner to pick up those frequencies so we cannot program those frequencies.

Unfortunately, you don't understand what is happening.

Nextel is giving up a bunch of their allocations lower in the 851-869Mhz band in exchange for the old public safety frequencies in the upper end of the band.

It has nothing to do with cellphones. I think your confusing Nextel service with cellular service which occupies from 869-894Mhz.

When the rebanding takes effect, the channel numbers sent over the control channel will change. Your scanner's firmware will need to be upgraded in order to understand the new channel plan. If you have an older scanner, this might not be possible.

I'm not sure how it will affect Canadians. I haven't read enough on the issue to figure it out (yet).

I'm sure scanner manufacturers will allow selection of the old channel plan for systems that have not been affected.

 

[_jabber_]

"Radio Shack World'????????

My vision ( and I hope someone from Radio Shack reads this ) is for Radio Shack to have a store(s) strictly with Radio Equipment ( scanning/ ham/gps) and accessories, possibly in the Steeles / 400 Area to get some compitition going. As for the rest of the stores, Id like to see them develop the name 'The Shack' or update their corporate logo without losing their identity, have their stores modeled to the US to a degree but have some unique identity

 

[DaveH]

Nextel is giving up a bunch of their allocations lower in the 851-869Mhz band in exchange for the old public safety frequencies in the upper end of the band.

It has nothing to do with cellphones. I think your confusing Nextel service with cellular service which occupies from 869-894Mhz.

Nextel's iDEN channels which are 25kHz wide were interspersed with regular 16kHz analog channels of other users, which caused intereference to users including public safety. This should have never happened, but did anyway. Nextel gets exclusive use of the 866-869MHz (previously public safety) sub-band but gives up other allocations below this. This topic has been discussed far and wide, not much point to repeating most of it, except to wonder how this will impact Canada as most of the Canadian population is within 100km of border with the U.S.

Dave

 

[SCPD]

I'm sure Industry Canada is all over it--Although nothing on their web site lol.
They'll no doubt make a decision right quick...Say within 5 or 6 years of the changeover in the U.S.

Hopefully Uniden will make a Canadian and a U.S. version firmware on new models so that there will be no issues until we "become one" with our southern friends. More immediately confusing will be the new Daylight Saving Time issue. Some fun.

Nextel's iDEN channels which are 25kHz wide were interspersed with regular 16kHz analog channels of other users, which caused intereference to users including public safety. This should have never happened, but did anyway. Nextel gets exclusive use of the 866-869MHz (previously public safety) sub-band but gives up other allocations below this. This topic has been discussed far and wide, not much point to repeating most of it, except to wonder how this will impact Canada as most of the Canadian population is within 100km of border with the U.S.

Dave

 

[hypersight]

so hey radioshack can you come up with a competitor to the uniden 396 and also can you tell us if your scanners will be able to come into compliance once the US frequency rebanding takes place?

You can ask them that question here: http://www.radioshackisback.com/en/askaquestion.aspx

 

[mikewazowski]

Hopefully Uniden will make a Canadian and a U.S. version firmware on new models so that there will be no issues until we "become one" with our southern friends.

Doubtful.

However, since rebanding will not take place instantly across the US, there will have to be provision in any future models to allow using the old channel plan as well as the new channel plan.

This could be as simple as adding in the capability to program in ranges (as is already done on vhf/uhf) of channels. The user would be responsible for selecting the right ranges based on whether the system has been rebanded.

The Pro96 is already capable of ranges on 800Mhz so users will only have to program in the correct ranges for the rebanded systems.

Uniden scanners will need this capability added to 800Mhz.