It's last call for analog holdout

Chris Sorensen
Business Reporter


Kosta Tsiriotakis has lost his conversation piece.

The 27-year-old personal trainer and security guard was scheduled to be cut off from his analog cellphone service early this morning, meaning he will no longer be able to raise eyebrows in his Danforth Ave. neighbourhood with his 1980s-era "brick" cellphone, which is more than a foot long and weighs about as much as a baseball bat.

"I would be walking down the street and no one could believe it," said Tsiriotakis just hours before Rogers Wireless pulled the plug on its analog service as part of a nation-wide conversion to an all-digital cellphone network.

"I'd go in to Starbucks and people would be like, `Hey man, does that thing actually work?'"

A self-confessed "retro junkie," Tsiriotakis said he bought his Motorola DynaTAC cellphone on eBay five years ago for $55 (U.S.) and fell in love with the not-so-sleek piece of telecommunications hardware that first went on sale in 1984.

"At first it was a novelty, but then I realized how good it was," he said, adding that he finds many modern cellphones to be flimsy and less "powerful."

Tsiriotakis' choice of phone is more than just a goofy-looking piece of outdated technology. The DynaTAC is widely regarded as being the first truly mobile phone. It was invented by Motorola's Dr. Martin Cooper, who reportedly made the world's first cellular phone call – to a rival at Bell Labs – on a prototype version in 1973.

But technology marches on.

Rogers Communications Inc., the country's largest wireless provider, said in January that analog signals do not have a future on its network, which is scheduled to become all-digital as of 12:01 a.m. today. That means Tsiriotakis will be forced to hang up his "brick" for good or seek out another carrier that still offers the service.

"The shutdown has been more than two years in the making," said Elizabeth Hamilton, a spokesperson for Rogers.

While analog cellphones were once the industry norm, wireless carriers have been slowly phasing out the voice-only service in favour of digital, which not only offers higher quality signals, but allows carriers to transmit more data such as video or music files, now the fastest-growing category of sales for wireless providers.

Rivals BCE Inc., the parent of Bell Canada, and Telus Corp. both continue to offer analog services, but with nearly 95 per cent of the country now covered by digital networks, it's only a matter of time before analog is phased out all together, observers say.

"I haven't seen an analog customer around for a long time," said Marc Choma, director of communications for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. He said the first analog cellphones appeared in Canada in 1985.

Rogers would not say how many analog subscribers were actually being cut off yesterday, but said in a statement that the "vast majority" of the company's remaining 280,000 analog customers had made the switch over the past few months after being offered free digital cellphones.

Tsiriotakis said his last analog call, to a close friend, was to be placed at about 11:55 last night. After that, he planned to begin easing himself into the digital age with a rare European version of the DynaTAK that dates from 1994 and was only available in Europe. He found the phone, which came equipped with digital technology and still works on today's networks, on eBay and is having it shipped from Germany.

"I'm upgrading to a digital brick," he said proudly. "This phone was way ahead of its time."

This was found at TheStar.com