[s-cars] Audiphone upgrade

[Steve Eiche]

Michael,
You are exactly right.  I often make the mistake of refering to 800Mhz
as "analog" where there are many "digital" technologies at that
frequency regionally.  That said, the old analog phones (like the
factory Audi phones) are all in the 800 Mhz range and that is what the
antennas in our cars were designed for exclusively.

I generally recommend a dual band antenna for use with our systems as it
is designed to be universal to be used on any system.  If you know that
you will never have a phone that operates outside of the 800 MHz range,
the Audi antenna will suffice, albeit with a longer cable installed.  In
my opinion, if you are replacing the rf cable anyway, you might as well
put in a new antenna.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Lawton [mailto:lawtonmk at yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 11:05 AM
To: Steve Eiche; jpostup at yahoo.com; iduff at rcn.com
Cc: len.mckenzie at rogers.com; s-car-list at audifans.com
Subject: RE: [s-cars] Audiphone upgrade


Steve,

I agree with everything you said except....

"The Audi factory antennas are designed for analog
frequencies only (800Mhz range), so digital phones
will actually have worse performance with the antenna
than without."

The external antenna is designed for 800 MHz
frequencies, but in nearly every populated area (every
one I know of) in the country, 800 MHz is used for
both Digital and Analog service. In Boston, Cingular
and Verizon both offer digital and analog service,
only using the 800 MHz band.

Some digital phones are dual-band, others are not.
Simply being dual-technology (digital and analog) does
not automatically make a phone dual-band. In fact,
most of the early digital phones are single-band, and
only operate at 800 MHz.

So it's not a simple question of digital and analog -
you need to know which band your phone is capable (and
programmed) to use. Switching to a dual-band antenna
won't do anything, if you have a single-band phone.

Mike

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