Options
Vodafone, O2 look to speed up UK 4G rollout with Arqiva deal
sethpet
Posts: 497 Forum Member
✭
Will be interesting to see what impact this has, nearly 17k locations now available to CTIL saving buckets of time sorting out individual lease agreements
http://www.mobileworldlive.com/vodafone-o2-look-speed-uk-4g-rollout-arqiva-deal
http://www.mobileworldlive.com/vodafone-o2-look-speed-uk-4g-rollout-arqiva-deal
Vodafone and O2 in the UK, which already work in partnership to avoid site duplication for their respective base station deployments, have entered into a ten-year deal with infrastructure company Arqiva. The immediate aim seems faster expansion of the two firms’ 4G footprints as they try to catch up with market leader EE.
Malcolm Collins, managing director of Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Ltd (CTIL) – the Vodafone/O2 network consolidation partnership formed in 2012 – welcomed the deal.
“The vast network of Arqiva’s sites across the UK is a core component of facilitating this consolidation for the mobile network operators,” he said. “This particularly offers us the opportunity to get the right site, at the right location, which will assist in driving better coverage, capacity and network speeds across cities, towns and rural locations for Vodafone and Telefonica UK customers.”
According to the press release, Arqiva will provide CTIL support on network consolidation and 4G deployment across the UK.
“Working in partnership with CTIL we are supporting the provision of the core footprint for the future of 4G in the UK,” said Nicolas Ott, Arqiva’s managing director of telecoms. “As 4G continues its rapid uptake allowing consumers to enjoy a richer array of content on mobile devices, it is imperative that the infrastructure is in place to support this growth.”
0
Comments
Do you have to turn every network thread Into some Wierd 3 / MBNL Obsession you have
You seem like you have a chip on your shoulder based on that last comment, a very strange outburst.
Good news for the UK landscape, less duplicate masts the better. Sharing sites is great news.
Good news for Arqiva, they need the income ;-)
There was zero need to even mention MBNL apart from your farcical need to constantly turn all discussion towards Three and MBNL.
So it's a discussion forum, but you can't mention relevant posts to the topic, like a similar deal to the one reported having happened in the past with the other network share in the UK. You don't think that's relevant to the effect it might have on O2 and Vodafone, or worth bringing into the discussion.
Right, ok...
What impact on the ctil 4G rollout will a legacy agreement between mbnl and arquiva have?
Should have zero.
Arqiva should gain more income and there should be more antennas on their masts / towers, and more equipment cabinets at the base. Assuming sufficient electric current supply to the site, and separate telco feeds for each cellco.
Well for a start, Arqiva gave MBNL access to 4,000 sites, and also helped work with the landlords to gain quick access when needed which speeded up the rollout of 3G and then 4G services.
The number of site accesses arranged by Arqiva for MBNL to access cell sites was 10,000 engineer visits s a month, with Arqiva's estates team doing a lot of the leg work to enable much faster upgrades. So this new arrangement should have a positive effect on O2 and Vodafone's ability to arrange site access and to be able to speed up their rollouts like it did for MBNL's dual carrier, 3G backhaul and EE's 4G rollout.
.....
Not sure about that. Don't forget O2 and Vodafone were separately already customers of Arqiva. Now they'll have a consolidated Cornerstone agreement instead. However they are bringing availability of a number of new sites to the deal so that will help them.
What Arqiva said today was that they currently have 8700 active sites (MBNL are on around 5000 of them) out of a total of over 16700 available.
It sounds like great news to me. Anything that can get Vodafone and O2 to speed up its roll out of 4G is fantastic. More competition will mean more choice and better pricing, so what's not to like?
However for mobile, you don't want to be high up on a big tower, but if it's a mobile site then you might want that extra meter and there may well be optimal placement. I don't know how Arqiva handle that, first on gets the place, or slightly different pricing or maybe it's not even an issue, I'd like to know though.
Whoever gets there first usually!
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the sites Arqiva manage were T-mobile's original 2G sites, long before MBNL.
I used to know people who worked at Arqiva, back in the days just after it became a separate company, but no longer. I think they've changed ownership a few times in the last 10 years.
As such this wouldn't speed up the rollout, it would just mean Arqiva weren't slowing it down....
Do you mean exchanges? do they normally have O2 cells on them dating back from the legacy BT days?
Around here the BT exchanges have *vodafone* masts on the roof; I always thought they were O2 but my friends with O2 have low signal nearby, but my work Voda has full signal.
Vodafone and O2 have recognised in order to support 4G and its evolved variants, they need to have more masts available to ensure adequate capacity compared to what they used to have. I read somewhere they were looking at the combined estate being in the region of 18k-22k mast infrastructure. Which I think would be comprable to MBNL.
Hi guys. Interesting thread ive just stumbled across. How fast do you think the roll out of 4g will be for both operators?? Will the still use the same antennas as they do now broadcasting both signals from on array?? When I say how fast will the roll out be I dont expect the country to be lighting up like a christmas tree, but will it be speedier than of late?
Cheers