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Old 27-02-2011, 07:56
southlad
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Near to where I live there is 2 masts next to each other, one is 3/Tmobile and the other is Orange.

With the merger of Tmobile/Orange, will they get rid of one of these masts?
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Old 27-02-2011, 19:40
Thine Wonk
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They are decommissioning all but 3,000 Orange masts, so yes it's almost a certainty.
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Old 28-02-2011, 06:11
Resonance
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They are decommissioning all but 3,000 Orange masts, so yes it's almost a certainty.
How many masts do Orange have in total do you know?
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Old 01-03-2011, 22:19
Thine Wonk
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Somewhere between 10,000 and 18,000 I think but I couldn't tell you which are 2G / 3G or both.

The 3,000 are being left in place for capacity rather than coverage so you might be lucky, but the numbers are against you.
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Old 01-03-2011, 23:22
Resonance
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Somewhere between 10,000 and 18,000 I think but I couldn't tell you which are 2G / 3G or both.

The 3,000 are being left in place for capacity rather than coverage so you might be lucky, but the numbers are against you.
Thanks for the info. I think I should be OK where I live. We are covered by an excellently sighted Orange mast that all the other networks are no doubt jealous of. The chances of Orange ditching it in favour of the T-Mobile mast that is in such a bad place I think are minimal.

Fingers crossed
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Old 01-03-2011, 23:45
old bill2
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Now this seems crazy to me. Both networks (in my area at least) are crawling down to a snails pace at peak times. To then cut most of Oranges cells and use T-Mobile over stretched network for both networks just seems mad.
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Old 02-03-2011, 10:09
plymouthbloke1974
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Now this seems crazy to me. Both networks (in my area at least) are crawling down to a snails pace at peak times. To then cut most of Oranges cells and use T-Mobile over stretched network for both networks just seems mad.
Where sites are fully integrated, the capacity will increase.
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Old 02-03-2011, 10:41
xtaz
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Don't know where on earth you got that info from. Where sites are duplicated and coverage can be provided from a single site then *either* the tmo or orange site will be decommissioned depending on which is most cost effective for ground rent and which offers the best future use. Where one network has coverage and the other doesn't that site will be left as it is. To suggest that most orange sites will be removed and all the tmo ones left is ridiculous. Especially as tmo only really have the better coverage in London.
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Old 02-03-2011, 11:12
paulker
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Where sites are fully integrated, the capacity will increase.
Plymouth bloke,

Do you have any update on when the mid call handover and 3g merge is happening?
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Old 02-03-2011, 11:14
plymouthbloke1974
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Don't know where on earth you got that info from. Where sites are duplicated and coverage can be provided from a single site then *either* the tmo or orange site will be decommissioned depending on which is most cost effective for ground rent and which offers the best future use. Where one network has coverage and the other doesn't that site will be left as it is. To suggest that most orange sites will be removed and all the tmo ones left is ridiculous. Especially as tmo only really have the better coverage in London.
I can actually tell you that most of what has been said here is true. FWIW, most of T-Mobiles masts are being decommissioned in Northern Ireland and Orange's masts being used. T-Mobile and Three already have an established RAN share agreement in 3G, and Orange will become part of that from April. Although I cannot tell you the exact figure of Orange sites being decommissioned, I can say for certainty it is the majority of them.
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Old 02-03-2011, 11:25
paulker
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I can actually tell you that most of what has been said here is true. FWIW, most of T-Mobiles masts are being decommissioned in Northern Ireland and Orange's masts being used. T-Mobile and Three already have an established RAN share agreement in 3G, and Orange will become part of that from April. Although I cannot tell you the exact figure of Orange sites being decommissioned, I can say for certainty it is the majority of them.
So were arnt getting a super network. Orange customers basically are going to have less coverage overall then. Orange has a great signal at my house. T-mobile sucks at my house. Lucky my contract ends soon. Next in the signal quality at my house is Vodafone. O2 being the worst ie utter pisch.
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Old 02-03-2011, 11:37
xtaz
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Well if that *is* true then it sucks. As I have absolutely zero tmo coverage at my house and the orange coverage is only just about usable if the phone is in the right place in the house. I know about the three ran share thing but that shouldn't make a lot of difference. Once the two RAN's are merged properly rather than the half-way-house roaming they have presently into one there should be no distinction between tmo and orange sites, they'll both be on the same logical network so it makes no difference to three which physical site is used.

Incidently I work for "Everything Everywhere" and have not heard anything like what you've described myself. Everything I have heard internally suggests that whichever site is most beneficial to use will be kept and the other decommissioned so you can see why I'm questioning it.
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Old 02-03-2011, 12:28
old bill2
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What sort of time scale are they planning to close masts down over ? Orange will lose a lot of customers if they are cutting back on masts so much. Take the town I live in. Orange cover the whole town with 4 masts. T-Mobile only have 2 mast and cover the main parts of the town.
I sadly cant see a SUPER network coming out of this. Network congestion and coverage will get worse. The only people who will be happy will be the share holders.
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Old 02-03-2011, 18:02
Thine Wonk
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Well if that *is* true then it sucks. As I have absolutely zero tmo coverage at my house and the orange coverage is only just about usable if the phone is in the right place in the house. I know about the three ran share thing but that shouldn't make a lot of difference. Once the two RAN's are merged properly rather than the half-way-house roaming they have presently into one there should be no distinction between tmo and orange sites, they'll both be on the same logical network so it makes no difference to three which physical site is used.

Incidently I work for "Everything Everywhere" and have not heard anything like what you've described myself. Everything I have heard internally suggests that whichever site is most beneficial to use will be kept and the other decommissioned so you can see why I'm questioning it.
The T-mobile and Three shared masts are all linked up and built for the network share by Nokia Siemens, the way they link together, the network equipment used and so on.... So obviously it makes the most sense to move Orange to the new standard and not Three and T-mobile to the Orange network configuration.

The Three and T-mobile network is apparently technically very impressive, scaled nicely, redundancy and faults all considered properly, built for data, built for the purpose, ready to be upgraded from a network point of view with faster connectivity when needed in future generations of technology such as LTE.

Why would you go the 'Orange' route when it's simpler to just decommission Orange all together and add 3,000 masts in to the newly built network at 3,000 existing Orange sites for capacity.

Of course with the power of effectively 3 networks worth of customers that means the investment in the network will be good from a point of view of adding new sites, keeping up with capacity and when it comes to future upgrades.
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Old 02-03-2011, 20:46
FiendishlyC
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When I asked Three's social media rep if they had made any announcement about the future of the mast sharing announcement they said they hadn't.

Do we know what the future Three network will physically look like? Will it share sites with EE or will there be a different arrangement?

Virgin has already announced it will have full access to the merged EE network, but Three seem to be playing their cards close to their chest which makes me wonder why...
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Old 03-03-2011, 01:06
Mystic Eddy
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When I asked Three's social media rep if they had made any announcement about the future of the mast sharing announcement they said they hadn't.

Do we know what the future Three network will physically look like? Will it share sites with EE or will there be a different arrangement?

Virgin has already announced it will have full access to the merged EE network, but Three seem to be playing their cards close to their chest which makes me wonder why...
Once the EE network is up and running, they will include 3 due to the networks all being part of the MBNL, so like Virgin, they will get full use of the new network.
On 3 September 2010 Everything Everywhere announced that Orange would join Mobile Broadband Network Ltd (MBNL), the 3G network sharing joint venture formed in December 2007 between T-Mobile UK and Hutchison 3G UK (H3G UK). MBNL will become a 50/50 joint venture between Three UK and Everything Everywhere, with Orange contributing several thousand of its base stations for network sharing purposes. MBNL was created after T-Mobile and Three UK agreed to pool their respective 3G infrastructures in a 50/50 joint venture. At present MBNL’s HSPA-based infrastructure covers more than 90% of the British population, and by the end of 2010 this figure is expected to rise to more than 98%, with the JV having already consolidated more than 7,000 of the 12,500 cell sites that the initial two partners had said will be merged by October 2010.
Source
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Old 03-03-2011, 09:25
xtaz
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Amusingly if the orange site near me is decommisioned and they rely on the t-mobile one for coverage it will mean I have no coverage at all in my house. I'm an on-call engineer for several EE services so that'll be good. Might have to get them to buy me a vodafone sim
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Old 03-03-2011, 09:50
plymouthbloke1974
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Amusingly if the orange site near me is decommisioned and they rely on the t-mobile one for coverage it will mean I have no coverage at all in my house. I'm an on-call engineer for several EE services so that'll be good. Might have to get them to buy me a vodafone sim
They won't decommision an Orange site where there is no T-Mobile coverage.
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Old 03-03-2011, 10:11
paulker
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They won't decommision an Orange site where there is no T-Mobile coverage.

I have excellent orange 2g and quite good 3g at my house. T-Mob is very average and quite poor indoors. Would they decommision either of these sites? The two are less than 1k apart but the Orange one is a lot taller and nearer me with less obstacles. To be honest I think they need to keep both.
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Old 03-03-2011, 10:28
xtaz
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They won't decommision an Orange site where there is no T-Mobile coverage.
Thing is there is t-mo coverage outside of my house. Just absolutely zero inside. So as far as the network planners will be concerned there is coverage.
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