I've noticed a few references to Everything Everywhere possibly launching an LTE Network on the 1800 MHz frequencies before the official '4G' auction happens.. I understand that have massive slices (and having to get of some)
However I remember that O2 used to use 1800MHz for GSM in some areas. Do they still have this and why couldn't they use this themselves for LTE seeing as its going to be one of the standard LTE frequencies world wide.. How about Vodafone?

O2 use 900MHz for 2G but they do have very little 1800MHz I think, as do vodafone... Orange and T-Mobile run their entire 2G networks on 1800MHz.

Spot on. O2 & Voda basically have a tiny slice which was awarded to them to fill capacity holes apparently. I can see this being used more in places to compensate for them taking a chunk out of the 900MHz band, Ie, In a busy 2G900 area, provision 2G1800 then take the band for 3G900, moving some users over to 2G1800. I'm just speculating mind. Maybe O2 will take the 1800MHz spectrum EE leave to move their 2G over to and use more 3G900? Who knows.

Yeah that's what i'm thinking cos it seems they are pretty serious about 3G900

The link below may be of interest as within the document there is a table which details how much spectrum each network has available at each frequency range. Everything Everywhere has by far the greatest capacity with 170MHz of paired and unpaired spectrum (although they have to sell 30MHz of that to comply with merger regulations). Even after they sell the 30MHz they will still have more spectruim than any of the others. Vodafone has 75.6MHz, 02 has 71MHz and Hutchison 3G UK (Three) has 34.3 MHz.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/bin...xes/annex6.pdf

very interesting, thanks for sharing!

Ditto. Didn't realise how dominant T-Orange were capacity wise at 2G. Even as seperate operators they have far more 2G capacity than O2/Vodafone. I can see Vodafone and O2 buying that 1800MHz spectrum tbh, and moving much more than half of their 2G900 band over to 3G, leaving just enough to provide good wide area/in building coverage, when compared to the 1800MHz spectrum they'd be replacing it with.

Just like O2 & Voda are totally dominant in the 900 spectrum. Yet they both whine about it... However EE has lots of advantages holding that amount of spectrum in the medium to long term at least. O2/Voda have the the short term sown up for now.

I agree, indoor 3G coverage is often a problem as it's usually at 2.1GHz