With EE projected to have most cells LTE enabled by 2014 I don't see how O2 can just sit around. We're still in mobile internet infancy but in a few years everyone will want it. If they don't keep up they'll be finished. Simple as that!
I don't really see why EE would want more than 1 block of 800 either. They are only going to need it in certain places to get extra reach.
Having said that running it from every cell would massively increase capacity once all cells have fibre backhaul.
Up till now every technology has been run from a single frequency (mostly). One of the reasons 3G has capacity issues.
With LTE you could potentially have a cell with 800, 1800 and 2600. With unlimited backhaul such a cell would be unlikely to be swamped for a very long time.
A forward thinking telco would run all frequencies from every cell providing serious future proofing.

No because if you are going to sell a company it's worth is it's customer numbers and spectrum. At the moment customer wise it's the fastest growing network in Europe and spectum wise they just bought that 1800Mhz from EE so they could get moving on building their own LTE network (not part of MBNL), with Huawei base stations as opposed to Samsung which EE have chosen.

They did this because there was a chance they wouldn't win any spectrum at auction and so couldn't justify building out a network over many months that would literally be sold off or decommissioned! They still hope to get extra spectrum, even if it's in the 2600, but I don't think they are going to go crazy bidding for 800Mhz at huge amounts.

Li Ka Shing has been in Telecoms for years, former owner of Orange, which they sold at just the right time. You'd never sell now with all this growth happening, you'll sell when it's got good customer numbers and frequency assets. The CEO says it's absolutely not up for sale and not to worry for about 5 years.

Glad someone else noticed how ridiculous that map was. Nowhere was there any link to O2, the publisher of the website obviously used some generic map to illustrate UK coverage. O2 at the rollout of 3G only promised coverage of 20 major cities in 2004. As stated the coverage shown is way beyond that provided by 2G in 2012 let alone 3G in 2004, so at best it's a bad link to choose to highlight and at worst it's deliberate deception...take your pick with regards to the individual who posted the link.

Speculation aside all the players will try their best to get some form of LTE to compete with EE as soon as possible. O2/Vodafone are pinning their hopes on the superior characteristics of 850MHz and may be prepared to pay more for that bandwidth. Time will tell if that is a good strategy. EE and 3 have 1800MHz clearance for LTE already so maybe less bothered about 850MHz and may be happy to snap up some cheaper 2600MHz availability. Note the 'may', nobody actually knows the strategy of the individual companies involved so until licences are awarded it's guesswork as to what each will provide and further speculation as to who will roll out what fastest.

By mid 2013 the picture is likely to be clearer but trying to make comparison with the 2100MHz UMTS roll out could be very mistaken especially when all of networks already have coverage for data which is entirely different from 2003 when 3 had to buy GSM coverage and build their own UMTS network from scratch.

I think Vodafone have made it perfectly clear in their advertising that they are only interested in the 800 stectrum

I'm kinda hoping all 4 have a level playing field and get a block of 800 each, but we'll see. It' the first time that some have properly been able to compete. The newer networks have always been at a disadvantage to those who set up way back in the day and inherited the old incumbent state telecoms infrastructure, which a lot of public money went into and which got spectrum very much on the cheap, spectrum that has been out of bounds for others.

The 4G auction should give everyone a fair chance and will quite possibly tip the balance for those that want to really do mobile data on an impressive scale, rather than the bare minimum.

Think you've got your Huawei and Samsung round the wrong way there mate
I agree though, 3 will continue to build their 3G network with full DC-HSDPA, adding more 3 only cells to increase capacity and if they only get 2600, combined with their 1800 will still see a pretty good network.
Do you know how much worse 2600 is than 2100 for coverage? LTE runs at a higher power output doesn't it?

Oops, yes you are right I did get them swapped around. 2600 is designed for urban areas, so whilst the 1800 will do them well for country wide coverage, the 2600 will be really good for big venues, big urban centres were you have little cells in every street or so, like central London (the square mile). The idea is to give very high speeds and capacity with a large number of users in a small geographical area.

I find it hard to understand why the networks (apart from Vodafone) are making it hard to get hold of Femtos. The biggest problem networks have is getting coverage indoors.
If the issue is interference with the macro network (which could be a problem if there are a lot of femtos in an area of good coverage) how come Vodafone don't seem to have an issue with this? You can just buy one, no questions asked.

i quite agree, however my brother is on O2 and had an email not long ago about an app thats going to be coming soon where basically it uses wifi for calls and texts if you have little of no coverage it comes out your normal mins/texts and uses your same number for calling out/in , they were testing it, but i cant remember whats its called.

edit think this is it http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/News/21...late_2012.aspx

Fair enough - however as I said I would doubt any network would end up producing such coverage on that scale especially in some very desolate places while a few white patches have some population centres. Technically it is unrealistic unless money is no object. That looks more like a publicity map than a proper technical one.


In my experience, most mobile phones with 3G capabilities that are sold in the UK in the past two years have been capable of using a 3G network on 900MHz as well as 2100MHz. A 2100MHz 'single band' 3G phone is perhaps as anarchic as a single-band GSM mobile phone was this time a decade ago. There were handsets and mobile-broadband USB modems available from 2008 onwards at least that could handle 3G on 900MHz. As for coverage, the fact is that while O2's own 3G coverage across the UK isn't exactly brilliant especially outside built-up areas, it is starting to fill in these holes, through upgrading some previously rural 2G GPRS or EDGE only 900/1800MHz to carry 3G 900MHz only at least in Northern Ireland (can't vouch for what's taking place in Britain). In terms of actively increasing their geographical footprint of 3G coverage, O2 is at least taking action.


It seems rather abstract about someone in O2 quite high up taking about "13-14 years", giving a date of around 2025-26, but it is difficult to exactly know what technology will be like then, the same way about thinking in 1998 how some small isolated villages surrounded by mountains in NI can get up to 80Mbps download internet speeds when all that was possible domestically back in the late 90's were dial-up speeds a tiny fraction of that.

Maybe another way to look at it is with how all five networks at the time of the 3G spectrum auction thought would be the killer function - video calling. That ended up going down like a lead balloon alongside poor battery times in 3G mode. It wasn't until the likes of 3 (and to an extent T-Mobile) started at looking to focus their UMTS networks more for general data use alongside developments in HSPA to increase user data throughput (3 started deploying HSDPA in 2007 IIRC) that the networks finally found something that they could sell to the public which 2G was only capable of to a more limited extent.

4G is being sold as having better user data capacity being available to customers for mobile internet against 3G, but is it enough right now to sell to consumers over 3G? With current LTE technology (especially with VOLTE not being fully defacto at the present) against DC-HSPA, probably not on speed alone. Also there needs to be a killer function for 4G over 3G that 3G isn't capable of doing well, like mobile data on 3G over 2G - until that happens, like say significant improvements to the LTE standard that delivers significant improvements over previous versions like HSPA has done to UMTS, then many people might just stick with 3G in the same way that most people until around 2008-09 saw no real benefit for people to use 3G over 2G.

Maybe the COO in question is deciding to play down the immediate impact a 4G network licence could have in the short term in selling to customers through cautious business language, though it is obvious that not applying for a slice of the 800/2600MHz spectrum is something that cannot be considered. Rather they see a more long term benefit in 4G provisions. Obviously if 4G take up proves to be quicker than expected, then Telefonica O2 will need a Plan B unless it just remains content with a base of users that don't use much data.

Also, it isn't just O2 that are capable of major goof-ups in making promises of coverage they can't keep - while 2012 hasn't finished yet, it looks increasingly likely that EE's promise via MBNL back in February of covering 94% of the population in Northern Ireland with 3G by the end of this year is not going to happen. And if this doesn't come to pass, should we then put faith in the promise that all current 2G MBNL sites (either Orange or T-Mobile) in the UK will carry 3G by the end of 2013? Not to mention that Vodafone last year stated that all their 2G sites would be upgraded to EDGE by the end of 2011. That didn't happen either.

I suspect the reliability of them are a problem, at least they were when Vodafone initially launched them. I also wonder if they could fool some phones that attempt to latch on to the femtocell despite not being authorised when a weaker but usable 2G/3G network signal is present. I can't say that I've seen many in action - I know one family who live in a location where there is no mobile coverage 2G or 3G within about a 100 metre radius of their house who have a Vodafone femtocell as they just about get a fast enough ADSL broadband speed.

I suspect EE and 3 will make bids for 800MHz spectrum simply because while 1800 & 2600MHz bandwidth is fine to cover per-head of population in urban & suburban areas, for rural locations sub-1GHz spectrum is simply more cost efficient, while in urban areas running it alongside 1800 & 2600MHz at the same site will provide capacity increases without the need to install more microcells and picocells. Both O2 and Vodafone have been reluctant to spread 2100MHz 3G coverage outside of built-up areas, 3 have done so to reduce the cost of them hit with 2G roaming costs while T-Mobile and Orange only started to get their backsides in gear with MBNL helping reduce the costs for all involved.

Interestingly 3's Irish sister network won 900MHz spectrum in the 4G auction last month, but benefited more from obtaining 1800MHz spectrum which will be doubled from 2015. However the other three incumbent operators will have more sub-1GHz spectrum to play with. By 2015 excluding the 2100MHz band 3IRL will have 2x25MHz spectrum, O2 IRL will have 2x35MHz (though interestingly they won't have any 1800MHz spectrum until 2015), Meteor will also have 2x35MHz (2x30MHz until the end of 2014) while Vodafone IRL will have a massive 2x45MHz allocation.

I do agree that both O2 and Vodafone have benefited enormously from having "gifted" spectrum at desirable frequencies. In hindsight it would have been better for Orange and the then One-2-One being offered 900MHz spectrum with the closure of the ETACS networks in exchange for an equal amount of spectrum in the 1800MHz band being transferred to Vodafone and O2 like what was done in Germany. Without it, Orange have still done a very good job with rolling out its 2G 1800MHz only network but even then its coverage limitations compared to Vodafone and O2 are still very noticeable. That's why many businesses only look at Vodafone or O2, needing solid coverage regardless of wherever it's 2G, 3G or 4G. That won't escape the eyes or EE or H3G, the latter of whom discontinued their business arm not that long ago because there were few business users.