100mbps seems about right. Is that per sector do you think? Bear in mind that the fastest home Virgin media connection is 250mb

My Vodafone tablet SIM is only showing H+, but I've never activated a 4G data pack, so I don't know if it would connect to 4G anyway. I'll ask my colleague at work that has a vodafone mobile tomorrow, he was off today.

Yes but we're talking 100Mbps for the entire Cell (backhaul).
A 10Mhz LTE cell can handle 400 handsets at full speed.
Now even at 10Mbps per handset, if they were all downloading at the same time (which of course doesn't happen in the real world) you would need 4 Gigabits just for that 1 cell.
A 100Mbps backhaul would give 400 handsets 250Kbps each.
Clearly these are extremes that don't happen but a 100Mbps backhaul link could probably only manage about 100 handsets assuming most were idle or trickle downloading and even then it would all be terribly slow.
Now imagine you have three 20Mhz 2600 + 20Mhz 1800 cells each with 1600 handsets (20Mhz can do 800 active handsets)
That's one sectored mast with potentially 4800 phones on it!!
Again, I stress, you are not going to get remotely close to that in real life but no wonder EE are putting in fibre that can go up to 100Gb per mast.

Admittedly, both the handsets were on the same sector of the antenna. I probs should have got Dad to go to the other side, but it was 11pm and we needed to get back home... As you can probably see from my website, I've done a fair bit of anoraking lately.

Ermmmmm, no. While one cell can have uo to 400 connected users (and more dependent on vendor\hardware), they all share the available radio capacity, so average backhaul throughput per 10Mhz cell would be circa 12Mbps average, so 36Mbps for a site. If there happened to be 1 user in each cell in perfect conditions, it would be 75Mbps per cell, so 225Mbps absolutely max, which would never happen in reality.

The 100Mbps per site, would be the balance to achieve a high probability of not throttling users, without wasting money dimensioning it to 100%, which would, in reality, never get used.

The how long is a piece of string saying fits perfectly for this question..
Because where I live boarders so many county's and councils I have to check 6 different planning sites to get an idea what's going on here and at work.
12-18 months seems the norm but could equally mean nothing at all as some get done quickly. I struggle to find any planning details for larger none Street pole masts on any of the sites, only 2 out the 6 lists some submitted mid last year and are marked up prior approval not needed, so it's difficult to see what they plan to do with larger remote masts which are normally 2g. The other detail I've noticed is unless it's a minor point, which can be corrected easy, if the plans are rejected they don't bother going back.


Due to having such poor indoor coverage from three and EE at home I'm trying Vodafone for a year as they have excellent coverage at home and work and are better then both three and EE on my commute, but there are still massive areas of Shropshire and Staffordshire with 2g only coverage, I've found plans for many of the masts to be upgraded but the question is when? I can't see them getting done while larger towns remain without 4g yet too, cornerstone are doing lots of work, Cheshire is starting to look good now but still way off from finished though and it's taken most the year so far, so could be 2 or 3 years at this pace,

That's a good point about rejected plans. I've noticed that as well. It's like they don't have the time to mess about, it either you take it, or you don't.

I guess the streetworks are easier as they now have the ability to use both o2 and VF sites to get the more dense coverage.

Some of the new cabs have now gone in. They look like taller versions of openreach fibre cabinets.

Does anyone know what they are actually for?

Have you got any pictures of them?

Hahahahahahaha.... thanks. I had one or two to drink last night.
How embarrassing. Can't delete that one now.
Yes of course, total bandwidth is shared across 200 phones per 5Mhz cell (about 37Mbps).

Do they look anything like these?
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/15yluznqq...PUX6qLHtP30u8a
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/u6qfpir7o...UjxYDH32kxy-Ha
As a note on upgrade time, the 1st pic had that cabinet put in nearly 4 months ago now but still waiting for the old O2 2g mast to be replaced, before the cabinet was put in a dodgy looking tall old wooden box was in place for over 9 months that I know to as that's when I started using the route regularly, so clearly no rush here.
The other mast was all upgraded over a long weekend, suspiciously no planning application can be found for it though, the original mast installation planning app is there, it was approved accidentally due to an adimin error as it's next to a primary school. Big uproar over it by the nimby's
In fact south Cheshire don't like mast upgrades at all it seemsseems.. nimbyism is still strong around here.
Vodafone applied to upgrade the mast which is camouflaged on a church in a village near me...
You can imagine how that went down!
Torches and pitch forks anyone?

I don't Devon. The masts are on my way to work on busy roads so I can't stop. I may wind up my saddo brain and make and effort to pull into a side street and walk to one on my way home when Im not in a rush.

That's a Huawei 3900 cabinet Voda are using these in the west of the UK. Here in London they are using Ericsson Rbs6102 whilst o2 have opted for the giant green Alifabs Lancaster and Vulcan cabs

No, they don't. The normal looking 4g cabs which are pictured in your pics are already there. They have added additional cabs which look a bit different.

This is the nearest I could find on the net. From what I saw its like the parts the cabs in the picture with the vents but two separate cabs. Hope I am making sense.

At an educated guess I would say its for upgraded backhaul.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/110zanhgh0...03623.jpg?dl=0

So, I just got a text from Vodafone saying that they've finished upgrading the masts in my area, so I can enjoy better coverage.
Erm, right. Not a sniff of 4G where I live, half a mile, if that, north of Shrewsbury town centre. According to their planned coverage, I should have good outdoors, but variable indoors 4G. But no, nothing!
I'm hoping the text was premature and once the map shows it as current coverage, then I'll actually get a 4G signal at home.

Popped into a Vodafone store today to see if they had access to any data about 4G sites that the public doesn't (namely wanting to know if I could see where they've got 4G+). I was told that they use the same maps as we do.

I was then talking about speed tests and other stuff with one guy who seemed quite interested and we got talking about 4G in general, and both EE and Three etc.

Then a colleague decided to jump in to show his expertise by revealing to me that EE doesn't actually have a proper 4G. EE is in fact 3.9G because it uses different spectrum, although it's still pretty good. Just not as good as Vodafone's true 4G service. The ONLY network, apparently, that is true 4G.

The guy I'd been talking to seemed a bit embarrassed at this, and as I wasn't doing a mystery shop I couldn't resist saying he was wrong. I wanted to say something stronger, but opted to say 'Actually, that's not right'. I'm quite proud of myself for not saying he was talking total ****!

I wonder if he uses that line on other customers?

Damn, you should have used the **** line, filmed it with a concealed Action cam and put it on your website.
It would have gone viral!
Not that that is too easy when you least expect a numpty to suddenly appear.


EDIT: yes he probably does. Most probably believe him. Marvellous!
Right I'm getting a PAC and going to Vodafone now where they have spectrum that's not "different".
Fancy, EE miss-selling 3.9G as real 4G!!!! My God this could be bigger than the VW scandal!!
Haha

I am now going to have to complain to EE for having lied to us for so long. 4G my arse. Why isn't my phone showing 3.9G like it should be?!

Sorry, think I edited my post just at the wrong time there!

Can confirm, Vodafone retail stores don't have access to any network information anymore.

The only stores that have network info now is 3 stores all other use public websites, The old Vodafone Atlas system used to be very good and useful for staff and customers as they could see exactly which masts were down and when upgrades were happening.

I also understand that most Vodafone call centre staff also only have the public website and network status system, Only level 3 and network team have more detailed info

Sounds ridiculous - and it doesn't inspire confidence in anyone asking for information so they can make an informed decision before committing for a number of years.

EE doesn't seem to let their store staff do anything except sell phones. So even when CS on the phone claims you have to go to the store to get something done, that's a lie, as they can't do anything except call the same people in CS as you can - and without a means of skipping queues

To be fair, EE stores are mostly franchises so I doubt they would ever get info from the network directly.

I believe the other networks own all their stores.

https://goo.gl/maps/9ysiqdPGvRP2 - Mast before the cabinets went in. If you browse through time on streetview, you can see it gaining the 900MHz cabinet in 2010. There are now a load more cabinets there and that was the site I did the dual 4G tests on.