Originally Posted by ACL777:
“If I am understanding correctly 02 is managing east England and yet 02 sites in the east are being removed in favour of VF sites. If that is right it is scandalous as 02 is far superior in Norwich to VF.”
It's far more complicated than that.
It's nothing to do with who owned each transmitter to begin with and a lot to do with whether they can negotiate a joint lease going forwards. From around here all the single operator sites I see being removed (well, planned to be removed, as none have actually been removed yet) are because Cornerstone were unable or unwilling to agree terms with the landowner and are instead replacing the site with a completely new one being built to cover the same area and both operators.
If any O2 sites are being removed chances are there's a new 4G one being put up across the road for both O2 and Vodafone to replace it.
Originally Posted by binary:
“There's also the issue of varying rents to different landowners to take into account. If the landowner of a top spot is demanding top dollar, then the network might decide that paying significantly less for a marginally less top spot is the way to go.”
This.
A lot of sites are being removed because of these issues - though who is to blame I'm not sure, perhaps the networks are more at fault since I didn't see MBNL having as many similar issues. Two major players that Cornerstone haven't been able to agree joint leases with are BT and Network Rail, meaning a lot of (unshared) masts on either BT exchanges or anywhere on/next to the railway can't be shared.
Edinburgh University incidentally has also been a problem for O2/VF but not EE/3. So while all networks have sites on all their buildings, none of the O2/VF ones are being upgraded.