People who frequent this forum are very savvy regarding the cellular market in this country and even on a worldwide basis. I admit myself I only have experience from a consumer/business facing side, there are a lot of terms thrown around which even I get confused by RAN share...etc

I thought it would be useful to have a thread specific to Netowork and Mobile technology, maybe around the discussion possibly of future LTE technology and so on.

I am creating the thread as I want to slay some of my own misconceptions...so here goes

Is someone able to give a laymans terms for me and the uneducated what agreement between O2/Vodafone and EE/Three is....I understand for the latter MBNL takes on the strain of upgrading existing 3G infrastructure, but there was also a later agreement which involved 4G. Secondly regarding the former I know there are two agreements Beacon and Cornerstone....in essence what do they mean how is the infrastructure upgrades divided and so on.

As much or little I may know around regulatory market and so on, I really feel like I am on the wrong side of the fence when it comes to forthcoming mobile technology.

When I see Cat 3/4/5 LTE I begin to wonder if any of my devices are capable as its moving quite fast.

Now as I understand regarding auction of the spectrum Vodafone got some 30mhz of unpaired spectrum in the 2600 range I think use for FDD... now as I understand FDD isn't in use in the UK at the moment? So how will that work?

I'm not going to lie, I'm not surprised that people have shunned this thread. When it comes to discussion threads like networking and data I only ever see people arguing about it in threads that otherwise wouldn't have needed it.

I once created a discussion thread about general mobile phones so people didn't have to create a thread to ask a question and it got a grand total of no replies. Shame really.

Sorry for not noticing this before was bit busy last night haven't got time fully explain MBNL and Beacon will do that later.

In answer to your other questions LTE Cat 3 was one of the first main stream variants of 3.9G technology LTE is a 3G technology not a 4G. Many of last years models were Cat 3 such as the iPhone S4 HTC One. It supports up to 100 download and 50 upload. Now cat 4 started coming in late last year in devices such as the LG G2 or the Note 3 or Xperia Z1 it is also in the S5 HTC One M8. It supports 150 download and 50 upload. Surprised you heard about Cat 5 as likely won't be done anywhere basically Cat 5 is using 4x4 MIMO instead of 2x2MIMO to double the speeds you would normally get. So you will get 300 download but only around 75 upload. The one that starts to become LTE-Advanced and true 4G is LTE Cat 6 expect to see device support from Fall this year.

Unpaired spectrum is actually called TDD and paired spectrum is FDD. Yes at moment is not in use though this is not the first times networks have had TDD spectrum. One particular reason it isn't in use at moment is that most devices don't support. Plus there is speculation that Vodafone intend to use it solely for small cell support.

Think I covered most of your questions hope I helped.

MBNL in a nutshell

For 3G: MBNL is an ongoing project between EE and Three to rationalise the transmitters of three originally separate networks (Orange, T-Mobile and 3) into one set of transmitter sites from which both networks broadcast. This means that coverage of EE and Three, on 3G, will eventually be identical. All equipment is shared (cabinets, antennas, etc). ("Active" network sharing)

For 4G: MBNL is upgrading the backhaul and mast infrastructure to the sites, to be "4G ready", but it's up to EE and Three to decide whether they will provide the equipment (antennas, cabinets, etc) to broadcast 4G from a particular site or not. So coverage will differ. ("Passive" network sharing)

Source: http://www.mobileworldlive.com/ee-th...etwork-sharing

Cornerstone/Beacon, from what I can gather, is passive network sharing, like the 4G share on MBNL (but not limited to 4G). So shared sites, but separate equipment and technologies.

Source: http://www.o2.co.uk/connectivity/net...next-big-thing