First information about how BT will return to the mobile market, initially for business and later this year for domestic consumers.

"BT has thrown down the gauntlet to mobile operators with the launch of BT One Phone, promising to cut SME’s phone bills by upto 50%.

The launch follows a eight month trial with nine customers which BT said delivered customers savings of between 20% to 50%.

The service which will be sold both directly and via a network of over 1,000 BT resellers, brings together fixed, mobile and data services under one solution, hosted in the Cloud and delivered on a mobile phone. It is targeted at companies with between 20 to 250 employees with plans to widen the offering to both larger and smaller businesses in the future."



http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/news/in...one-phone.aspx

I would like to know what selection of handsets are compatible with this service - the BT One Phone website is no help as the handsets don't seem to be on there.

http://business.bt.com/bt-one-phone/

I love the way everyone has to clone Apple ads these days and put almost the exact same background music, voiceover style, intonation etc That one could be an ad for an iPhone, can't they be original?

BT keeps trying these ideas and then if they fail they leave people in the lurch. I remember BT broadband anywhere, that failed, but yet they did not tell customers they was not going to renew.

This is also for the home user, but I really wonder how much use it will be for home users?

BT are also running an MVNO trial for reference...

Nothing too exciting here but BT surely have bigger ideas that have yet to be revealed particularly for consumers. Not much clue from this either about how they intend to use their 2600MHz spectrum. The 'dedicated in-house mobile network' they create for One Phone Office uses their 1800MHz spectrum so would be for calls using 2G I think.

Incidentally, 15 years ago BT had a fixed/mobile converged product called...... Onephone. Last time, it was a combined GSM Mobile / DECT cordless handset.

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct...,d.d2k&cad=rja

Yeah all the same aren't they!

Still at least they've all stopped using the douchebag whiney male/female singing to some crappy music (some bloke strumming some chords) while having washed out '70's looking film like the were all doing a couple years back

Bt might be looking into becoming a quad play provider like Virgin media then!

Probably. But this is not going to be a big deal until it comes to personal users and is nationwide. I did a quick postcode check on the BT site and the business model is not available anywhere close to where I live.

It wil be a 4G network rolled out to provide improved broadband access to BT customers not currently served by BT Infinity, in rural areas for example.

Hopefully this will then "encourage" other mobile phone operators to improve their 4G services out side of the main towns and cities. Many rural areas, including where I live, struggle to get decent 2G coverage let alone 4G.

Not convinced by that. If there's no fibre how do they backhaul these LTE sites? And if they put fibre in, that can be used for the broadband customers in these areas without LTE being added?

If fibre is abailable then that would be the preferred option, although other options, such as Macro Cell backhaul, wireless, and other technologies, etc, are also available. However even where fibre backhaul is available a farm, for example, can be a kilometre or more from the cabinet, meaning their broadband speed is very poor. The use of small cell technology over that kilometre can offer a considerable improvement in broadband speed compared to traditional twisted pair very cheaply in such circumstances. With the additional benefit that no planning permission would be needed to install the small cell hardware compared to a mast.

This is discussed in a Small Cells Forum White Paper: Extending rural and remote coverage using small cells

That's true, you can pick up the fibre from the cabinet if installed, and attempt to use LTE for the " last mile", but small cells @2600Mhz ain't gonna cover very far, and I would doubt that it would reach as far as that good old wire.

http://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co...ainst-distance

As such, if you're doing fibre to cabinets rural LTE is pointless, and no more cost effective than wired IMHO.

If you're only providing fibre to the Exchange, then it may be more cost effective, but again, coverage with small cells and the use of in band type back haul to chain them together, to reach some sort of decent coverage leaves you with a very poor speed limited by the slowest link in the chain. You also need to throw in getting power to these remote small cells, which is also not cheap.

I guess we will see in time.

We don't even have 4G in the city never mind the Rural areas and no plans ont he table either for any of the providers.

TBH, i would prefer local companies sorting out broadband for rural areas, all they need is a bit of that government money that uis being chucked at BT, but that will not happen because of too many funny handshakes

A local company does it, they got fibre to their head office and all the rest is done via wireless. They seems to have a couple of problems at the moment they need to sort out, but the idea itself works, just need investment.

I have been using it for almost two years and I can get FTTc where i live.

We don't have 3G yet, but certainly from their press releases, BT are looking to roll out a 4G network to cover places poorly served and if they can roll out something that gives smaller communities the chance of both improved mobile and broadband thet are obviously going to reap the reward of the extra customers.

Realistically we are talking of a few years before we have a better idea, I'm not sure BT are even at the contractual stage yet, although I believe they have started the tendering process for the new network.

It is absolutely possible. I had something installed 10 years ago which did a similar thing, although as a fixed broadband replacement.

If its based on equipment/antennas at the premises it becomes a different discussion from a coverage point of view. This also changes the cost model(mainly around install costs) and the availability of such a service for "mobile".

Depends on price, BT is good at being expensive. the problem with 4G so I have heard is that it is naff indoors, so any system needs to have a out door aerial.

I know it is possible I am using the system now, point to point wireless.
i got a module on the roof that connects via wireless to a access point on our cathedral and that connects to a couple of repeaters and then to the base station.

clever idea, they use churches to put the access points on and some of the relays are in farmers fields. Ok there can be some problems, like when sheep gets into the system . It don't happen too often. the main problem at the moment is lack of bandwidth they need to update.
i can choose FTTC maybe cheaper with a bit more speed if I want to, my contract is now up. but i am staying where I am and see what happens, but they do need some investment and I think they should have some of this money that Bloated toad gets.

The higher the frequency the more efficient throughput and bandwidth. It would only be 'naff' indoors if you put that spectrum on the existing cell towers and expected them to have the same coverage area and in building reception. If you used small localised cells then you could the perfect mix of indoor coverage in a localised area and very fast data throughput.

As I suspected above, the mobile network BT will create for One Phone Office is indeed 2G. Here's the Reg taking the P. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/24/bt_onephone/

However, more interesting is that they've spotted a BT job ad for an engineer to get LTE small cells inside consumer homes. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07...in_your_house/

There are more trials for this in a few months, i received an email only yesterday telling me that the new trials will begin soon

BT also have their business mobile plans running on EE up now.

http://business.bt.com/business-mobile/

As with One Phone, nothing too exciting. £25 + vat 5GB sim only but I guess you could say, BT | Free 4G for ALL!