Yes per sector. I wonder what 3's plans are with 800 we know they are going for 98%, but how dense in each area? Every site or enough for cover the area?

As with any geographic based rollout, the sites with the largest footprint are gonna be upgraded first and fill-in masts are going to be left until last. My area is supposedly completely bathed in 800MHz yet none of my local sites have been done so it's coming from much further away. As long as the coverage checker shows it, it counts towards their 98% target, so my local sites won't be done until much later because it won't do anything for their target.

This is the problem with geographic rollout targets, if it was based on indoor population coverage then they would focus on getting sites done where people live.

The Three coverage checker just seems to be completely wrong for 800MHz coverage in my experience. Shows full coverage where there isn't; shows no coverage where there is.

I've given up relying on it.

I think it's just a copy of what they think the coverage will be when they plan a new mast or upgrade. No one actually goes out in their van checking and if they do, that information doesn't get added to the general public map.

I use the cellmapper app and I alone am responsible for walking all around my town, up and down every street to map out our new 4G 1800mhz transmission. It's more accurate as it represents the actual signal you get on a phone in that place.

Very impressed with Three's 1800Mhz 4G.

From almost nothing to

http://i63.tinypic.com/35d7xo3.png

http://i68.tinypic.com/24yz88n.png

I think "at full speed" is being taken the wrong way.
5Mhz can handle 200, 10Mhz, 400 and 20Mhz 800 (in other words 200 devices per 5Mhz spectrum).
Think about it, lets say 10Mhz gives you a speed test of around 40meg on a good day.
That's because it pretty much only you doing a constant download on that cell.
Let's now say 400 users are on the cell and all start downloading a large app.
That would require 16,000 megabits or 16 Gigabits!!!
That would mean just 10Mhz of 800 spectrum would need to carry 2000 Megabytes per second.!!
That would surely be very impressive!!!
No, the maximum (lab conditions) throughput of 10Mhz of 800 (rounded up) is about 75Mbps.
That has to shared between those 400 handsets.
Now remember a large proportion are going to be either doing the odd blip of background data here and there or basic low data use stuff like browsing. Your normal intermittent Internet use.
If however 80 of those people started to stream video, there would be a problem!
That's when you start to need a more dense network (so the site can push your handset to a different one) or load your sites with more frequencies (2600 / 1800).
A site with 20 of 2600, 20 of 1800 and 5 of 800 would be able to carry about 400 or more Megabits so perhaps 300 devices could stream that video.

The results of this Ofcom commissioned testing into the sensitivity of various handsets for 2G/3G/4G have just been published. Unfortunately they only label them Device 1,2,3 etc although you can make educated guesses based on the market share/cost labels.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/mar...ndset-testing/

The one 4G enabled cell site that is near to me is at least giving decent speeds.

http://www.speedtest.net/android/1591990763.png

Welwyn Garden City earlier: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1Q...JuOGMzejZMM0dR

Had limited 4G before, but now seems to be fully covered - and what an improvement. Hertford was just as good a week or two ago.

Any new sniffs at a carrier update for the IPhone 6 to support VoLTE or are we still looking at 15-16th?

I'm banking on it being the 15th and killing two birds with one stone by enabling VoLTE on EE as well.
Notice the 15th is a Tuesday.
Hmmmm... that's EE's new feature rollout day....
The plot thickens.....
Or I'm mad...

Apple updates are normally on a Tuesday as well I think.

Hope so, it'll improve my 3 coverage indoors greatly. So hopefully I won't have to rely on my home signal.

Are we just expecting a carrier update or 9.2 also?

WiFi calling was an iOS / carrier update and that was Tuesday the 7th of April.
I remember it coz everyone went bonkers....

Well I won't hold my breath but I'm quietly excited x

iOS 9.2 is in the fourth beta now, I can't imagine it's too far away.

I can remember looking up iOS 8.3 way back in April on launch day and a lot of US sites were saying it's in it's 3rd or 4th beta, might be coming soon, probably somewhere in June though. etc etc.
Came back to the forum and just browsing and someone just did a short post.. "iOS 8.3 out now!" totally out of the blue.
All hell broke loose!!
Hahahahaha

On the other hand the 15th is mightily close to Christmas and the change freeze might happen before then.

Blonde moment but the change freeze?

It's a Christmas break period where changes to an IT environment go on hold, usually from 2 weeks before xmas to about 1 week after new year.

Mainly because there's limited staff around in that period so it's more risky to undertake anything that may cause issues or instability.

The operations centres will have less staff and a lot of the specialist engineers don't want to be have to be working on incidents over Christmas so only emergency changes as a result of incidents will be approved in the change control systems by the ITSM teams.

From a business continuity viewpoint I would say it would be a bad idea to push it because it is very close to Christmas at that point and if it goes tits up then it'll be a fun week for them. Wait until mid-January and when everyone's back and rested from all the Christmas/New Year chaos and then do it.

From another viewpoint though, it they can only get this out with Apple updates then they may not get another chance to put it out for a long time and they need to start getting people on Supervoice, whether or not it will be flooded, pushing it to the 2 most recent iPhone models at the same time is a good way to do that.

Slightly off topic but related, I guess that a mast in my area isn't going to be upgraded this month given what you've just said. Wilkinson Helsby have said the plans have been approved and the site is to be upgraded mid to late December, the site is to have the panels changed to 6 ports and to have 800 added and the SAMO cabinets replaced. What's the chances of this happening this month, slim?

Indeed. EE are 4 months late already and I expect it's Apple who call the shots and are probably insisting on both networks together.
It appears this is why Three haven't done the iPhone, Apple have said wait for iOS 9.2 and we'll get that out when we're ready.
It's probable EE had their VoLTE ready to roll several weeks ago but are just waiting for the update.

I don't do telecoms business continuity but my very guessed idea would be that because that is a fairly routine upgrade (at least I think it is) and because it's not affecting too many people that it might still happen. There probably won't be too much work on the actual christmas week itself but it's not going to be the entire network grinding to a halt for the rest of the month.

Three have said they'll definitely hit 98% by the end of 2015 and I think they'll be just short if they don't work for the rest of December </sarcasm>

I must live in the 2%.