Inspired by some comments in the Vodafone/o2 4g thread, relating to some of the older Vodafone 2G masts still broadcasting local dialling codes via Cell Broadcast, it got me to thinking: how old can some of the masts out there be?

I'm guessing that for 3g the initial masts were literally 3g only, so needed replacing to upgrade to HSDPA capable equipment, but for 2g... is there still a whole host of 90s equipment that's still trucking along 15 years after being installed? Or will it long since have been replaced?

Engineers have told me there's VF/O2 equipment out there from when 2G was being rolled out.

Did post about the few masts around here that still broadcast the old local area code but nobody seem that interested, so I'm glad you posted this as I think it's really cool and rather tragic at the same time that this equipment has been running as Pedro said probably since 2g was rolled out, it's amazing it's still going after all this time, but also sad that it's never been invested in over all these years.
As for 3g, the mast on the water tower in my local town must be fairly old school as it only broadcasts Base level HSPA on 2100mhz and maxes out at 1. 5mbps it seems, did see a mast somewhere along the A1m in the north east which was broadcasting UMTS original 3g, could get no data from it above Edge level.
All this retro tech did come as quite a shock when 1st transferring from three.

Even the oldest stuff would have had an upgrade for GPRS. None of the original 2G rollout was capable of GPRS. Voda's original 2G rollout started in 1991 but GPRS didn't come in until ~2000.

Aha that's fair - yes I remember the introduction of GPRS; I had a Sony Ericsson P800 and got the APN settings from browsing the Esato forums. Turned out that O2 (or was it BT Cellnet then?) hadn't figured out how to bill for GPRS so it was free and unlimited. Well, at ~50kbit per second you had to have significant patience to do anything major.

I'm wondering whether the GPRS upgrade only involved the equipment in the cab, with the antennae remaining the same; I'd speculate so since the frequencies didn't change, but was this actually the case?

The tall VF mast at Lobthorpe on the A1 near Colsterworth looks like it hasn't been touched for years.

I used to work in a place near Slough that had an ancient Siemens-NEC UMTS cabinet/monopole, owned by 3, outside the office. I've also seen them in other places, like Plymouth.

I don't know if it actually had newer equipment inside - though at some point when I worked there, MBNL's people turned up and plonked an EE Huawei 4G cabinet next to it. Down the road was Orange's monopole which I think was decommissioned. Curiously, I used to see people in suits with MBNL lanyards around their necks so I wonder if there's an MBNL office nearby?

I would expect that Cornwall has a fair amount of vintage VO2 equipment - and whatever is still transmitting the Orange 234-33 signal despite considerable MBNLing.

I'd say that the local Vodafone 2G mast to me which is still GPRS only hasn't had any major works or equipment replacement done to it when it was built in the late 90s. In fact I'd reckon that they, O2 & to a lesser extent EE still have 2G only sites that have been quietly chugging along for 15 years or more with only occasional routine visits, mostly in far-flung rural areas.

Any one got any pics of the older equipment ? inside the cabins

Here is some

https://cellsitesuk.wordpress.com/tag/base-station/

http://cellnet.illtyd.co.uk/uk-cells...spotters-guide

Was it like this

https://e87fbc5e-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites....attredirects=0

This site is a good read has old coverage maps and stuff http://cellnet.illtyd.co.uk/home

Yes, pretty much, but not covered in quite as much crap

Lots of T-Mobile legacy sites still have old RBS205 equipment (for 2G) - that ancient that many of the field ops guys cant connect to them to diagnose issues, just have to take a wild stab in the dark and replace the units they think are faulty!

VF have similar but dont think any are still on air, just redundant. TEF did a rollout a few years ago to get all the Nokia DE21's out the network that were not GPRS capable and replaced them with DE34's (GPRS) and Nokia UltraSite (GPRS/EDGE) cabinets.

Also seen plenty of Nortel 2G cabinets on TMobile which are pretty old too.

Quite a few omnidirectional Vodafone masts round here that were built in the mid 90's that haven't changed, newer ones all have 2 or 3 cells.

old o2 2g in wales overgrown but still working https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.96...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.96...7i13312!8i6656

Wow, if that is still on and working, someone isn't doing their job in site maintenance :-/

Doesn't look too bad, as long as the doors open on the cabinet! I'm sure now in winter it's a lot died back a bit.

yep still working

Here is another old site 02 & airwaves but just been upgraded to voda/o2 did a speed test and now get 65mb down on o2 from it

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.64...8i6656!6m1!1e1

Not sure why they picked this site for upgrade as it only covers a small area

I wonder whether some sites are left entirely alone until they start flashing red on a status screen in a central control room, thus allowing some weeds to start to grow. I'd guess the engineers have a petrol strimmer in the back of the van for cases like this!