Best news ever - mobile mast sharing

Jez said:
The investment side of it would surely not be the issue which you think it would? I am not sure that outright coverage is really being improved upon these days anyway, the networks would still be free to fight the current battle for fast mobile data coverage.

Technically surely this isnt an issue, the issue would be financial rather than technical? Roaming itself isnt new, we do it every time we go to another country! :)
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No it isn't a technical issue as you say its a financial / competitive advantage issue, on the investment side I was talking more about future next generation roll outs / more 4G roll outs.

In the future, if an operator has invested in a site in some rural area, there wouldn't be an incentive for another operator to do the same as they could piggy back off someone else's. Yes a payment system could be set up so the owner of the site is compensated but the loser could end up being the customer with a service with less capacity.
 
el_dazza said:
There are a lot of areas around here where I never used to get a signal with Orange, but now being on Three I get a signal almost everywhere and usually with high speed internet. Not that 4G, but miles faster than 3G. Cant remember what it's called, begins with H.
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HSPA+, otherwise known as 3G :D
 
Bear said:
No it isn't a technical issue as you say its a financial / competitive advantage issue, on the investment side I was talking more about future next generation roll outs / more 4G roll outs.

In the future, if an operator has invested in a site in some rural area, there wouldn't be an incentive for another operator to do the same as they could piggy back off someone else's. Yes a payment system could be set up so the owner of the site is compensated but the loser could end up being the customer with a service with less capacity.
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But why do you keep assuming these plans are for mobile networks to share their top tier wireless tech? The plan is just about getting call coverage, not ensuring everyone has access to 4G.

Why would a company not invest in 5G on the basis it has to share its 2G technology? They can still keep their exclusivity on their top product.

Furthermore doesn't BT disprove your point? They have to share their technology but still continue to invest in it.
 
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I've always (~15 years!) had poor mobile signal at home with Orange, only being able to get a signal upstairs by the window. When they merged with T-Mobile they must have turned one of the transmitters off as I had to go about 200M from the house to get a signal. Extremely frustrating.

I finally gave in and ported over to GiffGaff (O2) the other week, whilst it's still not brilliant I can actually get a signal most places in the house now, bonus.

I've always thought the transmitters should be taken out the hands of the phone companies though, I'm sure there's lots of overlapping transmitters that wouldn't be needed should this happen too.
 
estebanrey said:
But why do you keep assuming these plans are for mobile networks to share their top tier wireless tech? The plan is just about getting call coverage, not ensuring everyone has access to 4G.

Why would a company not invest in 5G on the basis it has to share its 2G technology? They can still keep their exclusivity on their top product.

Furthermore doesn't BT disprove your point? They have to share their technology but still continue to invest in it.
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I'm not, but I am assuming the older generation services will be turned off eventually either because they aren't economically worth while keeping going or they will reuse the frequency eventually like EE have for next generation services.

BT are hardly the same as they were / are a monopoly and were forced to ULL. Perhaps I'm unduly cynical of companies and of unintended consequences but the mobile companies have complained themselves about opening up their masts which they have invested in, no doubt because they can't advertise they have a competitive edge with regards to coverage.
 
Its never really made sense to me to have all these different companies creating their own networks all over the country, when you could have one joint network providing true national coverage which they pay to use.

I guess with everything though it would come down to investment and could the owning body / government be trusted to put the money back in for upgrades.

Hopefully they can work something out though, I travel all over for my job and Vodafone are terrible outside of cities / towns.
 
Bear said:
I'm not, but I am assuming the older generation services will be turned off eventually either because they aren't economically worth while keeping going or they will reuse the frequency eventually like EE have for next generation services.
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Then you keep moving. If 5G comes along and 2G is turned off, comapnies must share their 3G. When 6G comes and 3G is turned off, they share their 4G and so on.

That way companies still have motivation to invest and make money from having the best technology whilst providing all consumers with the best coverage.
 
MonkeyMan said:
Its never really made sense to me to have all these different companies creating their own networks all over the country, when you could have one joint network providing true national coverage which they pay to use.
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The problem is it's very difficult to run and multi operator base station each using their own spectrum. There is a phenomenon called intermodulation products, which is where if you have a pair of carriers, you get a sum and difference product spaced at the difference between the carriers. What this means in reality is that you will end up having spurious signals occurring in other peoples channels. Having base stations separated physically, isolates you from this problem.
 
estebanrey said:
Then you keep moving. If 5G comes along and 2G is turned off, comapnies must share their 3G. When 6G comes and 3G is turned off, they share their 4G and so on.

That way companies still have motivation to invest and make money from having the best technology whilst providing all consumers with the best coverage.
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AFAIK Three and EE are due (very soon) to turn off 2G services all together, EE will convert them to 4G. That means that roaming will be going onto 3G for these operators, for those that use 3G for data that could mean lower capacity for them. As I said earlier, I'm sure the operators will be ok as they will probably be paid for the roaming but the network customers that enjoy a decent service now might be the potential loser.

Perhaps I'm being too cynical, we will see I guess.
 
Bear said:
The problem is it's very difficult to run and multi operator base station each using their own spectrum. There is a phenomenon called intermodulation products, which is where if you have a pair of carriers, you get a sum and difference product spaced at the difference between the carriers. What this means in reality is that you will end up having spurious signals occurring in other peoples channels. Having base stations separated physically, isolates you from this problem.
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You obviously have far more knowledge of this subject than I and its interesting to hear the technical issues behind it.

With ideas being thrown around of a national WiFi network perhaps mobile phone companies could invest in that and use VOIP services instead, shouldn't be any interference issues with that.
 
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PardonTheWait said:
Why would you stay with a company for fifteen years when they don't provide proper signal to your house?
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I grew up in the age of landlines :p.

The only other company I used to be able to pick-up was Vodaphone I believe which were always expensive.

It was only relatively recently I realised O2 provided a pretty good signal. Even noticed the other day there's a bit of signal from 3 too now.
 
Surely the solution here is for wholesale roaming traffic to be charged at a high rate, so that if a particular network has poor coverage in one area, a lot of their traffic will be pushed onto roaming and that network will incur a high bill.

Wouldn't this then incentivise the network to then improve coverage in that area in order to reduce the cost of the roaming bill that they face?

I think this would be the best way to push up coverage. As soon as firms are hit with high costs, they'll bound to do what they can to reduce it, if that includes rolling out more cell sites, then I'm sure they would do that.
 
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