The moment you realise..

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

3 4G ain't coming to you in the next 2 years.

Yes, they don't have the subscriber numbers to roll it out any faster (probably can't get the borrowing from the owners / banks).

Edited by deleted (Mon 09-Sep-13 20:55:41)

I am guessing you one of the many on here who lives in a village?

realise most people do live in cities, then you can see most people will have their 4g service during 2014.

My city I believe is due in feb 2014.

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

I don't think they need to ask a bank for capital.

Agree - but I think they might own a bank too

What i meant was - none of those citys are mine :/

Or mine, heck I don't live in a city either, but 25 miles from Heathrow. I'm not expecting Three 4G before 2014, but we have EE 4G since start of August.

Three might stay at 9 million subscribers (which might be exactly what they want. Provisioning backhaul and core network for 9 million has to be easier than for 26 million).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_...

Looking at turnover alone can be misleading. Lets not forget that 3 has had to rollout an entire 3G network on its own using a high frequency (requiring more masts, but to be fair it didn't put that many up) and they have a relatively small customer base.

They will need significant investment to rollout 4G and given their heavy investment in superfast 3G it seems pointless rolling out LTE on a fast scale. They need to see a return on the 3G equipment.

Also 3 have never been trendsetters. 3 wait for the market around them and once they know how the competition is performing they work on a strategy of trying to undercut the big players to increase their customer base.
3 will wait for o2 and vodafone to launch 4G, look at their pricing etc and then will enter the market.

The only reason 3 deals are so good is because they're trying everything in their power to bring up their customer base. Once (if) they become established the deals will probably be not as sweet.

o2 has taken a clever decision to use low frequency LTE which means less infrastructure required. This will benefit o2 greatly as they have plenty of debt already so keeping this to a minimal during the 4G rollout is the best way forward. o2 will get a good indoor coverage with much less masts than the competition.

regardless of how much much cash they have these things take time.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Looking at turnover alone can be misleading. Lets not forget that 3 has had to rollout an entire 3G network on its own using a high frequency (requiring more masts, but to be fair it didn't put that many up) and they have a relatively small customer base.

Also don't forget that 3 was fairly rubbish until 2007 when MBNL was formed so 3 could share T-Mobile's 2G mast sites and they could both grow 3G coverage.

They will need significant investment to rollout 4G and given their heavy investment in superfast 3G it seems pointless rolling out LTE on a fast scale. They need to see a return on the 3G equipment.

and they need 3G coverage as well as LTE to handle voice calls, whereas the other companies can fall back to 2G. Given the 2100mhz coverage issue, this is probably taking a LOT longer to plan.

o2 has taken a clever decision to use low frequency LTE which means less infrastructure required. This will benefit o2 greatly as they have plenty of debt already so keeping this to a minimal during the 4G rollout is the best way forward. o2 will get a good indoor coverage with much less masts than the competition.

Essentially they're all doing this, O2, Voda, and EE all have 800mhz, but O2 is the only one with the minimum coverage requirement. Voda has the 'biggest' slice of spectrum at 800mhz - but EE has physically more spectrum at 1800mhz. What this means in the future is unclear!

EE already has more cells than Voda or O2 as they had to compensate for 1800 versus 900 in the old 2G days - so perhaps Voda & O2 will end up with similar coverage to EE but half the capable speeds, due to more people per cell site, as the cell sites will be bigger.

Something to watch

As others have said three is the smallest so we all new they were not going to be the fastest to roll out, That been said i dont mind this, I would much rather have a Unlimited fast 3G service from three(most places i go im on 22meg with DC at lowest its about 15meg while on the bus lol) than have have an extremely limited super fast 4G service from one of the other networks,
Ive had a 30day sim only off EE4G and i thought it was pants never got past 14meg down fair play on the upload was about 20 but TBF upload is not important to me on a phone no good having 20meg up if you want to download a 100meg app lol also it had something like a gig limit and cost almost as much as my one plan contract with unlimited, In the past three have known to be ahead in their roll outs so what it says on paper might not be how it go's so you could see it quicker than you think

Ash