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

Oh wow yes that's crazy. With o2 and Vodafone they both have an extremely good 2G network which LTE will fall back onto where 3G isn't there.

I think it means that EE will be best placed for the 4G rollout. They can rollout higher frequency in higher populated areas, install more masts & populated areas will stay fast... & use the 800 frequency to reach the more remote areas. Conversely o2 will be slower in highly populated areas. I was under the impression EE didn't get lower frequency but I was wrong here, so that's a bonus.

Ultimately I think we will see o2 and Vodafone are the slower networks with o2 being the worst for speed. That said o2 and Vodafone can definitely give the good indoor LTE coverage, albeit slower. This of course is somewhat mitigated by them having less masts.

EE will have the fastest LTE network in the end with best inner city speeds & good coverage as they have so many masts and strong investment & also 20Mhz support. They have good spectrum at both higher and lower frequencies so they should also have good indoor coverage.
We have another year or so before all orange sites are integrated into MBNL and 4GEE properly. At this stage EE will be far better than currently.

EE LTE indoor coverage will be better than their 3G indoor coverage, so you are likely to get strong LTE indoors but possibly weak 3G or no 3G and when making a call you will fallback to 2G. Say in highly concrete or metal buildings such as a cinema you may get LTE but not 3G.

In this situation,
Here 3 would have a major issue as customers would be getting LTE indoors but unable to make a call as there's no 2G fallback and no 3G signal from the same MBNL mast used by EE. How 3 will go around this I do not know. It's a lot of planning required and ultimately 3 are going to be investing heavily into 3G for basic calls when really it's a dying technology now & other networks will just rely on their 2G network (paid for a long time ago).

3 will have decent LTE but their all you can eat data has to slow things down somewhat & their rollout is painfully slow. Especially as an agreement between 4G and MBNL and EE wasn't really sorted fast.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 10-Sep-13 11:05:43)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I think it means that EE will be best placed for the 4G rollout. They can rollout higher frequency in higher populated areas, install more masts & populated areas will stay fast... & use the 800 frequency to reach the more remote areas. Conversely o2 will be slower in highly populated areas. I was under the impression EE didn't get lower frequency but I was wrong here, so that's a bonus.

I'm going purely by this page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_...

and the Ofcom outcome:
http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2013/02/20/ofcom-announces...

Here 3 would have a major issue as customers would be getting LTE indoors but unable to make a call as there's no 2G fallback and no 3G signal from the same MBNL mast used by EE. How 3 will go around this I do not know. It's a lot of planning required and ultimately 3 are going to be investing heavily into 3G for basic calls when really it's a dying technology now & other networks will just rely on their 2G network (paid for a long time ago).

They may be hoping for VoLTE which even the iPhone 5 can do if the network is set up for it.

Edited by deleted (Tue 10-Sep-13 18:54:21)

Is that with EE? Pretty dire!!

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

This area needs looking at - some nights it sucks.. I was on H+ but it has gone back to H for being idle
http://prntscr.com/1qi075

interesting, try one of the London speed test servers. Using 4G EE I find the FidoNet or PCCW test servers give the higher speeds, but when using TMobile 3G then the Maidenhead servers are better.

(There is no relationship in the UK to where you physically are and where your ISP/mobile provider enters the internet. You could be in scotland and get the best speed tests from a server in Canterbury, if your network has their 10gigabit connections to LINX based there).

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

But I'd rather have unlimited varying speed internet then 40mbps with 1GB limit - or even 6GB limit. On a phone anyway.

Yes, for me I'm happy with my BT Infinity at home with WiFi and out and about I don't need 100+gb capability, but its good that 3 offer it for people who do

I live in Cwmbran I used to get around 30mb using dc-hspa on 3 but since the one plan is on three is £15 with all you can eat data service has gone right down I get around 1-2 mb most of the time due to 3's traffic sense fup kicking in and caping every one on the cell due to lack of back haul capacity