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