At a guess there are local planning holdups stopping masts or sites being added.

AIUI some of the "normal" mobile phones to come onto the market in 2023 will be capable of using satellite broadband. If so that may be of some use to the two posters here with problems.

I assume mainly Starlink is the target. I've just spent under 10 minutes or so looking for providers of satellite connections in the UK, so not exhaustive, and the only one I found was https://etherlive.co.uk but that website doesn't seem to be much cop!

A few minutes later, googling how to get starlink in uk came up with two others as well, Viasat and HughesNet, but I didn't look into those. It also came up with a recent UK Starlink price reduction from £89pm to £75pm. Ah! Also ISPreview has better info re Starlink itself.

I expect you have better info than I on that whole subject!

It's time to cook!

Edited by pluralist (Wed 28-Dec-22 20:43:13)

Could the issues with mobile be anything to do with the military bases at Gosport?

In reply to a post by pluralist:

AIUI some of the "normal" mobile phones to come onto the market in 2023 will be capable of using satellite broadband.

For Starlink it's not broadband, but very narrowband: SMS and certain messaging apps only.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/12/starli...

In reply to a post by pluralist:

AIUI some of the "normal" mobile phones to come onto the market in 2023 will be capable of using satellite broadband. If so that may be of some use to the two posters here with problems.

Satellite comms from a handheld device is quite complicated. The real 'sat phones' that people take to wilderness areas have very limited battery life and if they do data services its incredibly slow (9600 bps if you are very lucky).

I assume mainly Starlink is the target. I've just spent under 10 minutes or so looking for providers of satellite connections in the UK, so not exhaustive, and the only one I found was https://etherlive.co.uk but that website doesn't seem to be much cop!

As the other poster said, sending emergency signals from a smartphone via satellite is the new thing which Apple launched this year with all the iPhone 14 models. Very slow text messaging service works to signal your position and that you need help somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, or the middle of nowhere in Montana. Its unclear if it works in Alaska, may be too far north for the satellites.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

VMo2 - no formal announcement to date

Yeah, so nothing unusual there. If o2 turned off 3G they'd have even more hopeless service than they do now given just how often you end up sat on 3G bearers with those clowns.

They can't even dream of turning off 3G unless they literally want to go back to 2G service only. Which frankly half the time with o2 is preferable.

In reply to a post by therioman:

Yeah, so nothing unusual there. If o2 turned off 3G they'd have even more hopeless service than they do now given just how often you end up sat on 3G bearers with those clowns.

Its unclear (given the money woes of their owner Telefonica) if during the 4G rollout they were replacing the 2G/3G hardware with 2G/3G/4G software defined radios (SDN) hardware. If so then moving from 2G/3G/4G to a 2G/4G only system would be easy. This is how EE and Vodafone will manage the switch during 2023.

Telefonica had O2 UK up for sale for years, the German operation merged with a competitor so they ended up with only 50% ownership, the Irish network was sold to Three Ireland, and now in the UK they've merged with Virgin Media so they only have a 50% shareholding. Hopefully this will mean money is available to do network improvements, rather than just marketing tricks.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by therioman:

Yeah, so nothing unusual there. If o2 turned off 3G they'd have even more hopeless service than they do now given just how often you end up sat on 3G bearers with those clowns.

Its unclear (given the money woes of their owner Telefonica) if during the 4G rollout they were replacing the 2G/3G hardware with 2G/3G/4G software defined radios (SDN) hardware. If so then moving from 2G/3G/4G to a 2G/4G only system would be easy. This is how EE and Vodafone will manage the switch during 2023.

Telefonica had O2 UK up for sale for years, the German operation merged with a competitor so they ended up with only 50% ownership, the Irish network was sold to Three Ireland, and now in the UK they've merged with Virgin Media so they only have a 50% shareholding. Hopefully this will mean money is available to do network improvements, rather than just marketing tricks.

turning off 3G is about:

(a) refarming the spectrum to 4G/5G because 3G needs a lot of spectrum for very little capacity - they've already moved as much as they can away from it.

(b) getting rid of the need to run an entire platform just for 3G - and in most cases entirely different kit which is also not very efficient - keeping 2G is not much of a big deal (indeed currently it's not possible to realistically remove 2G because behind the scenes it is still needed for basic functionality on 4G/5G - hence the longer window as that will get replaced in a much longer time window)

In reply to a post by therioman:

turning off 3G is about:

(a) refarming the spectrum to 4G/5G because 3G needs a lot of spectrum for very little capacity - they've already moved as much as they can away from it.

Yes, that's obvious when you look at the frequencies using a rooted Android.

(b) getting rid of the need to run an entire platform just for 3G - and in most cases entirely different kit which is also not very efficient - keeping 2G is not much of a big deal (indeed currently it's not possible to realistically remove 2G because behind the scenes it is still needed for basic functionality on 4G/5G - hence the longer window as that will get replaced in a much longer time window)

2G isn't needed for 4G/5G as the US shows, AT&T has scrapped 2G and 3G. The only reason for 2G hanging around is original smart meters, and a lot of vending machines/parking meters that have had no investment and only have GPRS radios. Given most networks have shrunk spectrum for 2G down to 5MHz it wouldn't give much back to the newer protocols.

UMTS (3G) has always been a disaster since it was invented by telecoms committe, it didn't scale, ideas such as Cell Breathing were horrendous, and it it time to put it out of its mysery.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 30-Dec-22 17:49:23)

2G isn't needed for 4G/5G as the US shows, AT&T has scrapped 2G and 3G. The only reason for 2G hanging around is original smart meters, and a lot of vending machines/parking meters that have had no investment and only have GPRS radios. Given most networks have shrunk spectrum for 2G down to 5MHz it wouldn't give much back to the newer protocols.

You've misunderstood what I mean - they don't need to necessarily broadcast a 2G signal to users, but 2G is still fundamental to things behind the scenes - there are various technologies to virtualise the functions of 2G networks to effectively emulate the behaviour and features, but it's absolutely crucial to a lot of backend networks still. It isn't about the radio network for 2G - it's about the backend.

There is an added reason to keep 2G around for devices too - but that isn't the operators reason to do so - it is however relatively "cheap" to keep a 2G service around for now since it already exists.

Comparisons with the US however aren't quite as straightforward as they've come from another world with some alternative technology transitions already so they haven't quite the level of embedded 2G service *and* they have very different geographical challenges.