Vodafone takes Telecom to courts over interference of new network

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Vodafone takes Telecom to courts over interference of new network

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153 posts

Master Geek

#212650 5-May-2009 20:34

marmel: My wife's vodafone cell causes funny noises through my speakers when I am trying to listen to music.

I'm going to sue vodafone until they agree to install a filter on my stereo to get rid of it.

Sounds more like an injunction against your wife

...but taking on Vodafone would be infinitely easier than she-who-must-be-obeyed...

exportgoldman

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#212657 5-May-2009 20:57

I have a funny feeling that if Telecom can rollout a nationwide 3G network in what, 10 months, then they can install the bulk of the filters in the next two weeks in time for launch, or at the sites of contention by launch.

From reading the letters between the lawyers last night, it seems MED may have made errors in allocating the spectrum and Vodafone never planned on other 3G networks existing when building their network.

I can actually understand some of Vodafone's pain, as if they are having this level of interference with no traffic on XT, what are the next two weeks going to be like before those filters are installed, and how many MORE VF customers are going to throw their hands up in the air and move to Telecom to simply get their mobiles working again.

I don't think Vodafone have done themselves any favours with their network build design, but it seems there are dollups of blame in a few places.

Tyler - Parnell Geek - iPhone 3G - Lenovo X301 - Kaseya - Great Western Steak House, these are some of my favourite things.

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#212661 5-May-2009 21:01

grant_k:
mikman: This is all starting to make sense.
...
2. MED are saying its within limits of its license and appears to be below the power floor of the RX band - this suggests that Telecom's argument is that VF have wound up the gain on their Masthead Amps. The Amps are important - they help minimise the number of antennas (through use of cross polarisation antennas and duplexers you can reduce the number of antennas but you take a link budget hit - you need a Masthead amp to compensate. More things in the chain, the more stuff can go wrong)

Increasing the gain could also exacerbate the effects of Intermod. Distortion in the Masthead Amps.

I wonder if this -- the increased gain that Vodafone are allegedly using -- is what Dr. Paul Reynolds was driving at when he stated that:

"This is a problem of Vodafone's own making".

That comment was made during a video clip broadcast on the day this story first broke. It's going to be very interesting what the judge's take is on all of this tomorrow.

mikman: What is clear is that for whatever reason - and I think you can really get rid of the conspiracy ideas - VF has decided that it is unable to resolve this through mediation. If they know that this could be fixed by end of May then an injunction to delay 2 weeks is not a big deal.

Without a doubt, Telecom's decision to advance their launch date has inflamed an already tense situation.

Assuming that the filters can be installed by the end of May, and that they can be proven to resolve the problem, then a 2-week injunction does seem like a common-sense approach.

If this is the outcome, it will be a bit sad for Telecom, but Hey, they have 2 more weeks to capitalise on all the free publicity this has generated, and compared to the life of the XT Mobile Network, 2 weeks is a drop in the bucket!

Unfortionately the people making the decisions, probably don't really understand the technology. I mean will the judge actually know what these experts are actually talking about? It will be whoever sounds the most convincing. If they are going to go on what an expert says, that expert needs to be totally independant, and not employed or contracted by either company. This is something that shouldn't be going to court, but handled inhouse by the MED. The fact the the MED has said they are going to wait for the court case, just shows the reason VF has had to take TC to court in the first place, the MED doesn't have a clue what to do.

exportgoldman

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#212667 5-May-2009 21:04

BarTender: Interesting Article on the NBR re Telecom and NZComms settle their spat.

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/nz-comms-settles-interference-spat-with-telecom-101945

I laughed outloud at this comment from the above link...

so why can't Telecom sort it out for Vodafone

If they accept there's a problem on the network they should fix it! Maybe Telecom could have actually got Richard Hammond to do some actual testing instead of just saying he did, eh?

Tyler - Parnell Geek - iPhone 3G - Lenovo X301 - Kaseya - Great Western Steak House, these are some of my favourite things.

alexx

867 posts

Ultimate Geek

#212689 5-May-2009 21:54

grant_k: It's a very interesting read. From an RF Engineering point-of-view, the crux of this whole problem is the proximity of Vodafone's Rx band starting at 899.8MHz to the upper limit of Telecom's Tx band finishing at 885MHz.

They are only 1.7% apart in frequency terms meaning that a very complex high-order passive filter would be required on Telecom's transmitters in order to reduce the out-of-band emissions to acceptable levels.

Another alternative is a filter on Vodafone's receivers, but in this sort of situation, it is always preferable to remove the interference at its source i.e. the Tx output.

I'm not sure if a filter on Vodafone's receiver is an option... there are two main categories of interference we can be talking about, In-band interference and Out-of-Band Interference.

In-Band: This means that the interfering signal is being generated inside the Vodafone base station receive band - in Vodafone sites this means above 899.8MHz. In this case Vodafone would not be able to filter this out, as the interfering signal is already in the same band as the Vodafone customers mobiles.

Out of Band: This means that a strong signal outside the Vodafone base station receive band is causing some sort of overload - blocking or intermodulation - in the base station receiver. in this case it would mean that the filters are needed in the Vodafone base station - which I would think is something they should be reasonably familiar with, since those Out of Band frequencies are from the same band (below 880MHz) as previous generations of Telecom transmitters.

If it was purely a problem of Out-of-Band interference, I'm not sure how that explains an apparent agreement for Telecom to install filters to prevent interference to NZ comms before NZ comms launch.

wongtop

563 posts

Ultimate Geek

#212692 5-May-2009 22:00

OK some questions for the cellular engineers;

1. Wouldn't this problem have existed in the past (or been even worse) when presumably Telecom was using most of its spectrum running dual networks (025 AMPS/TDMA & 027 CDMA) and there wasn't the 10 MHz defacto guard band (thank you NZcomms) between Telecom and Vodafone.

2. If there wasn't a problem back then, why don't Telecom just to a frequency shuffle and move their XT (UTMS) system down the dial, and their CDMA network up the dial, at least in the short term (say until CDMA shut down)?

3. If there was a problem, how come quite a few countries, in addition to our friend across the ditch, manage to run CDMA and GSM networks side by side, like India, China, etc? (I am presuming here that most CDMA is on the 850 MHz band)

tony0709

31 posts

Geek
Inactive user

#212720 5-May-2009 23:07

vodafone should just grow up, they've been having connection problems since they started back when the yea 2000...

their monopolistic service sucks, along with poor customer support, we are onloy with them coz we have no choice

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richms

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#212729 6-May-2009 00:34

So is anyone going to be liveblogging at court tomorrow? (assuming its open to all)

Bonus points for using a UMTS850 device ;)

Richard rich.ms

w2krules

491 posts

Ultimate Geek

#212741 6-May-2009 04:59

rck:
What I find interesting is that while most complaints I've heard in regards to Vodafone performance is in relation to the handover from WCDMA to GSM when, I assume, the GSM signal becomes stronger than the WCDMA signal. How can Vodafone then claim that the increase in faults they are experiencing is due to interference on their GSM network?

This is the problem that I had. In order to get my Vodafone supplied Nokia to work at home, I had to flash the firmware to a generic version that allowed me to select UMTS only. Otherwise Vodafone would have lost me as a customer months ago as I simply could not make or receive calls at home. And I suspect that this is happening much often now that Vodafone have expanded their 3G network.

And of course the XT network won't have this problem...

I was a geek before the word was invented!

rck

139 posts

Master Geek

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#212748 6-May-2009 07:12

Auckland High Court before Hon Justice Venning @10am. No 12 Court, First Floor. If anyone is interested...

old3eyes

9119 posts

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#212776 6-May-2009 09:05

Any live streaming?? :-)

Regards,

Old3eyes

willnz

573 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#212777 6-May-2009 09:06

Typical that they do it the only day I'm not in Auckland... ;)

Indio

153 posts

Master Geek

#212780 6-May-2009 09:17

willnz: Typical that they do it the only day I'm not in Auckland... ;)

It'll probably be jam-packed with media and other train-spotters...not to mention a few G'zoners. Those level 1 court rooms aren't the most spacious.....

wtf

38 posts

Geek

#212784 6-May-2009 09:23

Regarding the interference to your stereo from your wifes phone....the stereo is not licensed to receive these signals and the phone is (probably) transmitting within the band it is licensed for and at or below the power level it is licensed for. Under those circumstances you must accept any interference, and actually the fact that your stereo is responding to the signals indicates that it is crap in the first place. (Insufficient shielding against external fields, the signals should not even be reaching the electronics.)

And really the same principle applies to the Telecom/Vodafone case, the question will boil down to whether Telecom is generating signals that they should not, possibly through intermodulation, or if the Vodafone receiver is responding to signals that it should reject. The court will also no doubt take into account whether it is of vital importance to rush a network into service early when the technical issues have obviously not been completely resolved...remember an injunction does not have to be forever, it might just delay things for a few weeks while they are sorted out. One also wonders why this network launch has to be of such significance, it is not as if Telecom does not swap out its network every few years, sometimes before they even go live.

Indio

153 posts

Master Geek

#212787 6-May-2009 09:34

wtf: Regarding the interference to your stereo from your wifes phone....the stereo is not licensed to receive these signals and the phone is (probably) transmitting within the band it is licensed for and at or below the power level it is licensed for. Under those circumstances you must accept any interference, and actually the fact that your stereo is responding to the signals indicates that it is crap in the first place. (Insufficient shielding against external fields, the signals should not even be reaching the electronics.)

So I was right... he should sue his wife?? ...not for the interference but for being on Vodafone

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