Spark 700Mhz LTE

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#1181795 23-Nov-2014 21:59

Are these sites live yet

coffeebaron

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#1181803 23-Nov-2014 22:40

davsri: Are these sites live yet

A few, but I'd say most are not yet. Live before Christmas would be my guess.

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davsri

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#1189906 6-Dec-2014 14:57

4 G is currently live in Cambridge - hit 50 Mbps download on my galaxy note 4 this morning in centre of town. I guess it is on band 28 LTE 700. I noticed as I was driving into Cambridge from the north eastern rural areas there is no 3G reception but interestingly 4G is available.

matisyahu

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#1189949 6-Dec-2014 19:36

davsri: 4 G is currently live in Cambridge - hit 50 Mbps download on my galaxy note 4 this morning in centre of town. I guess it is on band 28 LTE 700. I noticed as I was driving into Cambridge from the north eastern rural areas there is no 3G reception but interestingly 4G is available.

Maybe they're in the process of installing the new Huawei 3G equipment that was announced not too long ago? When you make a phone call does it fall back to 3G?

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#1189968 6-Dec-2014 20:34

davsri: 4 G is currently live in Cambridge - hit 50 Mbps download on my galaxy note 4 this morning in centre of town. I guess it is on band 28 LTE 700. I noticed as I was driving into Cambridge from the north eastern rural areas there is no 3G reception but interestingly 4G is available.

It's very poor network optimisation if that is the case. 3G needs to be available for voice fall-back. In the Vodafone 700Mhz areas a lot of work has been done to ensure this doesn't happen.

coffeebaron

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#1189978 6-Dec-2014 21:10

sbiddle:
davsri: 4 G is currently live in Cambridge - hit 50 Mbps download on my galaxy note 4 this morning in centre of town. I guess it is on band 28 LTE 700. I noticed as I was driving into Cambridge from the north eastern rural areas there is no 3G reception but interestingly 4G is available.

It's very poor network optimisation if that is the case. 3G needs to be available for voice fall-back. In the Vodafone 700Mhz areas a lot of work has been done to ensure this doesn't happen.

Alas at the expense of coverage footprint :( Roll on VoLTE or OTT

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davsri

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#1189988 6-Dec-2014 22:28

I noticed this lack of 3 G reception with 4 G being available only for a fleeting moment as I was a passenger in a car heading into Cambridge - and the lack of reception meaning I did not see any bars on the phone indicating reception. I did not make call at the time. This is to just put things into perspective - for all you know the optimisation will still be very good.

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#1190075 7-Dec-2014 10:43

sbiddle:
It's very poor network optimisation if that is the case. 3G needs to be available for voice fall-back. In the Vodafone 700Mhz areas a lot of work has been done to ensure this doesn't happen.

Spark has spent and is continuing to spend a lot of time and money, optimising our network coverage. It's always possible under certain scenarios to pickup coverage from one carrier (700 vs 850 or 900) but not others, especially when dealing with differing technologies (LTE vs WCDMA).

It could also be that the phone was in the middle of doing a full band scan, which in today's multiband phones can take a long time to cycle through.

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#1190076 7-Dec-2014 10:47

How come most of the band28 sites are concentrated around the hamilton/ waikato area?

stubbed

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#1190094 7-Dec-2014 11:21

I wouldn't read to much into it. Probably a combination of population base/topography (relatively flat)/When UHF TV turned off. Collectively that would have been favourable conditions compared to other areas.

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coffeebaron

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#1190111 7-Dec-2014 12:20

ALTRON: How come most of the band28 sites are concentrated around the hamilton/ waikato area?

They're trying to get me to switch from Vodafone by being first with 4G in my area :)

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#1190114 7-Dec-2014 12:23

@stubbed I notice your GIS site is not showing the LTE marker for 700 sites.

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matisyahu

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#1190142 7-Dec-2014 15:31

gajan:
sbiddle:

It's very poor network optimisation if that is the case. 3G needs to be available for voice fall-back. In the Vodafone 700Mhz areas a lot of work has been done to ensure this doesn't happen.

Spark has spent and is continuing to spend a lot of time and money, optimising our network coverage. It's always possible under certain scenarios to pickup coverage from one carrier (700 vs 850 or 900) but not others, especially when dealing with differing technologies (LTE vs WCDMA).

It could also be that the phone was in the middle of doing a full band scan, which in today's multiband phones can take a long time to cycle through.

It'll be interesting to see what happens once the Lucent-Acatel equipment is replaced with Huawei whether there is a visible change for the end user - looking forward to eventually seeing Band 28 make an appearance in the Hutt Valley which will hopefully improve the signal down near the Pomare rail station (went to a party at a friends place and found that the signal was pretty weak) - just checking out on gis.geek.nz and it appears to be a bit of a dead zone between two towers (throw a tower up around 1401 High Street and that should fill in the gap).

Btw, getting great 4G signal in Johnsonville at work - occasionally I'm getting all the dots filled up so I wonder whether someone is experimenting with 700Mhz up there.

coffeebaron: @stubbed I notice your GIS site is not showing the LTE market for 700 sites.

Ideally gis.geek.nz needs another symbol to differentiate between LTE sites that are purely 1800Mhz vs. a site that has 1800Mhz and 700Mhz.

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sbiddle

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#1190160 7-Dec-2014 17:08

I wouldn't expect to see mass rollouts of 700MHz from any network in urban areas any time soon.

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#1190175 7-Dec-2014 17:40

sbiddle: I wouldn't expect to see mass rollouts of 700MHz from any network in urban areas any time soon.

Looking at gis.geek.nz a fair number of Spark towers in Hamilton are 700mhz

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