Will a vodafone cellphone work on the new telecom network?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Will a vodafone cellphone work on the new telecom network?

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#200306 10-Mar-2009 10:13

bbman:
Telstra do have 2100mhz in the City, it was there from before Next G become available. They dont promote it nor do offer the next G services over it, Next G 850 is Telstras 3G network and 2100mhz is really an add on to the 900/1800 GSM network

Remember as well that Telstra's 2100Mhz 3G is part of the 3GIS network which is shared infrastructure between 3 and Telstra. Many of these sites offering 2100Mhz were originally built by 3 not Telstra.

The YHA 3/Vodafone deal in Australia leaves many, many, many unanswered questions at present over the status of joint networks and roaming agreements - potentially some existing roaming deals could now be null and void with uncertainly over 3's use of Next G for roaming and GSM fallback. There is certainly plenty of specultion at present but very few hard facts about what could happen.

bbman

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#200307 10-Mar-2009 10:16

sbiddle:
bbman:
Telstra do have 2100mhz in the City, it was there from before Next G become available. They dont promote it nor do offer the next G services over it, Next G 850 is Telstras 3G network and 2100mhz is really an add on to the 900/1800 GSM network

Remember as well that Telstra's 2100Mhz 3G is part of the 3GIS network which is shared infrastructure between 3 and Telstra. Many of these sites offering 2100Mhz were originally built by 3 not Telstra.

The YHA 3/Vodafone deal in Australia leaves many, many, many unanswered questions at present over the status of joint networks and roaming agreements - potentially some existing roaming deals could now be null and void with uncertainly over 3's continued use of Next G for roaming and GSM fallback. There is certainly plenty of specultion at present but very few hard facts about what could happen.

Thats right, I knew there was something else which made the 2100mhz 3G network different and thats it. Hence why 850 is Next G!

Once CDMA goes or majority of the base has shifted from CDMA to WCDMA would Telecom really need 2100mhz of simply they could up 850 capacity / sectors etc.

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icepicknz

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#200310 10-Mar-2009 10:32

Once CDMA goes or majority of the base has shifted from CDMA to WCDMA would Telecom really need 2100mhz of simply they could up 850 capacity / sectors etc.

Yes, because 2100 has a much smaller footprint than 850. Lets say you you could have 100 concurrent calls per sector, that 850 cell would be picked up for 5-10km's thus serving a number of people, you put that in a city and it would be serving hundreds of thousands of people.

If you have a 2100 site, the footprint is smaller so a site would be serving maybe 1000 customers and be able to do 100 concurrent calls. This means lots of smaller streetlight time cells on 2100 or on the side of buildings, maybe 50 in the city compaired to 5-10 required for 850.

I believe 2100 would probably take preference as it would be considered like a minicell. A 850 site at say Quay street might be serving devenport, CBD & waiheke, whereas a 2100 cell site at quay street auckland would only do quay street and perhaps a 1-2km radius.

That's my thought anyhow

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munchkin

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#200311 10-Mar-2009 10:39

jesseycy: Interesting news....

Same with roaming customers... By not having 2100Mhz in the main centres (initially anyway), roaming customers will still be going on Vodafone...

I know that you're looking at the European roamers when you mention customers will be utilising Vodafone services, but the reality is that many roaming customers will have phones that support the 850MHz band. In a few years, there will be a very large pan-pacific 850MHz coverage area as various providers finish building their networks.

Don't forget that aside from Australians using Telstra's NextG service; AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus, a host of other smaller providers throughout the continental US and the Caribbean, as well as Claro and other providers in South America all have 3G handsets that support the 850MHz band.

bbman

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#200316 10-Mar-2009 11:03

icepicknz:

Once CDMA goes or majority of the base has shifted from CDMA to WCDMA would Telecom really need 2100mhz of simply they could up 850 capacity / sectors etc.

Yes, because 2100 has a much smaller footprint than 850. Lets say you you could have 100 concurrent calls per sector, that 850 cell would be picked up for 5-10km's thus serving a number of people, you put that in a city and it would be serving hundreds of thousands of people.

If you have a 2100 site, the footprint is smaller so a site would be serving maybe 1000 customers and be able to do 100 concurrent calls. This means lots of smaller streetlight time cells on 2100 or on the side of buildings, maybe 50 in the city compaired to 5-10 required for 850.

I believe 2100 would probably take preference as it would be considered like a minicell. A 850 site at say Quay street might be serving devenport, CBD & waiheke, whereas a 2100 cell site at quay street auckland would only do quay street and perhaps a 1-2km radius.

That's my thought anyhow

That makes sense when you put it in that context. So 2100 in high volume areas on top of existing 850 infrastructure to support high numbers of users in a smaller area of requirement. what about lower powered 850 sites, would that not do the same thing or am I way off track.

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icepicknz

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#200321 10-Mar-2009 11:13

That could work, however I don't know how frequency planning works. I'd say they'd be using 850 overlapping all areas and then reusing the frequency further down the line like in hamilton or at the airport or something so there is no overlapping of the same frequency. Probably comes down to whats the point in using a frequency that has so much more distance in a low setting when they have all the 2100 that they can use multiple times in the city.

i.e. the frequecny in 2100 on quay street could maybe be used again in symonds street, so to install 50 sites they only need maybe 5 chunks of 2100 whereas with 850 they'd need more as there would be some overlapping of waiheke 850 into the CBD.

Again I dont know completely what I'm talking about, but I believe thats how it works?

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bbman

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#200326 10-Mar-2009 11:20

icepicknz: That could work, however I don't know how frequency planning works. I'd say they'd be using 850 overlapping all areas and then reusing the frequency further down the line like in hamilton or at the airport or something so there is no overlapping of the same frequency. Probably comes down to whats the point in using a frequency that has so much more distance in a low setting when they have all the 2100 that they can use multiple times in the city.

i.e. the frequecny in 2100 on quay street could maybe be used again in symonds street, so to install 50 sites they only need maybe 5 chunks of 2100 whereas with 850 they'd need more as there would be some overlapping of waiheke 850 into the CBD.

Again I dont know completely what I'm talking about, but I believe thats how it works?

Got ya, that makes sense from the frequency planning. Atleast they have the 2100 frequency and some of the gear in place and as you have said before they would need to upgrade some cards and filters for dual freq etc.

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Scratchpro

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#200341 10-Mar-2009 11:39

Getting back closer to the question..

For the last month my TytnII has had extremely unpredictable signal strength and connectivity, a visit to the repair shop care of Vodafone failed to resolve the problem.
Yesterday I found the phone has a default setting to Auto select the network type between GSM & WCDMA, setting it to GSM resolved the issues
I like my phone again not so happy with Vodafone HTC support.
As the phone has this WCDMA setting will it be able to connect with Telecoms new network and will there be some kind of Sim card?

Behodar

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#200344 10-Mar-2009 11:44

Looks like your phone will work. According to HTC's site it supports WCDMA 850/2100 so that's what you need. Yes, Telecom will supply SIM cards.

coffeebaron

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#200426 10-Mar-2009 16:04

bbman:That makes sense when you put it in that context. So 2100 in high volume areas on top of existing 850 infrastructure to support high numbers of users in a smaller area of requirement. what about lower powered 850 sites, would that not do the same thing or am I way off track.

2100 although having a smaller footprint, has greater capacity, being a higher frequency. Therefore is much better for infill in high density areas.

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bbman

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#200430 10-Mar-2009 16:20

Excellent, i did know that but the whole Next G network idea confused things. I am not 100% on it but Next G phones dont use the 2100mhz capacity in Aussie at the moment, why i wonder.

But it does make sense in certain high density locations to have 2100mhz capability to provide enhanced capacity.

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NealR

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#200445 10-Mar-2009 18:00

The primary differenence between 850 and 2100MHz is coverage. The power output is the same irrespective of the frequency. (yes Mr radio geek I know there is a difference but for the the purposes of this discussion it is irrelevant).

Basically lower frequencies travel further than higher frequencies.

For those rednecks out there this is why you cannot hear you wife screaming from the ktichen to put the rubbish out yet you can hear your mate comming up the road in his V8 to watch the rugby.

The laws of physics says that as the frequency increases the effective coverage decreases. Scientifically this is the Inverse Square Law. (one over "x"squared). This law shows that when you double the frequency you quarter the coverage area.

What this means is that you need 4-6 times as many 2100MHz cell sites as you would 850MHz cell sites to cover the same area. So 2100MHz cell sites don't actually have more capacity, there are just more of them.

One of the other benefits of lower frequencies is that they penetrate buildings better so you get less call drops in lifts etc.

A major contraints of a mobile phone network is the maximum number of simultaneous calls available per cell site. The other is radio interference primarily from other cell sites.

Having 850Mhz coverage every where provides good consistant call quality everywhere especially inbuilding whilst having 2100MHz available provides a good capacity growth option. The network itself provides seamless handoff between the two frequencies based on signal quality.

Hope this helps.

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sbiddle

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#200450 10-Mar-2009 18:29

icepicknz: That could work, however I don't know how frequency planning works. I'd say they'd be using 850 overlapping all areas and then reusing the frequency further down the line like in hamilton or at the airport or something so there is no overlapping of the same frequency. Probably comes down to whats the point in using a frequency that has so much more distance in a low setting when they have all the 2100 that they can use multiple times in the city.

i.e. the frequecny in 2100 on quay street could maybe be used again in symonds street, so to install 50 sites they only need maybe 5 chunks of 2100 whereas with 850 they'd need more as there would be some overlapping of waiheke 850 into the CBD.

Again I dont know completely what I'm talking about, but I believe thats how it works?

Except frequency reuse in a WCDMA system is completely different to TDMA.

With a TDMA based system such as GSM nearby sites use different frequencies. Frequency reuse is factored by N=, ie N=6 on a high reuse system or N=15 on a lower reuse system. The higher the N figure the greater the frequency reuse (and efficienty of the spectrum) but up goes the chances of interference from channel reuse.

WCMDA (and CDMA) essentially has N=1 since all sites use the same frequency and use the bandwidth that's available to them.

One example I like to use is people in a room

With TDMA:

30 people are in a room numbered 1-30 if two people want to talk to each other they pair off and effectively talk to each other with no interference using a specific frequency. Now since there is no reuse of those frequencies there are no issues.

Now say there are only 10 frequencies available. Some of those people will be using the same frequency as other people in the room. If they are near you you'll get interference from them. If they're on the other side you may not. Likewise if they tlak loudly or quiety you'll see a similair effect.

With CDMA:

Since N=1 reuse occurs on all sites using a chunk of spectrum. Everybody talks in pairs and the system magically works out what pairs go together and everybody is happy. Until of course the S/N ratio of noise gets too high and suddenly nobody can hear each other. In a CDMA based system this can just dump every call to fix the problem! :-)

swisskiwi

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#200464 10-Mar-2009 19:50

I'm just curious though as to what happens to someone who is on the new network and something happens to the 3G network, i.e network issues and the network falls over, I mean Telecom wont have a GSM network as a foundation in case something does happen and it could happen W-CDMA is a complicated network and as the saying goes "s***t happens", it means that people will not be able to do anything; make calls use the internet, whereas if they built a GSM base at least the voice and even the data could fall back onto the GSM network and you would still be able to make calls.

Also, in regards to the handsets, if I'm not mistaken there are about four networks in Europe that are starting to use the 900 frequency for W-CDMA along with 2100 and some countries are already building a 900 W-CDMA network, while others are getting the approval to use the 900 for W-CDMA. Also, as a lot of the world, including Europe, Africa, Middle East, and parts of Asia are using 900 GSM, there is a very good chance that they will build their W-CDMA networks using the 900 frequency band. That would mean manufacturers would start to build more phones for 900/2100 as that could become the more dominant frequency around the world, apart from North America, parts of South America and Australia.

When I was reading about new phones being announced at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona I noticed most of the phones specs indicated W-CDMA 900/2100, so I believe that although there are probably more 850/2100 handsets at the moment based on what I've seen on the internet through various sites like GSMARENA, 900/2100 handsets will increase. This is just based on what I've read off the net.

I do agree that the 3G network Vodafone can be quite unstable at times, which is why I moved over to Telecom three months ago, but at least you have the GSM network to fall back on. I just thought I would put forth what I've read and what I believe could happen in the future. Only time will tell.

sbiddle

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#200482 10-Mar-2009 21:14

An entire GSM network just as a backup simply doesn't stack up. First off their simply isn't the spectrum to do this - Telecom could not run a CDMA, GSM and UMTS network at 850Mhz with the spectrum they own and adequate bandwidth for all 3 networks.

GSM is virtually obsolete when it comes to building a network from scratch unless you're looking at a market such as Africa where access to dirt cheap GSM equipment and handsets makes sence.

As for the handset situation I certainly think there will be "cooler" handsets coming out this year that support 900 UMTS and not 850Mhz. While there are a large number of 850 devices already available I think Vodafone may still have a slight advantage in this area. I'd say towards the middle of next year we'll start to see devices supporting both 850 and 900 UMTS (as well as 1700, 1900 and 2100) so this will become a moot point as there will be devices that can operate on both Vodafone and Telecom UMTS networks.

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