3g?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › 3g?

1 | 2 | 3

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#15127 30-May-2005 12:44

I believe it's got more to do with Telecom not wanting to put Woosh out of business and the threat that people would dump their landline phones if they had a true alternative (ie not requiring a voice line to get ADSL). If Telecom launched EV-DO pricing that was more competitive with current ADSL plans Woosh would be history. Telecom need Woosh to show that deregulation exists and the fact that Bob Smith (ex Telecom) is such a staunch fan of Telecom's current policies suggests to me that they are not exactly enemies. Woosh are struggling now and I seriously doubt some of their figures for projected growth. Combine that with the money they are spending this year on their rollout and you've really got to wonder if they truely believe they can survive or simply want to stay around long enough to be gobbled up by a larger company.

It will be interesting to see if Vodafone try and target home broadband customers with their 3G network, Vodafone Germany have done just this and are doing quite well. Sure it's not exactly a 2Mbps connection but it's broadband internet without being forced to have a landline connection, something that is dieing very quickly in the UK & Europe at the moment. I don't even have a voice line at home now, I have my mobile, TelstraClear cable and use the Slingshot italk VoIP service. My girlfriend is from oz so the only real use the phone got was calls to there and the odd local call. For $9.95 per month I get a VoIP number and then 5c per min calls inside NZ and to oz. Call quality is no different to a fixed line phone, the only small issue at the moment is that you only get an 09 number for incoming calls but nobody ever rang except for telemarketers so that's no loss! :-)

Liamz

5 posts

Wannabe Geek
Inactive user

#15130 30-May-2005 14:21

"I believe it's got more to do with Telecom not wanting to put Woosh out of business and the threat that people would dump their landline phones if they had a true alternative (ie not requiring a voice line to get ADSL). If Telecom launched EV-DO pricing that was more competitive with current ADSL plans Woosh would be history. Telecom need Woosh to show that deregulation exists and the fact that Bob Smith (ex Telecom) is such a staunch fan of Telecom's current policies suggests to me that they are not exactly enemies. Woosh are struggling now and I seriously doubt some of their figures for projected growth. Combine that with the money they are spending this year on their rollout and you've really got to wonder if they truely believe they can survive or simply want to stay around long enough to be gobbled up by a larger company."

Yes I imagine you would be quite right about this..
With Telecom already having existing cellcites,
compared to Woosh having to build their network
from scratch -
If Telecom wanted to they could probably bury Woosh.

However - it would be interesting to know how EVDO and UMTS
TDD compare in performance, mobility, cell edge data rates,
and cell coverage once the network is under heavy load.

From what I understand the UMTS TDD technology
was developed to improve most
of this performance criteria -
particularly average data throughput and
cell edge performance once the network is
pushing through large amounts of data to many users.

It would be interesting to know;
if the UMTS TDD technology deployed
with the same amount of coverage as the Telecom
t3g network would perform similar to, or better than
EVDO -

If that was the case then it may be a case of Woosh
not having the same available capital Telecom has
to deploy and maintain their network.

From the looks of things I can't imagine Woosh
being a serious competitor in the NZ portable broadband market
until several things improve:

* Coverage
* Higher speed data plans.
* Additional revenue streams (ie voip)
* mobility.

If Woosh gain additional funding on top of what they have already
to improve the network;
and Telecom plan to upgrade the majority of
the 027 cellcites to T3G - the next 2-3 years
in portable broadband should be interesting.

Lets hope so.
bring it on!

tonyhughes

Hawkes Bay
8476 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#15151 30-May-2005 19:23

Telecom cant bury Woosh - it would be classed as anti competitive to do that. They would get nailed by the CC.

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#15155 30-May-2005 20:48

Fat chance.. Apart from some old guy getting ripped off a few cents for Telecom overcharging him and several other issues of overcharging when have Telecom ever been found guilty by the commerce commission??

Most people live in countries where the government owns the incumbent telco. We live in a country where the incumbent Telco owns shares in the Government.

tonyhughes

Hawkes Bay
8476 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#15156 30-May-2005 21:04

Its all about public perception.

I own shares in Telecom, but I still dont agree with all of their methods. (Im happy to take 'dirty' money though LOL)

bbman

646 posts

Ultimate Geek

#15475 10-Jun-2005 23:29

Re a Nationwide EVDO network, Telecom have announced expansion to most major towns nationwide before xmas. Based on the coverage performance Telecom currently has on the exsiting EVDO network there investment will not a huge one and we will have mobile broadband through out the country, atleast in the towns and some outlying areas.

From there i hear Telecom is looking to do the whole network depending on Vodas movements with WCDMA.

JUst a note though WCDMA requires a huge property and equipment outlay to match even the existing GSM/GPRS service hence the 100's of mini and micro towers going up in CHCH. AUCK and Welly. There only so many silver vertical pipes on traffic lights you can put up before people start asking what is polluting the skyline. (how things have changed, people used to protest new cell sites going up)

It would seem for Voda to provide Nationwide WCDMA coverage as many industry people are saying, to match their existing GSM/GPRS footprint would take possibly 1000's of sites due to smaller foot print of this air interface.

The next few months after the Launch of Vodas 3g service will be very interesting. I am all for EVDO everywhere!!!

www.ultimatebroadband.co.nz
Delivering better broadband services

UFB fibre, Rural fibre on EA networks, RBI wireless, Ruralnet & Ultra wireless, wireless networks

andrewcnz

961 posts

Ultimate Geek

#15483 11-Jun-2005 11:14

One thing that does worry me about Vodafone and W-CDMA. Is that in other area’s like Tauranga and the Mount were I live. Apart from the addition of W-CDMA at existing sites I have seen no evidence of any extra filler towers or micro cells have been installed at all. So areas that have marginal GSM coverage(poor inbuilding) will have extremely bad or non existent W-CDMA coverage.

1 | 2 | 3