How Telecom's GSM/WCDMA network will be configured

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › How Telecom's GSM/WCDMA network will be configured

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freitasm

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#77112 6-Jul-2007 09:10

Aloha:
freitasm:

And hence my comment (reproduced below) alluding to the fact that Telecom made a decision to go with 2100 MHz, even though they know from science (as you pointed out) and by experience (from Vodafone's previous roll out) that it would be better to go for lower frequencies (if they are available it's another question)

You didnt get my point. The weakness of 2100 is well known in the industry (amongst the operators and vendors) and it's easy to fix it: you have to deploy more indoor sites. Unfortunately it takes time, operators are creating their outdoor coverage first then comes the focus on the in-building solutions. Vodafone is finishing its 2100 deployment sooner or later and they will fix the holes in the indoor coverage. You guys just want everything in no time! They have yearly budget, they have yearly plans, soon they will reach their goal and you will have your coverage inside. If something is not going as YOU want then it's easy to blame the technology or the vendor without knowing the real reasons of the problems. Ridiculous.

Seriously, WCDMA was launched a couple years ago. There were problems then and there are problems now. People see dropped calls, failed SMS sending, no data services, poor data services. There's no excuse, when a company is selling a service promoting it as "Broadband everywhere".

Do you remember the Xtra Go Large fiasco?

I think people like to be behind a name and post things like this. My name is public and people can see my face. Would you care to tell everyone reading this if you have any links to interested parties on this project?

Aloha

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#77114 6-Jul-2007 09:18

mjsit&t:
And from all accounts it's not going as well as the promoters would like. 900mhz is un proven and 850mhz is proving to provide head aches for operators and few vendors will run with that. At least 2100mhz is proven and the faults are known. To me this is a win for CDMA promoters knowing how well ~~there~~ their networks work at 1900/850/800/450 etc etc.

"WCDMA 900MHz un proven" - agree, but it doesnt mean anything yet.

"WCDMA 850MHz is proving to provide head aches for operators" - How many opearators are running this version of network in the world at the moment? Are you working for all of them? Not? Then how do you know? How do you know what problems they have? Did you read in the Herald? Or on Stuff.co.nz?

"2100MHz is proven and the faults are known" - Tell me the faults. And dont tell me poor in-building penetration, because that was mentioned already and that's just ONE problem. What else?

I is a kollege stoodent. Bee nice.

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#77116 6-Jul-2007 09:39

Fraktul: My guess is 2100mhz had unutilized or easily available spectrum for many network operators?

Where as the number of operators which had alternate lower spectrum available for immediate or reasonably easy deployment was of a lesser number.

Stab in the dark but that would be an obvious reason in my books.

That's one correct answer, all the 900 MHz bands were chocker with existing GSM networks. Many operators only had 7 to 10 MHz of spectrum and there was no way they were going to be able to free up enough spectrum for a 5 MHz UMTS carrier.

The more fundamental reason is they expected a much higher demand for 3G services than for 2G, which in turn requires a lot more spectrum. There is 60MHz of spectrum (paired) available at 2100MHz and only about 20-25MHz (depending on the jurisdication) at 900. Put simply, they believed 20MHz is simply not enough to provide widespread 3G broadband services.

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#77151 6-Jul-2007 14:30

freitasm:
Seriously, WCDMA was launched a couple years ago. There were problems then and there are problems now. People see dropped calls, failed SMS sending, no data services, poor data services. There's no excuse, when a company is selling a service promoting it as "Broadband everywhere".

You definitely didnt read the small text, which says: "wherever available" and "problems can occur" :)

I think people like to be behind a name and post things like this. My name is public and people can see my face. Would you care to tell everyone reading this if you have any links to interested parties on this project?

I dont have any direct link to interested parties on the Telecom GSM/WCDMA project, but as Jama or johnr, I am working for one of the big players in this game called (mobile) telecommunications.
And if people wanna know I can tell them in PM, which company it is, but for certain reasons I will not put my face and my email public on any website.

I is a kollege stoodent. Bee nice.

inquisitor

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#79055 21-Jul-2007 07:52

juha:
I'm curious about something here: why wasn't WCDMA deployed in lower frequency bands before? Does it work better in higher frequencies?

The reason UMTS was initially designed for 2100 MHz was, that in most European countries licenses are technology-restricted. So operators may not use their spectrum for anything else than GSM, however those restrictions are subject to easing now. Finnland, France and UK are the first countries to deploy UMTS900 now.
Further in many countries there are 3-4 operators at 900 MHz. Using a part of that small 900-MHz spectrum for UMTS is practically impossible, as there would be too few channels left for GSM basestations.
Other frequencies like 450 and 850 MHz are occupied by other radio applications.

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#79070 21-Jul-2007 10:03

"WCDMA 900MHz un proven" - agree, but it doesnt mean anything yet.

Actually it does. If the vendor get's it wrong and more investment/engineering is required to remedy, then it takes longer and will cost someone more money.

"WCDMA 850MHz is proving to provide head aches for operators"
Well, Telstra is. and their handset selection is stunning - all 8 of them. Go to google and see what people are finding - it's new technology and was rushed out so they could close the CDMA network. Impact is that it could have been done better.

"2100MHz is proven and the faults are known" - Tell me the faults. And dont tell me poor in-building penetration, because that was mentioned already and that's just ONE problem. What else?

Go buy a Vodafone 3G sim and use their network. They have overlaid 2100mhz cells onto their 900mhz towers - and that isn't the best model. Coverage at Victoria University is ok at 900mhz and shocking at 2100mhz. Their network doesn't handover between cells, they get significant blocking and data doesn't flow at all times, and the cells regularly crash.

2100Mhz as a paper exercise is fine, but it means nothing if the technology deployed is poor and doesn't work well.

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Antoniosk

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#79077 21-Jul-2007 10:35

i'm a bit late on this but here goes.

Telecom are choosing the 850 gsm/2.1 GHz due to the proven technology, you get coverage of the 850 on the reliable gsm platform with data services on umts at 2.1ghz which is the common configuration worldwide also meaning handset choice.

Yes 2.ghz has it's limitiations but i have had very nice results from it, reaching 1.9mbps yesterday.

Vodafone's problem is their back haul or microwave links, it seems to suffer when there is not a centre nearby. Using umts in the city is flawless, in the burbs it suffers.

Now of course there is evdo rev a and b and while the cdma voice platform aint the greatest thanks mostly some bad handsets hocked out by industry newbies, to qualcomm charging horrid licence fee's the evdo data networks are rock solid in reliability and the data devices are good once you hack them a bit like jama did.
Telecom are not doing a telstra and pulling the network with a years notice so you'll see evdo around for some time yet, possibly offering last mile services.

I work with mobile stuff on a daily basis on an almost network engineering level.

I'm happy with both services, nothing was "the wrong horse" but what was simply the best path at the time.

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#79080 21-Jul-2007 10:44

antoniosk:
Go buy a Vodafone 3G sim and use their network. They have overlaid 2100mhz cells onto their 900mhz towers - and that isn't the best model. Coverage at Victoria University is ok at 900mhz and shocking at 2100mhz. Their network doesn't handover between cells, they get significant blocking and data doesn't flow at all times, and the cells regularly crash.

While Vodafone simply added 2100MHz panels to most of their existing sites they also added plenty of additional 2100MHz only sites as well and on paper their 2100Mhz network in Wellington should work well. In reality it works pretty well for voice but inbuilding coverage in many parts of the CBD is terrible. Because Vodafone (and Telecom) have been able to get away with a minimal number of 800/900Mhz sites in CBD areas because of it's good inbuilding coverage the cost of rolling out large numbers of 2100MHz sites to replicate this due to the poor signal penetration is simply uneconomical. Due to the higher population densities of larger cities overseas the existing 900Mhz and 1800Mhz sites already exist so the cost of acquiring new sites is nowhere as great.

Vodafone could also potentially start facing some issues with frequency reuse as well, because they owned all the 900MHz spectrum they didn't have to bother with this in the past. Potentially losing some 900MHz spectrum to competitors and also rolling out 900MHz UMTS is going to mean a lot less 900MHz spectrum and greater reuse.

I actually think the 3G network in Wellington works extremely well for voice outdoors and while mobile outperforms the GSM network in many areas. Vodafone have made some terrible engineering decisions in Wellington over the years and still choose to ignore some areas despite their being known problems.

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#79087 21-Jul-2007 11:28

antoniosk: "WCDMA 900MHz un proven" - agree, but it doesnt mean anything yet.

Actually it does. If the vendor get's it wrong and more investment/engineering is required to remedy, then it takes longer and will cost someone more money.

It's just another frequency for God's sake! Same technology using different frequency. Kapish?

antoniosk:
Go buy a Vodafone 3G sim and use their network. They have overlaid 2100mhz cells onto their 900mhz towers - and that isn't the best model. Coverage at Victoria University is ok at 900mhz and shocking at 2100mhz. Their network doesn't handover between cells, they get significant blocking and data doesn't flow at all times, and the cells regularly crash.
2100Mhz as a paper exercise is fine, but it means nothing if the technology deployed is poor and doesn't work well.

I am dealing with another expert here, right? Ahh, tell me more about Vodafone's network please.
"that isn't the best model" - Who are you? A network planner? You must be joking.

I is a kollege stoodent. Bee nice.

freitasm

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#79090 21-Jul-2007 11:50

Aloha:
antoniosk:
Go buy a Vodafone 3G sim and use their network. They have overlaid 2100mhz cells onto their 900mhz towers - and that isn't the best model. Coverage at Victoria University is ok at 900mhz and shocking at 2100mhz. Their network doesn't handover between cells, they get significant blocking and data doesn't flow at all times, and the cells regularly crash.
2100Mhz as a paper exercise is fine, but it means nothing if the technology deployed is poor and doesn't work well.

I am dealing with another expert here, right? Ahh, tell me more about Vodafone's network please.
"that isn't the best model" - Who are you? A network planner? You must be joking.

Aloha, we have discussed this before: you haven't established your qualifications in this forum, so please don't dispute other person's.

It is nothing personal, but whenever anyone issues an opinion on Vodafone's network you jump at the person's neck.

Now, I know both of you - I know Aloha from Geekzone and I know Antoniosk personally (he joins us for coffee every Wednesday). And Antoniosk does not hide from the forum he works for TelstraClear.

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#79092 21-Jul-2007 12:33

Aloha: as Jama or johnr, I am working for one of the big players in this game called (mobile) telecommunications.
And if people wanna know I can tell them in PM, which company it is, but for certain reasons I will not put my face and my email public on any website.

I'll save them the trouble and take a wild guess, Vodafone \

/

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#79122 21-Jul-2007 16:16

and for those who want to be really bored, I have also worked at Telecom Mobile, and BellSouth when we were doing the deployment in Wellington and Auckland.

I'm not a network planner nor do I want to be. But i have worked around enough clever people to know that the words "sh*tty planning tools" and "bl**dy hills" are never the sort of quality professional observations you want to hear.

Shame this thread has become so aggro...

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#79137 21-Jul-2007 20:36

Those problems you guys describe for UMTS2100 are not caused by the technology itself but either by the inability of Vodafone NZ to set up a working network or just by your handsets.

Here in Germany UMTS2100 works flawlessly. With my O2 SIM I'm being handed over between GSM900, GSM1800 and UMTS2100 everyday and neither voice calls nor data sessions are interrupted. Even handovers to and from T-Mobile (O2 has a national roaming agreement with them) work fine. Of course the indoor coverage of UMTS2100 is not as good as GSM900, but it's still there in most places.

Also Vodafone and T-Mobile don't have such problems here. In fact Vodafone has the best and most spread UMTS network - they are considered a UMTS-pioneer in Germany. Only E-Plus, which are a discounter on the German market, have severe capacity problems on many urban nodes and so calls are dropped, handovers fail and datarates are a disaster.
But as I mentioned initially many UMTS-handsets have software problems and so can't handle handovers correctly.

Aloha

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#79139 21-Jul-2007 20:46

Sorry guys I lost control a little bit. It happens when people try to defend their own work and the technology they are working with. ;)

I is a kollege stoodent. Bee nice.

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#79271 23-Jul-2007 11:13

sbiddle: Potentially losing some 900MHz spectrum to competitors and also rolling out 900MHz UMTS is going to mean a lot less 900MHz spectrum and greater reuse.

Looks like it has already according to this ComputerWorld story from Juha:

Tom Chignell, Vodafone’s general manager of corporate affairs [...] adds that NZ Communications has also purchased some 6MHz of 900MHz spectrum from Vodafone, at “a fair market price not inconsistent with what is usually paid for such blocks”. The deal is waiting for the Ministry of Economic Development’s decision on radio frequency allocations.

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