Telecom UMTS coming soon?

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DjShadow

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Topic # 7840 15-May-2006 08:31

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10381809

Sounds like Telecom and Woosh are going to cut a deal that could see them starting up a UMTS network. Woosh will get to use WiMax spectrum from Telecom and as a trade off, Telecom will get to use the 2ghz spectrum Woosh has.
Sounds like a win-win situation to me for both networks.

sbiddle

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Reply # 35730 15-May-2006 08:51

Now who was saying Woosh & Telecom weren't in bed together? :-)

BTW I think you misunderstood the story when you made the topic "Telecom gettung UMTS". Woosh's UMTS network is not the same as Vodafone's 3G UMTS network. UMTS-TDD used unpaired spectrum and while it's similair it is also very different from Vodafone's network in many ways.

DjShadow

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Reply # 35734 15-May-2006 09:06

Could the frequency that Woosh runs on itself support a UMTS service like Vodafone runs?

sbiddle

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Reply # 35738 15-May-2006 10:01

DjShadow: Could the frequency that Woosh runs on itself support a UMTS service like Vodafone runs?

No.

Woosh's spectrum is unpaired rather than the paired spectrum that UMTS requires. Hence the reason Woosh picked up their spectrum cheaply at the spectrum auction because it was effectively the leftovers nobody else wanted.

paradoxsm

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Reply # 35773 15-May-2006 17:00

Looks like Woosh finally realized they will go broke shortly and are counting their pennies in desperation. Of course they might have succeeded by first treating customers, aka their income source, right.

sbiddle

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Reply # 35781 15-May-2006 17:40

paradoxsm: Looks like Woosh finally realized they will go broke shortly and are counting their pennies in desperation. Of course they might have succeeded by first treating customers, aka their income source, right.

I believe it's a case of Telecom offering them a lifeline to stop somebody else scooping up their assets. Their biggest assest is their cellsites, with some WiMAX gear on them it could make a nice nationwide network if picked up cheaply enough in a fire sale by another operator.

alasta

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Reply # 35799 15-May-2006 19:30

sbiddle:I believe it's a case of Telecom offering them a lifeline to stop somebody else scooping up their assets. Their biggest assest is their cellsites, with some WiMAX gear on them it could make a nice nationwide network if picked up cheaply enough in a fire sale by another operator.

If another operator could get an economically feasible return out of Woosh's assets, then why couldn't Woosh do so themselves? Woosh's existing investors don't strike me as being strapped for cash, so if there is a sound business case for any form of wireless Internet access in New Zealand, I would expect Woosh to come to the party. If these investors were not in it for the long haul, I would have expected them to have bailed out months ago when speculation about unbundling and Vodafone's data price slashing first surfaced.

sbiddle

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Reply # 35804 15-May-2006 20:39

TDD-UTMS is simply a dog, at the end of the day that is Woosh's problem. They would need a substancial investment to move to say a WiMAX based network and you would have to assume that Woosh simply don't have any cash left to spend and certainly don't appear to have any of their investors willing to put any more money in. Assuming Woosh went bust and the assets were sold off a competitor could no doubt buy a network of cellsites for a dirt cheap price - the problem both Telecom & Vodafone face isn't building or paying for a cellsite, it's getting consent in the first place to build it which is a very long process these days.

alasta

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Reply # 35807 15-May-2006 20:54

sbiddle: Assuming Woosh went bust and the assets were sold off a competitor could no doubt buy a network of cellsites for a dirt cheap price - the problem both Telecom & Vodafone face isn't building or paying for a cellsite, it's getting consent in the first place to build it which is a very long process these days.

Do Woosh have their own cellsites? I thought they just had co-location arrangements with Vodafone?

sbiddle

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Reply # 35809 15-May-2006 21:08

alasta:
sbiddle: Assuming Woosh went bust and the assets were sold off a competitor could no doubt buy a network of cellsites for a dirt cheap price - the problem both Telecom & Vodafone face isn't building or paying for a cellsite, it's getting consent in the first place to build it which is a very long process these days.

Do Woosh have their own cellsites? I thought they just had co-location arrangements with Vodafone?

Virtually all of their new sites over the past 18 months are all their own freestanding masts.

Jama

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Reply # 35837 16-May-2006 10:27

Carriers in NZ are only allowed to own a certain amount of Spectrum. With the spectrum in the name of Woosh no issues for Telecom with the MED

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