vodafone's 3G network

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johnr

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#15802 19-Jun-2005 12:32

I take it by your post you know what there coverage foot print is going to be when they go live. Can you please advise what this is going to be for UMTS, Cause I have no idea only from what I have seen driving around in Auckland and Christchurch and seen the upgraded sites.

taniwha

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#15803 19-Jun-2005 12:45

Disenchanted: Want video calling in Auckland? Best go 021

or voip +wifi :-)

that's just the geeks right now, but longer term, with more interoperability (maybe legislated) i can see my wifi pda hoping a video call with your 027 UMTS handset.

tonyhughes

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#15804 19-Jun-2005 17:00

johnr: i actually have no idea, but they will have to work hard to pull a rabbit out of the hat like telecom just did. (coverage wise)

there was a planned outage in hawkes bay recently for 027 sites - no announcement either.
planned outages on 027 sites are relatively uncommon from what i gather. I can only assume its a network upgrade to evdo. (There has also been at least three unplanned outages recently including the 24th may).

as far is i know, UMTS coverage is still going to be very similar to EVDOs current foot print, but i am sure that is being re-evaluated right this very minute.

I would expect to see an announcement before too long about extended voda 3G coverage. (and then telecom switching all 'main' towns and citys online within a week or two of that to try and water down the announcement)

You have got to admit, that no matter who comes out on top in terms of subscribers and revenue, that this is a fun race to watch (and be involved in)

tonyhughes

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#15805 19-Jun-2005 17:03

taniwha: "or voip +wifi :-) that's just the geeks right now, but longer term, with more interoperability (maybe legislated) i can see my wifi pda hoping a video call with your 027 UMTS handset. "

---

I would really like a NZ skypein number :-)

But yes - if we could get video/photo/voice/txt calling between all networks (PSTN, Internet, 027, 021 etc etc) then I would be a much happier boy. This is where it all falls down at present I feel. Imagine what it will be like with number portability. You wont know who can recieve what, and everything will fall back to voice only. Kind of a telecommunications dark ages!!!

sbiddle

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#15806 19-Jun-2005 18:07

> I would really like a NZ skypein number :-)

It may be reality before you know it. Now that the Skype API has been released for Linux there are people working on integrating Asterisk with Skype.

For those who don't know what Asterisk is it is an open source Linux PBX. I run it at home here with my italk SIP VoIP phone and it's awesome. To buy a PCI interface card to hook your phone line up to Asterisk is about US$8 from ebay. Assuming some sort of Skype interface for Asterisk is developed it would simply be a matter of running an Asterisk box hooked up to a NZ landline number and you could be accessible anywhere. The possibilities are endless..

timbo

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#15808 19-Jun-2005 21:40

Some issues for Vodafone-WCDMA data in competing against Telecom's T3G-CDMA EV-DO sevice. I am guessing Telecom were waiting for Vodafone to announce their 3G launch before releasing details of the expanded coverage recently, but couldn't wait any longer. The points below of course do not relate to video telephony which is a dedicated circuit-switched connection of 64kbps.

1. EV-DO is data only and so a whole 'carrier' (piece of frequency spectrum) is dedicated to it. WCDMA data shares spectrum with voice which has priority. At busy network times the amount of capacity that is available for data will be reduced.

2. WCDMA will be operating at much higher frequency, 2100MHz vs. around 800MHz for EV-DO. I believe that frequency is inversely proportional to propogation simply meaning that doubling the frequency halves the distance it can go - so 2100 is nearly 3x the frequency of EV-DO, less than half the distance. This means much worse in-building penetration and rural coverage.

3. WCDMA requires new cell-sites, EV-DO is relatively simple upgrade to existing 1X sites. Cell-site acquisition and resource consents take a long-time.

4. WCDMA will be slower, but of course this is only an issue depending what you are trying to do with it. But real world performance of WCDMA will likely be 120-250kbps, but ONLY in the downlink. Uplink speed is even slower, at first only a maximum of 64kbps (or possibly 128kbps) - so in reality?

5. I was at CommunicAsia last week in Singapore and ran tests with 3 different WCDMA data cards and got 74/94/102kbps. Admittedly the venue was packed but I couldn't see anyone else using mobile data. I asked guy at Sierra Wireless (data card manufacturers) about this and he said that most WCDMA operators are limiting the amount of bandwidth that any single user can have. Apparently because if they give it all to one user it makes it difficult for subsequent users to get access. I was surprised at this because surely the system dynamically allocates bandwidth as users come and go - but then there is so often a difference between 'real world' and theory.

It is very difficult to see Vodafone 3G coverage being even remotely close to Telecom's new expanded coverage. An increasing number of GSM operators seem to be rolling out EDGE (100-130kbps real world) to compliment their WCDMA because it is a simple upgrade to GPRS. And for almost all business customers I work with a steady 100+kbps available everywhere is what they need, not islands of super high-speed and other areas of 20-40kbps. In hindsight it would've made real sense for Vodafone NZ to roll-out EDGE at the same time as WCDMA.

Finally, there are some signs that GPRS/WCDMA data roaming rates in Europe are coming down to more sensible levels but no sign yet this will be adopted by Vodafone NZ.

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johnr

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#15810 19-Jun-2005 22:10

WCDMA I would say (could be wrong) is more future proof than EDGE and if you made data roaming $1 per meg people would still moan.

sbiddle

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#15811 19-Jun-2005 22:32

Vodafone are (finally) introducing new worldwide voice & data roaming rates for all of their networks. It's called Vodafone Travel Promise and the Vodafone Passport was launched on the 1st June in many of their European networks and will launch in NZ & Australia very shortly. I'm unsure what the NZ/Aus roaming prices will be for Europe but it's basically going to streamline pricing while you're roaming on a Vodafone or Vodafone partner network and offer better price transparancy. GPRS & 3G data roaming is also part of this.

timbo

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#15815 19-Jun-2005 22:57

The only other country to have the same GSM/WCDMA vs. CDMA/EVDO is the US. And there Cingular has nationwide EDGE coverage. This at least offers a credible counter to 1X and EV-DO while they roll-out WCDMA. While there are both networks operating in Japan, Australia and parts of South America the head-to-head competition is not the same.

The last I heard for official launch of CDMA 1X roaming to Australia was June 30th, and rate at $3.00 per MB - 1/10th of Vodafone currently. That's not bad - just be a bit careful.

freitasm

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#15816 19-Jun-2005 22:59

sbiddle: Vodafone are (finally) introducing new worldwide voice & data roaming rates for all of their networks. It's called Vodafone Travel Promise and the Vodafone Passport was launched on the 1st June in many of their European networks and will launch in NZ & Australia very shortly. I'm unsure what the NZ/Aus roaming prices will be for Europe but it's basically going to streamline pricing while you're roaming on a Vodafone or Vodafone partner network and offer better price transparancy. GPRS & 3G data roaming is also part of this.

More information on Vodafone Travel Promise. Note the list of countries initially included: there are the ones that offer the tariff and the ones that are part of the "footprint". The last ones are the ones where users can roam with the flat fee - the list includes Australia and New Zealand.

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freitasm

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#15818 19-Jun-2005 23:06

timbo: The only other country to have the same GSM/WCDMA vs. CDMA/EVDO is the US. And there Cingular has nationwide EDGE coverage. This at least offers a credible counter to 1X and EV-DO while they roll-out WCDMA. While there are both networks operating in Japan, Australia and parts of South America the head-to-head competition is not the same.

The last I heard for official launch of CDMA 1X roaming to Australia was June 30th, and rate at $3.00 per MB - 1/10th of Vodafone currently. That's not bad - just be a bit careful.

Wow! That's much better than Vodafone's rate.

I really can't see why Vodafone insists on GPRS here in New Zealand. To compete with CDMA 1xRTT it really should go to EDGE, which shouldn't be as hard as deploying the 3G network - after all is a natural step to GPRS (with some different compression, algorithm, slots but not a whole new network).

I've used EDGE in the US, courtesy of (then AT&T Wireless) Cingular with a Sony EDGE PC card - the thing is really good!

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