Vodafone activates first site with Tri-Band and Carrier Aggregation

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Vodafone activates first site with Tri-Band and Carrier Aggregation

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#1109130 15-Aug-2014 15:13

drivel:
Demeter:
drivel: Then why are Vodafone NZ keeps putting their money to Carrier Aggregation since population density of NZ is *MUCH LOWER* than AUS and the UK?

Lower population density means less people connect to a base station, will there be a congestion? God knows.

Look, not to be rude or anything, but are you familiar with the concept of future proofing? We're trying to make sure our network provides a first rate customer experience, not just hobbles along like so many networks do abroad.

TBH, I have no idea about that. But the question in my head is "Do we really need a Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation here in NZ?"

Coz customers are the ones who will pay the bill of upgrade.

BTW I have never heard any complaint from my friends about base station congestion or slow mobile Internet speed but some of them wish they had more data allowance.

This. I have never had issues with congestion, only data allowance. Cell congestion in NZ is quite nonexistent.

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Stefan Andres Charsley

Demeter

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#1109138 15-Aug-2014 15:20

drivel: TBH, I have no idea about that. But the question in my head is "Do we really need a Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation here in NZ?"
Coz customers are the ones who will pay the bill of upgrade.

BTW I have never heard any complaint from my friends about base station congestion or slow mobile Internet speed but some of them wish they had more data allowance.

Yep, I totally get what you mean. I suspect a few years ago the question would have been 'Do we really need LTE in NZ?' - and now it has become something a lot of people really rely on. And that's in just over a year.

It is so hard to predict what things will be like in 5 years time, because LTE might be a lumbering dinosaur then for all we know. Technology just moves so fast; we're trying to not just keep up, but stay ahead of the game so that people enjoy the experience instead of finding it frustrating. Data caps have trebled in just over 18 months and they'll keep getting bigger, but we simply can't just go 'Here, have ALL THE INTERNETS' at this stage. The infrastructure is not ready.

Behodar

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#1109139 15-Aug-2014 15:21

charsleysa: This. I have never had issues with congestion, only data allowance. Cell congestion in NZ is quite nonexistent.

I'm lucky to get more than 2 Mb/s over 3G in my area these days, whereas I'd easily get over 10 a few years ago. Congestion definitely exists.

Edit: I just got 2.89 Mb/s; 3G congestion may be slowly letting up as people move to 4G devices.

cr250bromo

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#1109519 16-Aug-2014 15:30

charsleysa: This. I have never had issues with congestion, only data allowance. Cell congestion in NZ is quite nonexistent.

It's the data allowances that help prevent congestion because like others have said spectrum is a finite resource.. if they (say) gave everyone quadruple their current data allowance without doing any network upgrades it would definitely be a lot slower.

ajw

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#1109564 16-Aug-2014 17:27

Demeter:
drivel: TBH, I have no idea about that. But the question in my head is "Do we really need a Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation here in NZ?"
Coz customers are the ones who will pay the bill of upgrade.

BTW I have never heard any complaint from my friends about base station congestion or slow mobile Internet speed but some of them wish they had more data allowance.

Yep, I totally get what you mean. I suspect a few years ago the question would have been 'Do we really need LTE in NZ?' - and now it has become something a lot of people really rely on. And that's in just over a year.

It is so hard to predict what things will be like in 5 years time, because LTE might be a lumbering dinosaur then for all we know. Technology just moves so fast; we're trying to not just keep up, but stay ahead of the game so that people enjoy the experience instead of finding it frustrating. Data caps have trebled in just over 18 months and they'll keep getting bigger, but we simply can't just go 'Here, have ALL THE INTERNETS' at this stage. The infrastructure is not ready.

Huawei has come up with some ideas.

http://www.telecoms.com/270842/huawei-jumps-on-5g-bandwagon/

jarledb

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#1109589 16-Aug-2014 18:22

Demeter:
drivel: Let's compare plans in Aus, the UK and NZ.

Okay, lets.

Population of United Kingdom: 63.23 million (2012)
Population of Australia: 22.68 million (2012)

Wait for it....

Population of New Zealand: 4.433 million (2012)

Funnily, deploying network infrastructure costs the same everywhere regardless of how much income potential a carrier has. Go figure.

Sure thing. So lets compare two apples:

Norway, population 5 million
NZ, population 4.433 million.

Monthly mobile on-plan subscriptions at NetCom in Norway (one of the two top providers, owned by Telia).

1 GB data, unlimited calls and txt: 38.2 NZD
3 GB data, unlimited calls and txt: 57.41 NZD
6 GB data, unlimited calls and txt: 76.61 NZD
8 GB data, unlimited calls and txt: 95.81 NZD

So in Norway, which are of similar size to New Zealand, you get 4 times the data on plan as what you do in NZ, for a somewhat lower price. So size isn't everything in the equation.

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richms

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#1109606 16-Aug-2014 19:03

im on optus in sydney at the moment, $2 a day for 500 megs that then jumps to $4 a day for a gig. I got a second sim because I was expecting to use more than a gig a day and it moves onto some crap rate after a gig.

Anyway, its total junk. Contantly lagging loading things, this strange E keeps appearing where it should say 4G and nothing happens, the signal is up and down constantly to the point where the phone will move to another telco and show emergency calls only in a spot where there was previously 2 out of 4 bars the evening before.

It would be pretty hard to use a gig for something useful on this as it just drops out all the time. Upload to youtube - stalls. Upload to flickr. Stalls. Skype starts out ok then it just turns to a mess.

Doesnt help that my laptop cant see the free wifi in the hotel even tho the phone and the tablet can.

Richard rich.ms

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andrewNZ

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#1109624 16-Aug-2014 19:36

E is EDGE, which has performance about halfway between 2G and 3G connections, so it's pretty slow.

richms

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#1109632 16-Aug-2014 19:48

I know what it is, more to the point is why the hell am I seeing it on a 3g/4g network? Surely bumping a phone down to that is counterproductive for the network. Shame that the note3 doesnt have a WCDMA/LTE only mode, it does WCDMA only which works great to stop the 2g fallback, but then you miss out on 4G when its available.

Richard rich.ms

21brandon21

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#1109651 16-Aug-2014 20:33

jarledb:
Demeter:
drivel: Let's compare plans in Aus, the UK and NZ.

Okay, lets.

Population of United Kingdom: 63.23 million (2012)
Population of Australia: 22.68 million (2012)

Wait for it....

Population of New Zealand: 4.433 million (2012)

Funnily, deploying network infrastructure costs the same everywhere regardless of how much income potential a carrier has. Go figure.

Sure thing. So lets compare two apples:

Norway, population 5 million
NZ, population 4.433 million.

Monthly mobile on-plan subscriptions at NetCom in Norway (one of the two top providers, owned by Telia).

1 GB data, unlimited calls and txt: 38.2 NZD
3 GB data, unlimited calls and txt: 57.41 NZD
6 GB data, unlimited calls and txt: 76.61 NZD
8 GB data, unlimited calls and txt: 95.81 NZD

So in Norway, which are of similar size to New Zealand, you get 4 times the data on plan as what you do in NZ, for a somewhat lower price. So size isn't everything in the equation.

+1 Companies in NZ use population as an excuse too many times.

cr250bromo

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#1109776 17-Aug-2014 08:22

Finding two countries with similar population and comparing mobile prices in isolation isn't very robust analysis to support your case that prices in NZ are too high. What about taxes, regulation, labour costs, competition in the local market, housing costs, average family income and all of the other factors that vary between countries.

There are also intangible benefits of every country you can't put a price on - in NZ I love it that even in the concrete jungle of Auckland you don't have to drive much longer than an hour or two to be completely rural or at a nice beach that's not busy. Because you can't attach a $ value to those types of things, people don't consider them at all.

Let's try to apply the same logic to petrol prices in various countries - they pay the equivalent of NZ$3/l in Norway - the most expensive in this survey. As mentioned they have a similar population to NZ - does that mean Norway are paying too much because it's cheaper in NZ? Maybe they can use the money they save on their mobile plan on higher petrol prices.

Another example is Venezuela - they pay NZ$0.02/l. Since NZ are 7.5 times smaller population wise, why aren't we paying NZ$0.15/l for petrol? Before anyone tells me why petrol is so cheap there, I'm aware of the reasons - but that's my whole point!

churs
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networkn

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#1109806 17-Aug-2014 09:59

drivel: And to save your time, here's the currency.

69 New Zealand Dollar = 62.79 Australian Dollar = 35.05 British Pound Sterling

This means that you pay 69 NZD only get 1.5GB/m and Australian pay 60 AUD for 4GB per month (and also 300 min International Calls in Aus).

Oh dear, they must be suffering from the slow speed right now! Let's save them and shrink their data allowance to 50%.

Seems your name is appropriate. May I suggest you take just a few seconds to educate yourself about economies of scale before bringing your uneducated sarcasm to a thread like this one?

Has it occurred to you that if it were commercial feasible to provide 100GB of data on a mobile connection for $5 a month, someone would have already done it, and they would have 90% market share?

Since you seem to know more than everyone else here, perhaps you could start a telco, build a network and provide said 100GB for $5 a month. Just think of all the money you would make!

Dingbatt

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#1109811 17-Aug-2014 10:09

I had to roll up to the top of the screen to check I was on the same thread. This has got so wildly Off Topic it will need a map and compass to get back.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

networkn

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#1109813 17-Aug-2014 10:13

Dingbatt: I had to roll up to the top of the screen to check I was on the same thread. This has got so wildly Off Topic it will need a map and compass to get back.

Sadly every thread where a vendor announces new faster technology devolves into a few whining individuals complaining it's not cheap enough and spouting the same badly thought out reasoning for why it should be cheaper and it's never enough.

jarledb

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#1109921 17-Aug-2014 13:56

portunus: Finding two countries with similar population and comparing mobile prices in isolation isn't very robust analysis to support your case that prices in NZ are too high. What about taxes, regulation, labour costs, competition in the local market, housing costs, average family income and all of the other factors that vary between countries.

Since this is a response to me showing prices in Norway. Lets look at the aspects you bring up.

Labour cost: Salaries in Norway are amongst the highest in the world.

Competition in local market: Norway has two large mobile operators and two networks. There are others but they operate much the same as 2Degrees and the others that at least use some of the network of the other two big ones.

Housing costs: Norway has amongst the highest prices for property in Europe, and had a housing market that didn't take a fall after the colapse in the US.

Taxes: The norwegian GST is 25% compared with 15% in NZ.

So prices for services should be higher in Norway than in NZ, but still - for mobile subscriptions - they are not.

There are also intangible benefits of every country you can't put a price on - in NZ I love it that even in the concrete jungle of Auckland you don't have to drive much longer than an hour or two to be completely rural or at a nice beach that's not busy. Because you can't attach a $ value to those types of things, people don't consider them at all.

This doesn't have anything to do with pricing, but I think you would find that Norway is pretty similar to NZ in this regard, as well.

Let's try to apply the same logic to petrol prices in various countries - they pay the equivalent of NZ$3/l in Norway - the most expensive in this survey. As mentioned they have a similar population to NZ - does that mean Norway are paying too much because it's cheaper in NZ? Maybe they can use the money they save on their mobile plan on higher petrol prices.

Norway is a big producer of oil. It is Norways biggest export and the reason why Norway is so wealthy.

The reason for higher petrol prices in Norway is the taxes that are put on top of the price.

As neither of the big telcos are fully owned by the government I can assure you that there are no subsidies of the Telecos.

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