2degrees/Spark/Vodafone RSM: Detecting LTE/3G/2G sites

Forums › New Zealand Mobile and Wireless › 2degrees/Spark/Vodafone RSM: Detecting LTE/3G/2G sites

stubbed

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#161991 26-Jan-2015 13:14

Afternoon,

I'm in the process of development a new version of my cell tower website, just to implement a few features I've had requested off me, with the main one being a GeoJSON API for anyone to integrate into.

I want to make the data as accurate as possible and ideally someone from Vodafone would be able to provide me with the information. Failing getting that info for any reason, I'm will accept a consensus from the Geekzone crowd on what I should be doing...

It was a while since I made the initial importer and as such some of the assumptions I'm making are more than likely outdated:

LTE/4G: Below 750mhz, above 2550mhz, between 1830mhz and 1880mhz
3G/2G: Everything else.

This is obviously not ideal (1800mhz is used by other than 4G), so would like a smarter way. The RSM database includes information such as license bandwidth. One would assume that the different G's would operate on different allocations, or it may be as crude as everything modified/commenced after date XYZ is LTE.

http://www.rsm.govt.nz/smart-web/smart/page/-smart/domain/licence/SelectLicencePage.wdk
Example License ID = 113266

Any intel would be appreciated.

Cheers;

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coffeebaron

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#1222409 26-Jan-2015 13:50

1800 there are still some 2G. I don't think there is anyway to tell if it is 2G/4G or just 2G or just 4G.
700 is from 703-803 I believe, but is usually requested against one particular base frequency.

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stubbed

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#1222410 26-Jan-2015 13:51

If someone can link me to a few definite 1800 2G transmitters and definite 1800 LTE transmitters on RSM, we can start figuring that out.

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coffeebaron

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#1222456 26-Jan-2015 15:35

I think I tried to look at this in the early days of 4G, but could not find any difference. It will be the one single license on the RSM site; whether this is used for 2G, 4G or both does not matter, so nothing to distinguish. I'd say there would be none or very very few Vodafone 1800 sites that are 2G only. Most of the 2G 1800 was in busy areas, so logic would imply that these will pretty much all be 4G now - though some may still do 2G.
2dgrees maybe a different story and could still have a few 2G 1800 only sites.
It is probably such a small minority now, so I'd just assume all 1800 are 4G sites (of which a handful may also have 2G), but pretty much none or very soon none would be 2G only.

Though one other thing to be aware of, is 1800 I think was also used for some P2P backhaul links; probably a different part of the 1800 band though.

Oh and what will you do when LTE900 comes along :)

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stubbed

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#1222459 26-Jan-2015 15:44

Cry :)

I would have thought there would have been some sort of fundamental difference in the licensing in terms of the frequency and how it was being used. I'm happy to be told otherwise but I just find that interesting. I guess spectrum is spectrum in that regard.

Have just noticed this thread was moved here and others posted in other telcos sub forums were deleted - My bad, wasn't sure where to post it, this forum obviously does make the most sense! I can't edit my top post, so trying to find out info on more than just Vodafone/Spark/2degrees...

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coffeebaron

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#1222491 26-Jan-2015 15:59

Also check out this site: Vodafone: MATAMATA HUB RSM Licence: 207240
I'm 99% sure this is still a 2G only site, so maybe compare this to a 2G/3G 900 site (e.g. Vodafone: PUTARURU RSM Licence: 209480) and see if you can find anything different.

Johnr may know of a few 1800 sites still supporting 2G. I know Takapunu and a few CBD sites had G1800

P.S. a KML file for Google Earth of this data would also be very handy to have :)

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knoydart

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#1222511 26-Jan-2015 16:11

stubbed: Cry :)

I would have thought there would have been some sort of fundamental difference in the licensing in terms of the frequency and how it was being used. I'm happy to be told otherwise but I just find that interesting. I guess spectrum is spectrum in that regard.

As the cellcos have their own management rights, they normally licence to the maximum emission they can, and then choose which carriers to actually fire up on a cell site.

stubbed

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#1222514 26-Jan-2015 16:20

^-- are you sure about that? My understanding was the RSM licenses weren't registered as maximums, they have to be quite accurate.

P.S. a KML file for Google Earth of this data would also be very handy to have :)

Will get GeoJSON launched first, that's what I've had the most requests for. From there the rest is relatively trivial...

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