Linux: @matisyahu How long ago did you use 4G on 2degrees & Vodafone?

Linux

Around a month ago; I was leaning towards going with Vodafone and tried it out using a sim card and found it was forever stuck on 3G no matter where in the home I stood and even outside when it did get a 4G signal it was one line (I have an iPhone X). 2 Degrees was marginally better with it bouncing between 1-2 lines on my phone. Vodafone seems to have a phobia bout not using 700MHz in urban areas (Naenae - near the Naenae College) because I'm stuck basically in a doughnut where none of the carriers, bar Spark, are able to give me a robust 4G signal.

matisyahu:

 

Linux: @matisyahu How long ago did you use 4G on 2degrees & Vodafone?

Linux

 

Around a month ago; I was leaning towards going with Vodafone and tried it out using a sim card and found it was forever stuck on 3G no matter where in the home I stood and even outside when it did get a 4G signal it was one line (I have an iPhone X). 2 Degrees was marginally better with it bouncing between 1-2 lines on my phone. Vodafone seems to have a phobia bout not using 700MHz in urban areas (Naenae - near the Naenae College) because I'm stuck basically in a doughnut where none of the carriers, bar Spark, are able to give me a robust 4G signal.

 

Bars mean very little in the LTE world because signal strength is complex and signal bars aren't. I have -110dBm 4G at home (1 bar) and can still get 100Mbps on a speedtest.

As for your location near Naenae College that puts you around 600m from 1 Vodafone cellsite, around 700m from another Vodafone cellsite, and around 600m from a 2degrees site. Vodafone don't have the same need for 700Mhz like Spark do because their network build was based around 2100MHz 3G in the first place, unlike Spark who have a coverage footprint that was based around 850MHz.

Frequency isn't everything in the modern world anyway - beamforming antennas for example do wonders for coverage, and using 5G as an example a 3500MHz 5G site can have similar coverage footprint to a 1800 or 2100MHz network.

It wouldn't actually surprise me if VF never actually deploy ubiquitous 700MHz LTE coverage, simply because it's not needed.

sbiddle:

 

Bars mean very little in the LTE world because signal strength is complex and signal bars aren't. I have -110dBm 4G at home (1 bar) and can still get 100Mbps on a speedtest.

 

That has been my observation too. My example above with LTE managing to deliver a 1mbps data connection over a very weak signal, my iPhone usually reports anywhere between 1 to 4 bars out of 4 (usually around 2-3). Not sure what sort of algorithm Apple is using for their signal bars but theirs seem to take into account a number of different factors rather than just simply signal strength.

GSM was the last tech that signal strength bars provided useful info. For UMTS and LTE it's rarely of much use. I've had good signal reported in situations I was unable to get even a little bit of data to work at all while I've also had poor signal reported in situations where data just worked with reasonable performance.

Actually I'm fairly sure AMPS (025 network) was the last/only one to show actual signal strength. Most GSM handset manufactures based the bars of "signal strength" on the BER (Bit Error Rate) or errors in the raw, uncorrected digital data stream, with is a measure of signal clarity/quality, rather than strength, as this more closely equated to the quality of call which is what users were actually interested in. I do not know, but it is possible that this continues on modern handsets - ?

It seems some people equate signal strength to speed, however a tower that has strong signal but is over loaded will give lousy speed and can easily be beaten by a weak tower that is lightly loaded. Also other factors such as carrier aggregation and radio channel bandwidth heavily influence speed. In the radio world a narrower channel with the same transmit power will usually give better receive strength, but at the cost of speed.

tripper1000:

 

Actually I'm fairly sure AMPS (025 network) was the last/only one to show actual signal strength. Most GSM handset manufactures based the bars of "signal strength" on the BER (Bit Error Rate) or errors in the raw, uncorrected digital data stream, with is a measure of signal clarity/quality, rather than strength, as this more closely equated to the quality of call which is what users were actually interested in. I do not know, but it is possible that this continues on modern handsets - ?

Nokia GSM handsets definitely used the signal strength. I used the Field Test mode on several Nokia handsets (3310 and 8210 comes to mind) and always observed the signal bars drop from full to the next bar down at -85db on the dot (and documentation elsewhere on the web indicated this was true for other Nokia models). There were definitely certain cut-off points for each bar.

Not sure BER would have been a usable measure. I think phones back then only measured the BER on active connections (or at least the field test screens on the phones I had at the time only showed error rates during active connections). I think this might still be true with modern devices today.

Linux: VodafoneNZ has said 2025 2G shut down

Linux

Makes me wonder if Vodafone NZ wants to follow the strategy of T-Mobile US, shutting down 3G instead of 2G so that they can grab the M2M market from the competition.

It stands to reason that most data users should have 4G LTE by now.

Strayfire:

 

Linux: VodafoneNZ has said 2025 2G shut down

Linux

 

Makes me wonder if Vodafone NZ wants to follow the strategy of T-Mobile US, shutting down 3G instead of 2G so that they can grab the M2M market from the competition.

 

It stands to reason that most data users should have 4G LTE by now.

 

@Strayfire Zero chance of 3G been shut down before 2G

John

Strayfire:

 

Makes me wonder if Vodafone NZ wants to follow the strategy of T-Mobile US, shutting down 3G instead of 2G so that they can grab the M2M market from the competition.

 

It stands to reason that most data users should have 4G LTE by now.

 

I would put my bet on Vodafone reducing the amount of UMTS carriers they have to the bare minimum needed to operate a national 3G network. My observation is a bit old but when I was with VF a few years back I observed that in high demand areas VF would operate 6 UMTS carriers (2x900 and 4x2100 for a total of 30 MHz). As demand for 3G decline they won't need so many UMTS carriers and can refarm them to LTE. 2degrees is already using refarmed 900 MHz spectrum for LTE. Long term Vodafone may just end up with a national single-carrier UMTS network at either 900 MHz or 2100 MHz (most likely the former) and all the excess spectrum added to the LTE mix. IMHO anyway but will be interesting to see what Vodafone ends up doing.

KiwiSurfer:

 

I would put my bet on Vodafone reducing the amount of UMTS carriers they have to the bare minimum needed to operate a national 3G network. My observation is a bit old but when I was with VF a few years back I observed that in high demand areas VF would operate 6 UMTS carriers (2x900 and 4x2100 for a total of 30 MHz). As demand for 3G decline they won't need so many UMTS carriers and can refarm them to LTE. 2degrees is already using refarmed 900 MHz spectrum for LTE. Long term Vodafone may just end up with a national single-carrier UMTS network at either 900 MHz or 2100 MHz (most likely the former) and all the excess spectrum added to the LTE mix. IMHO anyway but will be interesting to see what Vodafone ends up doing.

 

I just wonder why the switchoff date for 2G is 2025 for Vodafone NZ that's all. Here in Australia, we should be rid of 2G by the end of the year (If Vodafone AU stops stalling every month).

I know that Telstra AU is placing their bets on a single carrier 850Mhz UTMS network because they sell 850Mhz UMTS only dumbphones. I've noticed that Vodafone NZ hasn't done this yet so maybe they are hedging their bets for the time being?

Anyhow as far as I know, T-Mobile US is phasing out UMTS and keeping GSM until 2025.

https://www.prepaidphonenews.com/2017/07/tmo-lte-spectrum-update.html

I'd say that the key differences in situation are

*1900mhz PCS band is super uncommon for UMTS and probably holds them back in signal penetration

*US Carriers are much further along with VoLTE/WiFi calling

*John said so and I've lurked around long enough to know he's probably right about this one :)

Strayfire:]

 

I just wonder why the switchoff date for 2G is 2025 for Vodafone NZ that's all. Here in Australia, we should be rid of 2G by the end of the year (If Vodafone AU stops stalling every month).

 

Vodafone have 10 year m2m contracts for smart meters. They will keep 2g running in some shape until then. They may however kick off the general public and just have a single carrier sandwiched inside a 4g carrier in a few years time. 

Makes sense. It wouldn't cost them much spectrum to keep it anyhow.

Do they still need a dedicated piece of kit for 2G or is it all rolled into one now?