900Mhz 3G coming to christchurch any time soon?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › 900Mhz 3G coming to christchurch any time soon?

hamish225

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#98734 5-Mar-2012 18:20

Just wondering, it'd be a god send.

The in building coverage is terrible at my house and i reckon a change from 2100Mhz to 900Mhz would mean my phone spends less time on 'emergency calls only' (but not really because I did try once, the call failed)

Also, who's bright idea was it to use 2100Mhz for 3G ANYWAY? why not use 900Mhz everywhere from the start?

How does one go about asking them to fix their coverage anyway?

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SaltyNZ

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#590839 5-Mar-2012 18:43

hamish225:

How does one go about asking them to fix their coverage anyway?

Call customer care, and tell them where you are when the coverage is poor. If enough people in the same place complain, something will be done about it.

That's basically true for any telco.

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eXDee

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#590936 5-Mar-2012 22:21

hamish225: Just wondering, it'd be a god send.

The in building coverage is terrible at my house and i reckon a change from 2100Mhz to 900Mhz would mean my phone spends less time on 'emergency calls only' (but not really because I did try once, the call failed)

Also, who's bright idea was it to use 2100Mhz for 3G ANYWAY? why not use 900Mhz everywhere from the start?

How does one go about asking them to fix their coverage anyway?

If you can't get 900mhz 2G and are getting emergency calls only, why would you get 900mhz 3G?

Speaking of 900mhz 3G, what are known areas which have this so far?

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#590939 5-Mar-2012 22:24

hamish225: The in building coverage is terrible at my house and i reckon a change from 2100Mhz to 900Mhz would mean my phone spends less time on 'emergency calls only'

In theory the network should pass the handset down to 2G 900Mhz before going into no coverage,

sbiddle

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#590994 6-Mar-2012 06:20

eXDee: Speaking of 900mhz 3G, what are known areas which have this so far?

Somewhere in the vicinity 50% of Vodafone's coverage area (in square km) is 900 3G - ie typically anywhere outside a 2100 coverage area.

Best bet is to look on the Vodafone coverage map if you want specific coverage.

sbiddle

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#590995 6-Mar-2012 06:25

hamish225: Also, who's bright idea was it to use 2100Mhz for 3G ANYWAY?

why not use 900Mhz everywhere from the start?

The bright ideas was the creation of the GSM alliance and 3GPP who in effect built the UMTS standard, and built it for the 2100MHz band, since it was the best available spectrum at the time.

A comment like that suggests you're completely unaware of the fact the vast majority of countries don't have 3G at 900MHz, because unlike NZ they don't have spectrum available to deploy it. Up in ~2 years ago legal restrictions across the bulk of the EU also prevented any technology other than GSM being deployed in 900 and 1800MHz bands.

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#590996 6-Mar-2012 07:00

eXDee:

Also, who's bright idea was it to use 2100Mhz for 3G ANYWAY? why not use 900Mhz everywhere from the start?

Well for one thing, the EU states signed the GSM Memorandum of Understanding back in the very early 90s which explicitly stated that the 900MHz band was to be used only for GSM across the EU. Thus when UMTS was standardised, another common band with sufficient available spectrum had to be found, and it was 2100MHz. Basically, the MoU meant that operating UMTS in the 900MHz band was, technically, illegal in Europe.

It was actually not until about 2 years ago that the MoU was officially dissolved, paving the way for widespread UMTS 900. After all, the European networks were the earliest and the biggest adopters.

It was also the case that the technology to successfully run GSM and UMTS right next to each other (allocating a variable amount of spectrum to UMTS/HSPA) has only become economical in the last couple of years. In many places, the competition is such that the spectrum slices are fairly narrow. There is a certain minimum amount below which it's not feasible to run both GSM and UMTS together in the same band. And of course HSPA lives or dies by spectrum. The more you have, the higher the theoretical maximum bandwidth you can get.

This is why everyone will fight tooth and nail for the 700MHz LTE spectrum when the time comes too. Having the most spectrum gets you a big head start in the 'OUR NETWORK IS TEH FASTEST' headline competition.

So, it was not a 'bright idea' - it was a very well thought out idea indeed. :-)

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SteveON

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#591010 6-Mar-2012 07:47

I find the 700 mhz spectrum very interesting in NZ at least. We have bugger all population and fewer network competition. No matter how you look at it, our 3g currently out performs most 3g networks in the world. So when telecom get a slice of 700mhz which overseas would be used for 3-4 carriers and 10x the customers; we (NZ) wont have much to complain about.

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hamish225

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#591053 6-Mar-2012 09:23

I turn 2G off because it's too slow and kept dropping back to slow speeds when i was out and about, trying to use 2G data is just not even worth bothering with.

also, i actually didn't know anything about the whole 900Mhz EU thing, but we're not in the EU are we?

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sbiddle

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#591058 6-Mar-2012 09:33

hamish225:
also, i actually didn't know anything about the whole 900Mhz EU thing, but we're not in the EU are we?

No we aren't.

To answer your question about why 900MHz wasn't deployed nationwide right from the start in NZ and not 2100MHz? Well it's a little hard to deploy something that didn't exist when Vodafone deployed their 3G network.

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#591060 6-Mar-2012 09:36

hamish225: but we're not in the EU are we?

No, but the EU market is vast, so if they don't want to adopt it, it doesn't get developed very quickly. These things are all about economy of scale.

And although your point about 2G data is very relevant it's important to note that you - i.e. heavy smartphone data user - are very much in the minority. Witness Telecom's 600K remaining CDMA users. Exactly zero of them care about data, which was switched off many months ago.

The majority of handsets out there are 2G only, even these days.

You may not exactly be the 1%, but you're not the 99% either. :-)

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SaltyNZ

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#591062 6-Mar-2012 09:37

sbiddle: Well it's a little hard to deploy something that didn't exist when Vodafone deployed their 3G network.

Exactly; Vodafone were only talking about the project (UMTS 900 rollout) when I left at the end of 2007.

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SteveON

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#591096 6-Mar-2012 10:27

hamish225: I turn 2G off because it's too slow and kept dropping back to slow speeds when i was out and about, trying to use 2G data is just not even worth bothering with.

also, i actually didn't know anything about the whole 900Mhz EU thing, but we're not in the EU are we?

... Would you rather have slow service or no service at all? Your phone will only switch to 2g if there is no 3g.

hamish225

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#591945 7-Mar-2012 20:18

It actually sat on 2G and wouldn't use 3G so i had to turn it off. its just the in-building coverage that won't work.

I didn't know they only invented 900Mhz 3g, i thought it was just always there lol.

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