[Ben]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7004426.stm


Old mobile phone frequencies in the UK could get a new lease of life thanks to proposals by regulator Ofcom.

The telecommunications watchdog wants to loosen restrictions on who can use the portion of spectrum currently reserved for second-generation mobiles.

By opening it up, Ofcom hopes to boost 3G coverage in rural areas and speed up mobile downloads.

3G comes to 900Mhz? We can always hope. How nice would it be for 3G to finally make the crawl towards 99% population coverage? I don't think it'll ever go much further than 90% using the current frequency.

[3g-g]

It would be good, however I did read that they plan to make the spectrum non-specific, as it stands just now, the users of the 900Mhz band (O2 and Voda) can only provide a 2G digital voice and text service, OFCOM would plan to make it available for anyone, that could include WiMax and 3 new operators!!!

[Hands0n]

Yay :) About time too. WiMax has been too long coming to these shores.

[gorilla]

...as they are planning to do in the US of A, google look like they'll bid for this spectrum.

Google is understood to be considering its move into wireless after Ofcom's surprise proposal yesterday that it will take back part of the 2G spectrum handed over in 1985 so it can auction it off.

More interesting is the prospect of O2 loosing the spectrum (http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,,2174020,00.html) that they're gonna use for the iphone!


It was unclear last night whether the removal of a third of its 2G network capacity would harm O2, but the move is certainly a blow as that is the spectrum over which the iPhone will operate.

People will start to think I write for the Guardian, but alas I've better things to do, like read newspapers all day :p

[3g-g]

More interesting is the prospect of O2 loosing the spectrum (http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,,2174020,00.html) that they're gonna use for the iphone!

It won't make any difference to the iPhone on O2, it's not a frequency specific device, it'll just mean the band in which O2 and Vodafone operate at 900MHz will be smaller, which will reduce the number of available TX channels they can use, it's like removing a chuck of their capacity, not ability to operate.

It won't have any effect on the devices on the network, only on the ability to re-use frequencies without causing co-channel interference from overlapping cells, which is more a pain for their network planners than anyone else!

Ideally you want to have a nice beefy, blanket coverage 3G network with most of your customers on that so as not to worry about the old 2G ones... Oh, hang on, O2 haven't really been doing much with their 3G allocation have they? :eek: