[Ben]

The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/19/vodafone_orange_mast_share/) is reporting that Vodafone and Orange will now share masts, not networks, this year. The sites will be shared, but both companies will own their own equipment at them.

Mast sharing is nothing new, but what I assume has been agreed is that joint network planning and rollout will now take place at a much deeper level between the two mobops. The companies reckon this will lead to a reduction of 3,000 masts.

So is the network sharing agreement dead? Is this announcement purely a way to walk back from all the fanfare in 2007? I can't say I'm too fussed if it is :p

[3g-g]

You're exactly right Ben, it's planned to be a fairly in depth agreement between the two companies planning and access departments. From what I've head the possibility of a RAN share isn't off the table, it's just on the back burner... and other such kitchen based analogies. This will apparently be the start of the relationship between Orange and Vodafone UK. This agreement mirrors exactly the way Orange and Vodafone do things in Spain, it's a tower sharing agreement they have there. As you stated it's nothing new, but it does give the opportunity to reduce costs to both operators. There are places where Orange are and Voda aren't, and vise versa, so why put up 2 different masts, which happens a lot! Just think of how many farms you drive by with 5 different towers on the land, the only person benefiting there is the farmer who's creaming it in from all 5 mob-ops!

IMHO I think Vodafone may be the ones to benefit here, due to the differing frequencies of the two operators, Orange have a substantially greater number of sites out there in terms of geographical area, that can only be good for Vodafone. And I'm pretty sure in the denser urban areas Vodafone have a greater number of sites (as lower frequencies have a smaller capacity) which can only benefit Orange.

Us punters won't notice anything other than perhaps coverage where you didn't have it before, which I suppose would be nice!