[3GScottishUser]

No real surprise.....

"Orange will on Friday announce it is joining Mobile Broadband Network Limited, the network-sharing joint venture between 3 and T-Mobile, ZDNet UK understands.

According to industry sources, Orange will contribute a few thousand of its own masts to MBNL, which will remain a 50-50 joint venture between 3 on one side and T-Mobile and Orange, rather than just T-Mobile as the deal currently stands, on the other.

The continuation of MBNL was a condition of the European Commission's approval of the merger of T-Mobile UK and Orange UK, under the auspices of another joint venture, Everything Everywhere. The Commission was worried that 3 might be squeezed out of the benefits of MBNL by the formation of Everything Everywhere, if its position in the JV was not assured.

MBNL involves its participants pooling their base station resources, so as to cut back on the number of masts needed while boosting coverage for all parties' customers."


http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/orange-to-join-t-mobile-3-network-share-10018527/

http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/Mobile_Exec/Orange_hooks_up_with_MBNL.aspx

[Hands0n]

This has got to be worrying news for Vodafone and O2. The former appears to have place a great big millstone around its neck by agreeing to a mast share with the latter who's own distributions of masts drew the negative attention of OFCOM last year. Nothing improved, instead O2 entered into the mast share with Vodafone as a way of mitigating OFCOM's verdict that O2 had failed to fulfil its obligations for the 3G licence.

The crying shame is that the mast share agreement appears to have had a negative impact on Vodafone's previously impeccable mobile data network. Neither network operator is going to admit to it, but the anecdotal "evidence" reflects badly on both.

Meanwhile, the MBNL has delivered demonstrable improvements to Three's own mobile broadband capability - and no doubt T-Mobile's too.

[DBMandrake]

Although this will help strengthen MBNL, and thus benefit T-Mobile and 3 by contributing some of Oranges masts to the shared network, (something we already knew back when the T-Mobile / Orange merger was announced, when it was said that around 3000 Orange masts would be added to the combined 13,000 of 3/T-Mobile) the real benefactor here is Orange.

Despite Orange being the largest of the 3 networks by customer base and revenue by a significant amount, their network is clearly lagging behind T-Mobile and 3's MBNL joint venture to such an extent that I now even more strongly than I did before think that beefing up their network by way of integrating with MBNL was one of their key deciding factors for merging with T-Mobile in the first place.

Only a year ago Orange's 3G coverage was close behind 3, and well ahead of T-Mobile, now there is a huge gulf between 3/T-Mobile up in front, with Orange left trailing well behind.

For some real world examples, as part of a recently acquired job I've spent the last couple of months working in places all over Scotland, and of course being a geek I like to test 3G coverage and speeds of different networks where I go especially in small isolated areas, as well as making use of tethering on my laptop back at the hotel room.

I had my Orange SIM in my spare iphone the last couple of weeks and I was surprised that in some of the places I was there seemed to be no 3G coverage from Orange, while I had good 3G coverage from Three - in particular I was getting no 3G at all just on the outskirts of Dumfries, and none at Kirkcudbright, or Stranraer, even in the town centres so I decided to check Orange's coverage maps - well, according to those there should have been coverage in Dumfries, but there wasn't, but more surprising is that their coverage maps showed absolutely ZERO 3G coverage either in or anywhere near Kirkcudbright or Stranraer.

Yes, they are small towns in, erm, Scotland, :D places where some networks wouldn't care about, but the point is 3 has wall to wall 3G coverage in all three of those locations - both on their coverage map AND in reality. I was getting 3G coverage in all three places, indoors, and at acceptably good speeds - typically 1-2Mbit, whereas all Orange had on offer was GPRS, not even EDGE. I quickly checked T-Mobile by way of my Virgin SIM and it too had good 3G coverage, although i didn't test speeds due to lack of credit on the SIM.

Even O2 and Vodafone had SOME 3G coverage in these small towns, although it was quite spotty. The only networks with wall to wall 3G coverage in these areas were T-Mobile and 3.

So what about Orange's speed in places where it does have 3G ? Well again another real world example - this time indoors in Falkirk town centre - a good strong 3G signal from both Orange and 3.

On 3 I got my fastest ever measured speed of 4100kbit on the speedtest.net app, on Orange I got......... 600kbit. Oh dear.... ;)

This scenario is repeated in most places I compare Orange and 3 - 3 nearly aways over 1Mbit, usually around 2Mbit, sometimes even has high as 3Mbit. Orange is typically 300-800kbit, and I don't think I've seen over 1Mbit on Orange, ever. It's not uncommon for me to find 3 to be 3, even 4 times faster than Orange in the same location.

Yes, the Orange/T-Mobile merger was a cunning plan on Orange's part to avoid having to invest in their own crumbling network, and just jump aboard the juggernaut that MBNL is becoming....and I can't wait to see what MBNL can do if they can get their hands on a good chunk of 850/900Mhz spectrum for 3G...