[a_ukboy]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15717913

It will be interesting watching this develop :)

[3GScottishUser]

This looks like a real advance that has the potential to deliver high speed wireless not only to urban areas but to places where traditional wired broadband would be expensive to deploy.

Saw a video demo of the Samsung dongle in action and it looked impressive. Sadly I have lost the link but when I find it again i will repost it here.

[Ben]

O2 always were forthcoming with the trials. Perhaps they'll break with tradition and actually roll LTE out comprehensively...

[3GScottishUser]

I think they will just like they have been very fast rolling out 900Mhz UMTS. Perhaps they they just thought 2100Mhz UMTS was not ideal and perhaps they were right. Their customer base and retention show no signs of any major startegy error re 3G.

[Ben]

The 900MHz rollout is definitely encouraging. It escapes me how O2 and Vodafone have taken such different positions on this 'gift'.

I don't doubt that O2's business case for a meagre 3G rollout was sound, though I suppose it's early days. It's only as we start to hit HSPA+ that we're actually seeing decent mobile data performance worth shouting about so, yeah, holding back could have been a smart move. But, damn, they didn't even bother to meet the miserly coverage requirements of the license. Perhaps they need to get a head start on LTE now because they simply don't have the 3G mast density and backhaul ready to go as the other operators with bigger 3G rollouts do.

[Hands0n]

Not to put a dampener on things but ... there is the little matter of the LTE auctions to get over first. So far the collective of British mobile network operators have procrastinated and delayed the auctions until late 2012. That means we will not see LTE (not 4G) until 2013/14 at the earliest.

Turning to O2's 3G efforts to date. In a word, pathetic. So much so that OFCOM have censured them not once but twice for failing to honour their license conditions for deployment. Only under threat did they re-commence the deployment. It wasn't optional. It wasn't a marketing ploy. It was downright dishonest, and they got caught out, twice.

Now O2 are pushing out their 3G be it 2100Mhz or 900Mhz. Why? Simple, they've seen smartphone users shifting away from their network. The headline figures of millions of customers are not smartphone users, featurephone at best. These will not be the kind of customers who will be using mobile data to any significant degree.

[Ben]

Hmm, point. I'd have stayed with O2 if they had a shred of 3G on my iPhone - I liked having Visual Voicemail. I only left because the coverage was so so shocking. Plus then they had all the bad press about their network issues. Now the iPhone is available on all networks with Theee in particular pushing hard perhaps they're taking note and will finally start to invest.

I think the original 3G rollout, or lack of it, had a lot to do with the Telefonica acquisition. O2 had been preparing for sale for years, and everything was focused on achieving maximum return. Building out a 3G network was a challenge for the next guy.

[hecatae]

was the 3g trial unsuccessful?

the 4g trial carries more data than O2's entire 3g network, not hard that, not hard at all

[Ben]

the 4g trial carries more data than O2's entire 3g network, not hard that, not hard at all
I recall laughing heartily the first time I read that ;)

[3GScottishUser]

Now O2 are pushing out their 3G be it 2100Mhz or 900Mhz. Why? Simple, they've seen smartphone users shifting away from their network. The headline figures of millions of customers are not smartphone users, featurephone at best. These will not be the kind of customers who will be using mobile data to any significant degree.

Thats not really true though as 02 have reported a 36% penetration of smartphone users across their own 22.2 million customers. Now that by my reckoning is around 8 million smartphone users currently, or about 2.5 - 3 million more than 3 UK has in total.

I don't honestly think it's possible to make assumptions about the type of usage smartphone owners on each network makes. I imagine there will be very different types of customers using all the networks, some heavy data users other occasional. Bottom line is that 02 have 8 million smartphone customers and the lowest number of complaints so that confirms their user base must be pretty happy with what they are getting.

I'm not an 02 customer and have not been for many years but I fail to be convinced that 02's decision to restrict the rollout of 2100Mhz 3G has been a poor decision for them or has been bad for their customers. The churn rates they publish simply do not support the notion that smartphone users or any others for that matter are making any significant moves away from 02. (02's user base actually increased in the last year!)

[Ben]

If you're an O2 customer then have you not suffered due to poor availability of 3G? If an O2 customer has EDGE and a Vodafone customer has 3G then how is that not bad for the O2 customer?

Perhaps you get O2 3G locally and so haven't experienced the problems we have down in the South.

[blush]

I took my old iphone 4 out today with a 3 sim in it on PAYG and compared that to my iphone 4S with o2 sim on contract. Three was like a breath of fresh air with almost perfect 3g signal and a rapid one at that, the iphone 4S with o2 sim had no 3g most of the day and when it did it was sluggish and delayed. I considered switching from o2 to three but after today I think it really is time. The iphone 4 was in my hand most of the time and not in a case so subject to hand attenuation!

The two occasions I needed to make calls on my phone with o2 the first call dropped and the second time was a call from my wife who rang on my work phone as my personal o2 phone went to voicemail.

My observations were from Ashford to Strood then back to Ashford, down to Dover, out to Deal then back to Ashford via Canterbury and Chartham for the Kent collective on here!

[miffed]

Well , I am sure you all know my opinion on o2 by now.

I really can't fathom how I get the experience I do with them , especially in contrast to the other Kent folks on here ?

Perhaps I have some special VIP SIM or something ?

Have to say I find it hard to get excited about 4G the way I did with 3G , I am already getting better performance on my 3G devices (3UK) at times than my ADSL connection at home .

[3GScottishUser]

So I am guessing that a few opinoins are not representitive.

If 02's performance was so bad there would have been an exodus of customers who would have went elsewhere to get the user experience that the latest smartphones offer.

02's customer base has grown and 36% of their users have smartphones...... so I am guessing with the lowest churn and complaints per user they must be delivering a level of service that their customers think is good.

Just because 02 decided (maybe very prudently) to roll out 2100Mhz 3G slower than others it does not make them a poor network. The statistics re customer numbers, churn and complaints seem to confirm that 02's product and service has been better despite their 3G coverage issues.

I have said it again and will repeat it....... perhaps 02 have been more aware of the bigger picture in terms of service delivery and the timing re high speed mobile data roll out. Their performance in the UK has been the strongest of any mobile operator to date and that did not happen by chance.

[Hands0n]

I think all you can say is that their "sales" performance ... may have been the strongest, I'd like to see some citation of these claims. But experience and user feedback is that network performance is dire.

Clever marketing may catch you some sales, but if they do not have the in-service experience to back it up then the churn will happen at the end of contract. Our firm has just moved over to O2 from Vodafone and as anticipated the performance of the same phones now equipped with O2 SIMs is predictably awful. But we're saving a bomb, allegedly.

[DaveC]

1.1% contract churn so a whole host of people must be happy.

[Hands0n]

I would have to wonder, however, what the churn rate is like for smartphones with O2. I'm having a real problem taking on board that smartphone users are quite happy with miserly amounts of data, dire 3G coverage, even worse latency and timeout. In London (East and City) their 3G service is unusable at times.

How will these smartphone users feel during the life of their 18 and 24 month contracts when they start hitting the data caps and having to buy more or pay out of bundle charges?

So, I'm inclined to ignore that 1.1% if it is across their entire portfolio of mobile phones - there are plenty of folk who are not using smartphones to make that statistic questionable in context.

That said, 1.1% churn is impressive.