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Don't underestimate the importance of the Voda/Orange & 3/T-Mo sharing arrangements. These will deliver very noticeable improvements for many customers.
The best examples will be where the conjoined networks (e.g. Voda & Orange) don't currently share masts in a poor coverage area. If you are a VF customer with poor coverage but Orange have a site just up the road, from next year you will get great coverage as you connect to a site you were previously barred from.
In many instances MNO's are forced to make hard decisions on site placement to give the best bang for their buck, whilst fitting into the existing network design and local planning laws/community wishes. Not for nothing do MNO RF engineers often have Masters or PhD's. And grey hair.
Here in the UK we have some of the best coverage in the world. If you look at a map of 2G coverage there is hardly a place in the country that isn't covered. Notable exceptions are Central Wales, Peak District, Yorkshire Dales and Highlands mountains. In these places, if you have line-of-sight to an urban area or motorway you will almost certainly get coverage. You go to these places for isolation and unspoiled wilderness, so I have absolutely no problem with no coverage there - long may it last. This story is replicated across the globe, with varying coverage based on overall population density and national wealth.
In-building vs outdoor is a major issue, especially for 3G where the frequencies are much higher and therefore the signal doesn't penetrate brick & tile as easily. Is Femto the answer? A lot of players are betting on it, but as you say there are a lot of issues to be worked out, so don't expect anything soon.
Cheers,
Mike
These sharing agreements, are they sharing the physical mast, land and associated costs or are they sharing the actual radio equipment and backhauls?
With regards to in-building vs outdoor, I think a lot of faith is being mistakenly put into femtocells to fix a problem that can already be solved with a dumb repeater (which will, no doubt, upset your grey haired RF engineers)
What happens is that the 'foreign' network you previously could not access because you didn't show up in their records as a valid customer (I'm wildly oversimplifying here) will now allow you to connect. So the tie-up between the core networks is critical. When you do a manual search of available networks, you see all networks listed. If you try to select one you aren't subscribed to, it attempts to log on and is then rejected. Once the network sharing is complete, you should only see one network instead of two, and your phone will automatically log into it.
Generally the actual sites get sold to a new company set up to manage the sharing, so you could think of it that each MNO becomes an MVNO on infrastructure they previously owned outright, but now have shares in. MNO's contribute to network upkeep according to complicated metrics around customer numbers, throughput, etc.
No doubt there will be some clever clogs who could put it much better, but that's a basic starter.
Re repeaters, they are evil, and are banned in many countries because they can kill coverage for others and because they are very complicated to get right, often don't work as sold. Using something that emits in an MNO's licenced band without explicit approval is just a tad illegal, and will see you in the dock.
/m
The Vodafone / Orange tie up is now only to share SITES - not to share the network.
http://connectinvodafone.blogspot.com/2008/02/r...
The original plan was to share the radio network - and I think that's still the long term aim. But that has been shelved.
T
(I work for Vodafone, I don't speak for them. This post represents my own knowledge. I am frequently wrong.)
Will be interesting to see how well 3 & T-Mo customers react when that gets turned on.
/m
Coverage on trains and along the south coast is between poor and terrible on 3!