Ofcom sets out spectrum mega-auction, again Ofcom is proposing greater coverage requirements, but fewer ownership caps and simpler lot sizes, in its latest round of proposals for the forthcoming mega-auction. The proposals include pushing 2Mbps of data to everywhere you can get a 2G voice call today – which should cover 98 per cent of the country – and capping overall …
4G deployment will be rapid, most UK Mobile network cores are nearly ready. By the time they get the frequencies it will just be insert new card into subrack off we go. It will make 3G look like a complete waste of time, the whole code division WCDMA is so difficult to optimise and get right.
"BT, who has previously stated that coverage obligations are an effective state subsidy and therefore (in their opinion) illegal"
hang on, is this the same BT which, when privatised in 1984, received whole national telecommunications infrastructure absolutely for free? Or did I miss important details from the history of BT?
they cant regulate for toffee, neither can they understand that they are supposed to keep electro-smog to safe levels.
but since they don't think there is a dangerous level, the population is being burned by it.
OFCOM the Regulator that just keeps giving (CANCER TO THE MASSES!)
ETHER ESTATE AGENTS SINCE 1979 (Cheers Maggie...)
Voda and O2, two of the worst companies to deal with when you complain as they arrogantly know they have such an upper hand over their competitors. Why doesn't OFCOM understand the benefits to freq under 1GHz, the footprint of a 900 cell is massive compared to 1800... Orange and T-Mobile had to merge to avoid going under and how 3 survive I'll never know, thought OFCOM were supposed to oversee fair play and make sure the customers get the best deal... Oh well keep paying over the top for Voda and O2 they have got better 2G coverage but that's about it..
"Voda and O2, two of the worst companies to deal with when you complain"
Odd I found Three to be the worst, since when I was with them their indian call center workers were incompetent, yet with Vodafone i've never had a problem, and always helpful UK call centers when I call.
But I do hope 3 stay in the market, since in Canary Wharf its hard to get a decent net connection on Vodafone but 3 works well
This is all irrelevant anyway. LTE pushes right up against the limits of spectrum capacity. As mobile networks deal with more and more demand in a post-LTE era, their only option will be to build more and more sites (since they won't get more spectrum...). At this point, you'll eventually have outstanding coverage everywhere as the country will be saturated with small cells, so how are you going to differentiate between the networks?
Services of course. Or not.
IMS is a waste of time, MS, Google, Apple, Facebook potentially, will all come to the table with better implemented and integrated multi-media experiences. IMS is a joke compared to the integrated experiences of the internet social giants. Operators at this point become a bit pipe with blanket UK coverage. (and phone numbers become irrelevant, but that;s another story!)
So.. they then differentiate on price! Well an operator can only go so low until they're at their minimum price threshold (assuming they re-architect their networks to gain maximum cost efficiency). When they're there, they can never go any lower. We will have a number of operators with coverage everywhere, no service differentiation, and all having prices that will never fluctuate.
So we use the cheapest. The others are irrelevant.
Where's your competition then?
That's a lot of assumptions there: IF outstanding coverage everywhere becomes the norm (unlikely - there will always be demand for better) and IF the networks can't differentiate on services and IF they then drive prices as low as they can go (they won't; there's a point where less customers paying more is more profitable than more customers paying less), then yes, we will have "a number of operators with coverage everywhere, no service differentiation, and all having prices that will never fluctuate."
But no variation does not equal no competition. If we did get to the position of having super reliable networks at the cheapest possible price, it would be a massive victory for free market competition in terms of benefit to the consumer - we should be so lucky.
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