O2 UK wafts 4G coverage over 1,000 new Brit sites

O2 is enlarging its 4G footprint across Blighty to an extra 1,000 sites, after splurging £205m gobbling up all the available LTE spectrum at Ofcom's recent auction. Places earmarked for the extra coverage include Leeds, Nottingham and London, with 60 sites in the capital currently using the new spectrum after Ofcom made it …

[Philippe]

Dual Carrier?

Let's say I am in London where those new 2.3 ghz are located.

Will O2 support dual carrier over 800Mhz and 2.3Ghz, or even better 800, 1800, and 2.3Ghz?

We should start seeing some really decent speed if they do.

[ARGO]

Re: Dual Carrier?

Aggregation of 2300 + 1800 would be a possibility - quite a few phones already support that. Problem is that O2's spectrum in 1800 is a pair of 5.8MHz FDD channels. That's only going to add ~15% downlink speed to the 40 MHz of TDD in 2300.

Aggregation of 800 and 2300 would be better, but I don't recall seeing a device that actually supports that.

Aggregating 900 with 2300 would be better still, but I'm not sure how far O2 have got in refarming that old GSM spectrum

[TrumpSlurp the Troll]

3G coverage would be nice

About time they invested in a few more cell towers to get more coverage. Connectivity is more important than extra speed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 3G coverage would be nice

Switched to O2 in Jan after checking their website coverage, fine at work and home but at our holiday caravan despite it saying good 4G inside and out I can'y even make a voice call without it cutting out or dropping the call.. I know idiot me for actually believing them.. reported 12 times so far and according to them a mast 3 miles from the site is down and that is the reason. Despite there being a mast all of 400 yds away from where I am stood when I have the problem. Ah well, only 20 more months to go....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 3G coverage would be nice

I was chatting to an R/F engineer about mobile signal. He said O2 are pushing 4G hard (for data) to free up bandwidth on their 3G infrastructure for voice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 3G coverage would be nice

I agree with yourI fully support your sentiment regarding more cell sites, but not expanding 3G.

For those who give a feck, they’ll likely have a device which can support VoLTE and all of the 4G frequencies in use in the UK. Most of the folks in this category will feel aggrieved whenever they see anything less than 4G displayed on their screen. They simply don’t need the legacy frequencies.

For the basic and/or legacy devices, the vast majority of these will support 2G, but a large proportion will not support 3G or 4G/VoLTE. Think granny-phones, cheap work-phones for manual workers, and the large number of M2M devices such as smart meters, card machines, parking meters etc for which 2G GPRS is a low power and sufficient carrier.

So, 3G is now a largely redundant ‘middle’ ground, no good for a majority of legacy devices, and reviled by users of Smartphones, tablets, MiFi devices etc who just 4G.

Switch 3G off, and repurpose the spectrum & bandwidth for 2G/4G.

sentiment about more