Three and Vodafone: We need to merge because our networks are rubbish Vodafone and Three UK are desperately trying to convince Britain's competition regulator to approve their merger, going so far as to denigrate their own network services - at least in some regions - as outdated. Last month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published provisional findings from its investigation into …
Mine is included in that - only I had to go outside and hope the wind was blowing in the correct direction for it to "work". I switched to a Vodafone MVNO, and I can now use data in the house - sometimes :-(
I can't see how a merger is going to improve that! Though I have noticed places when I'm away from home that I only get Edge where I used to get 3G (coverage, but not data bandwidth of any significance).
I think it's about time all the operators were told "no 6G license until you provide a working service to those who are paying for 4G/5G".
I believe the plan is that by merging infrastructure you will end up with one network that covers more area, and then in the areas where they both have coverage you can begin de-duplicating equipment (say they both have towers 50m from each other) and re-use that equipment elsewhere in the country allowing for more coverage with minimum capital expenditure.
Hmmm, and you believe it'll pan out that way, rather than just a massive exercise in cutting costs as far as feasible and then a bit more?
This is not a merger, it's a Vodafone takeover. And Voda have had every chance to improve their crap coverage, and failed to do so. Voda clearly have many millions to splurge on the advisory and huge deal fees of taking over Three, ask yourself why they didn't actually want to invest that sort of money in their lacklustre network?
As a non-UK resident and someone unfamiliar with these companies, I would expect that, in addition to many negative consequences, that would actually happen. That wouldn't stop them from raising prices, canceling deals they no longer wanted to offer, or any number of other problems that arise when competition decreases. However, moving the equipment around to increase coverage is a relatively cheap thing that increases their potential customer base. Buying new equipment to serve rural locations is expensive. Moving equipment isn't, and it's often older equipment that they don't need in urban areas.
I doubt they will improve things much in the long term but just to comment on:
"especially if they switch one tower off?"
Switching duplicate tower off won't reduce capacity as existing radios are not at capacity, due to the way the UK has sliced up the airwaves most of the radios on a 5G transmitter are switched off as they each correspond to a frequency band and different companies own different frequencies.
Say you have two towers right next to each other, after the merger they can just pick say the Three tower and turn on the Vodaphone frequency radios on that tower and get rid of the Vodaphone tower with no reduction or loss of signal in that area.
The current system is so horrendously inefficient, really there should just be a single organisation which owns all of the towers and the mobile companies just be turned into MVNOs.
"Switching duplicate tower off won't reduce capacity as existing radios are not at capacity"
This isn't quite true: Each tower has receiving equipment that allows a limited number of connections. So there's a limit on how many devices can connect to make a call or transfer data at a time. This is why devices 'ping' the towers but don't maintain connection unless they're transferring data/making a call. It's why there are times of the year when the network is jammed due to the volume of calls: The cell towers simply can't cope with that many simultaneous connections.
It's been getting more noticeable as more devices are being made internet connected (car infotainment systems for example) - stream data to the car and that's one less connection available for others to use where as a device on standby just pings the towers at intervals to update it's status and which tower it's nearest should it need to connect for a call or data transmission.
" Each tower has receiving equipment that allows a limited number of connections"
That is per radio though, imagine you have a WiFi router with only 2.4ghz enabled, and another one with only 5Ghz enabled. You could remove the 5Ghz one and just enable 5Ghz on the other one and get the same result.
It would double capacity for that tower, sure, however there's still a limit and in densely populated areas it may still not be sufficient for the volume of connections required.
If you look in central London for example the proliferation of mobile phone masts compared to somewhere rural is staggering, with some masts only covering a few tens or hundreds of metres.
Each tower, just like a WiFi router will have a per logical radio, per physical radio connection limit and a per tower limit,
Obviously, as a tower is unlikely to be consumer grade kit, we would hope the limits are as per the Standards and not to fit an arbitrary consumer friendly price point, and thus reasonable.
Supposedly it'll improve the overall situation/coverage where one but not the other is present (or poorly present), but obviously it can't suddenly give 100% coverage everywhere.
Whether they're actually going to increase spending to better cover places where neither have good service today, or they'll enjoy it as a cost-cutting exercise will be interest to see.
"They both have poor (virtually no) coverage where I live. How is merging going to improve things, especially if they switch one tower off?"
I'm not sure their coverage strategy is centred entirely on your house to be fair. And you've already demonstrated that your signal experience is improved with a joint Voda/3 coverage, as you say assuming they switch of the correct towers - but that's the point, they'll switch off the poor range ones (or non-4G/5G enabled ones) and leave the good coverage ones.
Obviously your mileage may vary, you may see improvement, you may see degradation, but collectively across the UK it would improve.
Call me sceptical, but I think there's an element of "look at the pretty colours! The unicorns! The rainbows!" Type thinking involved if people think this won't be a cost cutting exercise with degradation of coverage. It doesn't matter a whit how it's dressed up to the CMA or whoever, this is about Voda and 3 making more money than they do now.
I realise that where I live, we have reasonable coverage from VF, and next to none from 3, so it's sensible to switch the 3 one off. How that's going to help the next village across, where they get patchy coverage from O2 only, I'm less clear on... And I'm sure it'll make places like Keswick even more of a nightmare than they are now - major tourist hotspot that had 4G, now has 5G, but you can't actually make calls or use the internet because there's too many people trying to get on the network.
I was in Switzerland a month or so ago, and I had 5G pretty much everywhere, apart from the 20 minutes in the tunnel inside Jungfraujoch, and that was a solid 4G. We really need to get a sensible agreement in place where everyone shares masts that are managed by a separate not-for-profit management company.
Okay, some issues here: By merging networks, you merge loads. By decommissioning 'duplicate' equipment, you then move that load onto the remaining kit. If that's not sufficient to carry the signals/connections, you get more disconnects.
This is the current issue with the introduction of connectivity in cars, and the increase in 3G/4G/5G devices - they're all fighting over the limited connectivity with the towers. End result is more lost connections where there isn't the capacity.
What's needed, unfortunately, is for capacity to be increased, be that through better kit or more towers. Both will cost money: What's the betting the merged 3/Voda will be willing to invest what it'd take?
Instead they go on about coverage and sweep capacity issues under the carpet: The former can be addressed by slapping a single tower out where coverage is poor, the latter requires that investment in better kit.
The 4 UK Mobile OpCos (not MVNOs) already have mast sharing arrangements (via 2 jointly owned companies) in place for quite a few years - O2 & Voda share their masts (I think all such masts in south of England and in Wales are installed by Vodafone and likewise are installed by O2 in north of England, Scotland, and NI), and EE & Three share their masts.
Therefore typically these days in any particular area you will see only 2 masts (1 O2/Voda, another EE/Three), not 4 masts. Obviously assuming the Vodafone purchase of Three goes through then Vodafone will have to get out of their deal with O2 and likewise Three will have to get out of their deal with EE.
As why O2 (for example) might have better 4G coverage in a particular area than Vodafone when they're currently sharing the same mast, this is probably due to the radio frequency bands in use there by each the 2 OpCos as lower frequencies tend to travel better/further.
Note: the current mast sharing arrangements are exactly that, *mast* sharing, so there will be 2 sets of antenna on the mast and 2 sets of equipment cabinets next to the mast.
"Note: the current mast sharing arrangements are exactly that, *mast* sharing, so there will be 2 sets of antenna on the mast and 2 sets of equipment cabinets next to the mast."
Absolutely spot on, and different frequencies, directionality of signal and (by implication) different ranges.
Having spent a week last week in deepest Cornwall, all i can say most of my network was 2G wherever we went. i feel for those having to live with this permanently, there's a reason they still have live phone boxes in some places which wont be replaced once the digital switch over happens. I suspect this wont be improved as the population is fairly low so no desire to improve things.
"In its 2022/23 financial year, Vodafone's operating profit was approximately 14.3 billion euros. This figure represents an increase of nearly nine billion euros if compared to the previous year"
The special pleading when they have more than enough money to upgrade their networks is pathetic. The idea that investing the money to improve their infrastructure will get more customers who pay more for faster services seems not to have been entertained - just keep milking the massive profits from the old stuff for a few more years, take home huge bonuses in the boardroom and let some other poor bugger sort it all out once you've left.
TBF, they tried investing. The government then banned the infrastructure vendor with the best technology and handed the costs of replacing that kit to the networks. Which means the customers either pay more and get a similar service, or pay the same and get a worse service.
"TBF, they tried investing. The government then banned the infrastructure vendor with the best technology and handed the costs of replacing that kit to the networks."
My heart bleeds for them. Evidently they can afford to invest in whatever kit they need. Huawei kit is not the best, if you read the register regularly you will note that their source code, having been inspected officially, was lacking and riddled with bugs. They have chosen not to reinvest their profits in network upgrades. Simple as. Until recently Vodafone were the only network I paid (200 quid) to leave, the next was three.
Having been involved in deploying that kit, I can confirm the radio features were (and still are) miles ahead of the competition.
As for the software, how many of the other network kit vendors have been subject to public audit? What do you think would be found if they were?
I've worked with the others too, and ropey software and config management is not limited to Huawei.
"Huawei kit is not the best, if you read the register regularly you will note that their source code, having been inspected officially, was lacking and riddled with bugs."
Indeed, so basically it was determined that Huawei's code was "shit".
However what was not determined was whether Huawei code was "shittier" or "better" than Nokia's / Ericsson's etc code...as no equivalent audit was performed on their rivals' code.
I’ve seen both H and Ericsson code. H’s was *far* worse. But that wasn’t the issue. H either refused to do anything about it, or were incapable of doing so.
Vulnerabilities are going to exist in any large, complex code base. Ideally you want to reduce the likelihood of them arising, following the ALARA principle. Ofc that takes effort and resources. H just didn’t seem to care. As a result, they got binned. Hardly surprising when you’re selling equipment that forms part of the CNI and it’s riddled with RCEs. “Put a firewall in front of it” doesn’t really cut it ;)
Tax land, not labor.
Productive activities, such as building communication networks, should not be taxed at all. The only labor contribution should be for social security.
Land should be taxed by proximity to public infrastructure and its concentration. Property price is irrelevant. Cheap unused property still occupies valuable space.
You mean like how OpenReach is in charge of all the standalone phone lines (Except for specific areas like Hull)?
That works well as long as you have good government oversight and strict regulation, otherwise you end up in the situation we have currently where:
1. ISPs can blame OpenReach for every problem, but the public can't speak to OpenReach directly so there's no way of knowing what's true or not
b. OpenReach engineers are thin on the ground so problems take ages to get investigated and usually involve a fee for the customer if no fault is found, which it won't be if the ISP is at fault
†. OpenReach or their awful subcontractors like Kelly Communications make very poor targets-driven decisions like stealing another customer's phone line to get a customer online on target because they then have a new target to fix the "borrowed" customer
iv. Despite the government regulation there's still a pervasive sense that BT Consumer has better access to OpenReach than the other ISPs who have to use OpenReach services
Oh, and since BT owns EE and gets OpenReach to run it, the most likely outcome of this nationalisation would be that OpenReach takes over everything and we therefore get whatever quality of network EE currently provides, but everywhere.
They are talking about 5G SA not 5G. At the moment 5G is used as a data only addon on top of an existing network core. Voice uses the core which is either 2G or 4G (VoLTE).
5G SA is using 5G as the base network with all of the network setup being done with 5G and voice using VoNR.
Anything in that alphabet soup that's of benefit to me, the humble consumer? I mean voice is voice, it just needs to be intelligible, that ought to be a solved problem, although on the rare occasions I make a voice call it seems like it might not be. And data is data, sometimes fast more often not. More fastness would be nice but rebuilding the network? Why?
My primary phone is O2, and I still end up on 2G sometimes (yay for rural lincolnshire) when the phone and sim work all the way upto 5G, so I'm not surprised.
I have a vodafone sim in an old Wileyfox Swift. I got lots of messages on it about how they are turning off the 3G network and how "as your phone uses 4G for data, but 3G for voice, you will be reduced to 2G for voice calls" which I found funny as the only voice calls I make are to keep the account live - the phone is actually used to talk to my car's ODB system and only cares about the mobile network for AGPS use.
It raised two major concerns: that consolidation would result in increased prices for users,
Consolidation always results in increased prices for users, especially when they say it won't.
and the post-merger company might not have an incentive to follow through on its proposed investment program to deliver network upgrades.
But why would they invest money when the merger is supposed to cure all their problems? Profit first, customers last, that's the modern way of business.
I live in London and have a 3 SIM in a Sony phone that supports VoLTE but haven't been able to make or receive calls for many weeks now.
It appears that 3 have shut off 3G in this area but simply haven't made sure that VoLTE has been activation on their network for their customer's handsets.
Have spent about 5 hours on the phone to their Technical Support team across the last 10 odd working days and have explained what they need to do to resolve the issue and I am still waiting for them to do it.
Once 3's Technical Support team fail to resolve the issue I will probably raise a complaint, with the aim of taking it all the way to the Telecoms Ombudsman and then move that number to another network.
Not that there is much choice on that front, due to Vodafone and VMO2's networks sucking harder than a Dyson.
Yes, Vodafone is rubbish.
I had a Lebara account until last year, which is on Voda's network, and in the places I go most often there is no useful signal at all. I tried a Voda payg sim in case they were getting restricted bandwidth and that was no better. (In fairness my sister has a good service with Lebara, she doesn't live near me.)
Now I have Lyca, reselling EE, and I have very little trouble.
I originally tried Lyca when I decided Three needed to go* (even though EE have no usable signal where I live; the same as all the others).
However, I couldn't get WiFi Calling to work, with their support telling me they didn't offer it! Have they got it going yet?
* Three's WiFi Calling would drop out, sometimes for days (and sometimes only fixable with a new SIM).
careful with lyca they will come up with any reason to move you from a cheap plan to a higher priced one, they are conmen.
try changing bank card with them, see how that goes, apparently changing bank card (just a new one after the old one expired) terminates your contract and you must sign up for a more expensive one as your no longer a "new customer"
Fuck the scamming bastards.
Also you won't know but you are actually on a different tier than true EE customers, you will miss calls even when the phone say's you have signal, in my case missed vital hospital calls!!!.
(plain and obvious when you have a second work mobile on EE, that can be called but your private lyca phone sat next to it can't be called and goes straight to answer phone, same signal bars)
couldn't get away from them fast enough!
Turn the mobile network (masts, bandwidth, etc) into a "national grid" in the same way as electricity or gas is supplied - then allow every telco to access every part of it, and charge them for the amount of data they carry over it.
Two benefits as I see it:
1) Coverage is not (for any given location) dependent on who happened to put up the nearest mast.
2) The telcos will have to compete on cost, or (if more expensive than a competitor) value for money.
Electricity and gas are supplied (ie the cables and pipes are owned) by regional distribution companies, who may not want to invest unless compelled to do so. I think the gas distributor and the electricity distributor in my area are part-owned by the same pension company.
"Last week VodaThree pledged to maintain social tariffs at £10 or below for at least two years after the merger."
Gosh, how generous.
My provider in France offers an entirely commercial and in no way time-limited tariff at 2 euros per month.
https://mobile.free.fr
It's free gratis if you subscribe to their broadband.
-A.
Our corporate package is substantially cheaper than my consumer package. I think line rental is free, unlimited calls and texts is pennies per month with data not being a massive burden.
I think this is part of the problem: The bottom has fallen out of the mobile (air time) market and there's little way for the networks to differentiate themselves other than racing to the bottom in pricing. And we all know what happens when suppliers are in a race to the bottom: Overhead (quality, customer service, investment, etc) goes out the window.
The Vodafone (actually Voxi) social tariff is restricted to certain recipients of government benefits and lasts for just 6 months. The Free Mobile €2 deal is a standard tariff available to anyone without restriction. The next cheapest is effectively unlimited everything 5G and, at current exchange rates, about £10.
> That's comparing appels and pears.
I see what you did there. Chapeau!
-A.
and now want to be allowed to merge so that the C-Suite can get their bonuses? That figures.
5G in this country is bloody awful. The Government should have been kicking these firms in the head for the last 10 years! Where is the 1Gbps for 5G I was promised!?
Where is the 1Gbps for 5G I was promised!?
Where did you find that promise?
5G was hyped much as previous technologies were before it. Marketing departments took what had been demonstrated in a laboratory (or even just what a research paper said) and assumed the real world experience would be the same.
Adverts should never be believed and indeed it doesn't take much effort to avoid them completely.
And those pointing out that EE has the best network seem to be forgetting that they were a previous merger (T-Mobile and Orange), and that they're owned by BT/Openreach.
I've had a Vodafone contract for over 30 years and it's served me well in most places; poor signal at home, but wifi calling addresses that. My phone also has an O2 SIM as a backup, but it's rare that O2 has a better connection than Vodafone. Switching off 3G hurts as areas that had patchy 4G now fall back to Edge and you can forget any useful data connection. Vodafone was one of the first mobile providers in the UK, alongside Cellnet (that's now O2) and it's no credit to Vodafone that they're now third - but it was a merger that gave us the biggest network so I would hope that merging the 3rd and 4th players might give us a stronger overall service.
But I'm in a rural area, so what does it matter...
Wifi calling just papers over the cracks, it doesn't fix the root cause that their coverage is crap and they haven't deployed antennas in the right area so you do get coverage.
Pretty cheeky though of them to say effectively provide your own coverage and data connection, whilst we still bill you each month for a service, and crank it up inflation+X% each year.
My experience of the 3G switchoff is, poor communication from the network they're doing it, inability to now make calls (so having to buy a new phone) and 4G is now overloaded. Where areas used to get 3G coverage there is now no coverage. Looks like they're not in a rush to refarm the frequencies. This is with 3UK, so there is no 2G fallback, but from reading the comments here it seems it's only good for voice calls.
I'm with Vodafone because it has good 4G signal in my hometown. But I often lose it when I'm on the road.
In the 3G days, if I lost 3G and fell back to 2G, it would still give me a data connection, often using EDGE/EVDO ("2.5G") for the data (slower than 3G but not as slow as base GPRS; it was fine for checking email or SSH'ing to my server to do something).
Nowadays, in a 2G-only area I still see the EDGE data connection but any packets I send on it don't come back. Has been that way for years, in *any* 2G-only area: calls and texts work, and I get a data signal but I don't get to actually send data on it.
My hypothesis was they run the 2G data signal for smart meters and things but no longer let normal phones have any data unless it's 4G.
Which is one of 2 large reasons why the electricity companies are supposed to be replacing all their smart meters with 4G compliant ones - the other reason being that the original generation of smart meters were provider-specific so you had to have your meter(s) swapped if you wanted to change energy provider.
Apparently that's not going as swiftly as they'd hoped though...
Many electricity suppliers allow you to sign up for a smart meter only tariff even with a gen 1 meter, but then can't read it. They keep nagging you to upgrade, but remember you swap the chore of reading the meter once a month for the opportunity to play selective availability bingo. Which means if you aren't on the priority register (have under 5s or a health condition) when supply is short on cold cloudy windless days now we have no coal and 3 out of 4 French interconnects aren't working, it might be your meter they turn off when shedding load.
When all the technodribble has been soaked into the drooling bandana of indifference and the spiky pineapple of marketing hype has been stuffed into the anaesthetised arsehole of contempt, I'm left just wondering exactly how big and ruinously the mega-crap, sorry, mega-corp, will be increasing prices for no other reason than "because we can"
I guess pretty much like the way Three screwed me over by about 500% when they arbitrarily gouged the venerable "321" tariff prices because - you guessed if - "they could".
May the repellent tolerant fleas of a thousand camels infect their sandpaper tendered genital regions.
Hmm, "MergeCo"? I rather suspect that if you were to take a close look and start to peel some of the sticky labels off, it will say "Moloch" underneath…
In fact, they were probably watching the first part of "Metropolis" to get the inspiration for this latest attempt to stomp on the proletariat…
I am reluctantly of the opinion that not allowing the merger will just condemn both companies to slow lingering deaths. I am not sure that 3 ever had a financial structure that would have funded the ongoing investment requirements of running a mobile network. Vodaphone I rather blame the historic management of the company.
I feel two types of measure are necessary to permit the merger. The lesser issue would be the possible divestment of some of the merged companies spectrum. More important since the argument is about network investment is that Ofcom should provide the merged company with a prioritised list of not spots to which they should provide 5G coverage within 5 years. Failure to hit this target should trigger a fine of 10% of annual revenue each year until the target is hit.
I was at a conference last week where coverage was discussed in depth. The head of UKTIN made an interesting point. When people paid per megabyte or minute, any area which was not covered cost the operator money. now it's all-you-can-eat building cells in expensive, hard to reach places is just added cost with no benefit.
The drive to lower and lower tariffs - ironically led by Three - has sold out coverage in return for better bundles. the solution is for the merger to go ahead but have a coverage obligation. This needs a minimum speed of 20Mb/s (not the 2Mb/s currently specified), Ofcom needs to measure throughput not just signal strength and assume throughput.
Spectrum released from the merger to other MNOs should also have a coverage obligation,
The 3.5Ghz and at least 5Mhz of 1800Mhz spectrum needs to go to shared access.
It needs to be both stick and carrot. There should be more margin for the MNOs but they should also be expected to deliver.
What it doesn't need is government subsidy. In two and a half years the £1bn SRN has failed to cover a single total not spot.
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