Interference knocks Vodafone NZ into court

Vodafone New Zealand is in court trying to get an injunction to prevent rival-operator Telecom NZ launching their new "XT" service, which is scheduled to come online on May 13th. The operators, who run a virtual duopoly on New Zealand mobile telephony, are both in the process of upgrading their networks, but Vodafone reckons …

[Anna Log]

GSM?

" 3G network should use next-generation GSM technology (UMTS) operating at 850MHz rather than 2.1GHz, where it usually hangs out."

Presumably they're deploying W-CDMA at 850MHz, rather than TDMA based GSM 850, which is only UMTS in marketing rather than engineering terms.

[Anonymous Coward]

900 is a hard band to play in

The US allows 900->930 for all sorts of odd things with enough power to knock out a 900 MHz base station from tens of kilometers away. In a few months, nearly every container and pallet out of China will have a 900 MHz RFID tag. Add in the fact that there are 4W readers for those tags operating in NZ right now, I don't see how any one thinks using any thing between 900 and 915 won't be a major problem. Vodafone in Australia uses all the way up to 914 without any guard band even though 915 is in the amateur band.

[Anonymous Coward]

Elmer

Does it again!

[Jean-Yves Avenard]

850MHz vs 900Mhz works fine in Australia

Australian biggest mobile operator Telstra has been running a UMTS 850MHz network since mid-2006.

The 2nd biggest operator started rolling a UMTS 900MHz network last year.

Haven't heard of any interference between the two.

I guess NZ does things differently !

[Anonymous Coward]

FUD

"Fear, uncertainty and doubt", shurley?

[Andy Dent]

Wonder if it's the geography

After a stunning holiday in NZ South Island last year I wonder if the problem is due to geography - there is very little room between those mountains. It will be very interesting to see where they claim the interference occurs.

My physics isn't good enough to know if the presence of the mountains, of various rock types, could cause interference between bands that are normally safely mixed in wide-open spaces.

There are very few places in Australia that come close to matching the NZ geography. Maybe if we stretched NZ out to the same size as Oz it would be as flat.

[Travis]

FUD. . .

At a guess I would say that Vodafone is just scared and pissy. First they told us that they would have 3G everywhere in NZ by mid 2010. Then Telecom say that they will have their new GSM network up and running by May 31 2009, and Vodafone releases a statement saying theirs will be up and running May 30.

Now they are taking it to court due to possible 'interference'?

FUD indeed.

[Cortland Richmond]

It could be worse

They could interleave high power PTT and low power trunking, overloading the smaller, lighter, portables.

Wait...haven't we SEEN that? Someone ask Sprint how many US Billion$ rebanding costs.