Posts by ARGO 266 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2012
Also, since 2020, the networks have had to notify customers when their contract ends and what deals are available to replace it.
If the customer doesn't do anything about it, that's their choice. Hard to see how they blame the network for that choice though.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/service-quality/companies-must-tell-customers-about-their-best-deals?SQ_VARIATION_191375=0
There are several problems with it, but none of them are the ones mentioned by Apple and Google.
The main one is that - outside of Europe and North America - not many operators are signed up to use it. This is slowly being addressed.
A secondary issue is that most of the operators who are signed up only use blocklists for device stolen in their own country - so if you export the stolen device, it works again.
A third is that while the IMEI is usually stored in write-once memory on the device, it has to pass through layers of rather less secure software before it reaches the network. Intercepting and changing the IMEI is illegal in the UK. But so is stealing the phone.
And so on....
That said, it is a relatively simple way of making life more complicated for purveyors of stolen phones. It's far from watertight though.
Virgin were an MVNO - they didn't have any of their own masts prior to their merger with O2.
Similarly BT - who sold off O2 many years ago - didn't have any masts prior to their takeover of EE.
The only (previous) UK merger that led to mast consolidation was Orange & T Mobile. And even that wasn't straightforward because TMo had a lot of sites they shared with 3.
Well you will insist on having a house with walls :-P
Satellite signals don't like walls (or roofs) either, so probably not going to help much in this scenario.
To be fair, the mobile operator are providing your SIP service.
Buying that directly for a consumer landline costs ~£10pcm plus calls, so if your mobile bill is less than that you're winning.
It does affect foreign users roaming into Australia, because they have to be able to connect to the local network to get service (even if it's routed to the home network) and emergency calls are always routed locally anyway (no point calling for an ambulance in Oz and being put through to the London ambulance service).
Should also note that what Australia regards as an acceptable phone is not always the same as a phone that works for VoLTE in the UK. Some brands that are sold in the UK are not available down under, so the networks haven't validated them.
It works as well as you can expect within the limits of 3GPP standards - in particular it won't switch networks until the one you are on loses signal completely. And that includes 2G signal, which isn't really compatible with modern apps. The list of permitted apps is limited but growing. And you get the same service abroad at no extra cost.
If you want full access I think Manx (and maybe Jersey) Telecom still offer roaming SIMs for all the UK networks. But they are rather more pricey than Honest's £5 per month.
That's not entirely wrong though - for some applications latency really does matter.
And given the lack of QoS on most networks, you have to improve the latency of everything to improve it for the traffic that actually needs low latency.
Putting the datacentre near the end points will help.
Voda UK are heavily unionised, Three UK don't have any union recognition.
And Voda UK have double the number of employees to deliver basically the same service.
I can see why their unions might be concerned.
(though accusing Three employees of being Chinese spies isn't going to do much for recruitment of members there)
France Telecom bought Orange from Vodafone, who were forced to sell it after they took over Mannesmann.
Mannesmann bought Orange a few years after Hutch floated half of it.
Hutch were 100% owners when the Orange UK network launched in 1994 and for some years afterwards, and remained 50% owners after the float.
Yes. The 800MHz band has been used since ~2015.
It's comparable to the 900MHz that gave O2 and Voda a coverage edge for years.
Strange that you lost 4G but kept 3G when going indoors though.
The 4G 1800 and 3G 2100 footprints are almost identical, except that 4G 1800 was marginally better at dealing with walls.
If you kept either, I would have expected it to be the 4G signal.
Motorola only had the contract for part of the system - the service layer stuff.
Then they bought the legacy Airwave system.
As el-reg commentards noted at the time, that didn't leave them with much incentive to develop the new system - but the regulators apparently knew better than us.
The radio coverage is coming from EE, and devices are expected to come from the usual suspects.
All three elements are late, and services especially so after the re-tender noted above.
Generally local break out of VoLTE is only for emergency calls.
Would be a bad idea to send those to another country, but as they use a separate APN it's easy to identify them.
Pretty much everyone offering VoLTE roaming has implemented S8HR for normal calls.
(S8 is the 3GPP interface that carries the traffic and "HR" stands for Home Routing.)
Mainly to simplify management and accounting (VAT is a particular problem).
It does have some user benefits too, but those are more side effects than features that were designed for.
A lot of traffic also passes through a central node on the way home to avoid the need for individual links between every network pair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_roaming_exchange
Networks are (in theory!) dimensioned for peak demand.
Peak times for mobile and home use vary a bit by location but don't generally coincide.
So aside from a small increase in power consumption and the cost of providing the router, it's effectively free money for the network.
(Business use of wireless broadband would be a different matter of course, but the current offerings all seem to be consumer focused)
Yup, various permutations of network signal time of arrival positioning are already in 3GPP.
They've been gradually ramping up the accuracy requirements over the years.
Starting from ~100m in GSM days, they've now got the 5G iteration to a best-case accuracy of 30cm.
(Should also note that Cambridge Positioning Systems had a way of getting down to ~10m around 20 years ago)
...it's almost identical to the proposed remit of the CMA Digital Markets Unit in the UK:
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/365/business-energy-and-industrial-strategy-committee/news/173840/report-consumers-at-risk-if-digital-markets-unit-not-given-teeth-say-mps/
There is a list in the regulation linked from the article. It's a slightly weird selection though, and only adds up to 15 if you have more than one item in some of the categories:
• battery;
• back cover or back cover assembly;
• front-facing camera assembly;
• rear-facing camera assembly;
• external connectors;
• buttons;
• microphone;
• speaker(s);
• hinge assembly;
• mechanical display folding mechanism;
• mechanical display rolling mechanism;
• display assembly;
• charger
You may be pleased to hear the draft regulation actually says this: "for a minimum period from one month after the date of placement on the market until 5 years after the date of end of placement on the market"
Which is rather different from 5 years from launch.
Not yet, but eventually.
5G latency improvements don't come until Stand-Alone 5G is live (maybe 2023~24 in the UK). At the moment 5G latency is limited by its signalling running over 4G.
At the radio level there's minimal power difference between 4G and 5G. Spectral efficiency is also about the same.
Right now user density would be much higher for 4G2100 than 5G2100 simply because there are 10x more 4G2100 devices out there. That will probably reverse around the same time Stand Alone arrives. The full density capabilities of 5G aren't needed for handsets though; it's more about Internet of Things.
2G interleaving is only an option in the 900 & 1800 bands in the UK - no 2G2100 devices exist. Unlikely to see 5G in 2100 just yet though; there are plenty of other bands available that require less work. For example 700 & 800 give much better coverage than 2100, while 1800 would be a better option for capacity.
"Fingers crossed they'll start making old-school handsets that run on 4G."
Nokia (or rather the people who now own that brand) are way ahead of you there: https://www.gsmarena.com/res.php3?sSearch=nokia+4G
Battery life isn't quite as good as your old model, but still way better than a smartphone.
Interesting that there is no mention of 2G here. As I understand it, Voda are keeping that running for now. And it could serve as a fall back for all those folk with 3G (or non-VoLTE 4G) handsets. But as 2G is also for the chop by 2033, I guess they'd rather move folk to a capable handset now so the later phase can concentrate on the rather trickier M2M devices.
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