Posts by ARGO

Customer bricked a phone – and threatened to brick techie's face with it

Re: Motorola brick

Ah yes, the era when Nokia phone cases only existed to protect the floor.

UK minister recalls two planning decisions which blocked datacenter investment

Re: Slow electrons

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.

Vodafone, VMO2 shuffle spectrum to woo watchdog amid merger moves

Re: Things which need nationalising...

Or the old GPO.

I can see it now.... "Yes of course you can download some data. We can allocate you 5MB at 3am on the 2nd Tuesday of next month...."

An arc welder in the datacenter: What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Let's start a fight with the Welders

>Fill the hole?... or make an unwanted hole?

Very much the latter. Some of them were quite artistic though!

Re: Let's start a fight with the Welders

A long time ago, I needed some welding doing on my car.

Didn't like the quote, so I went on a welding course (Arc and MIG).

After which I could weld a hole into anything.

Actually welding stuff back together? Not so much.

You're wrong, I'm right, and you're hiding the data that proves it

Re: Slow WANs

Two millibits you say? Yes that's certainly slow!

Two cuffed over suspected smishing campaign using 'text message blaster'

Re: Rules for thee

You're going to get really annoyed when you discover the "lawful intercept" provisions written into network standards.

Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

Re: Simples - Just change the SIM

Indeed. Strange that the mobile networks haven't used this route to shift all their customers off 2G/3G handsets ahead of those networks being turned off.

/s

Vodafone and Three's UK merger hits regulatory roadblock

Re: "Unions aren't nearly so keen on the pair consummating the agreement"

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)

Brits blissfully unbothered by snail-paced mobile network speeds

>but new ones are never added

Indeed. And then about a year after planning is refused, the same people who campaigned against the mast are in the local paper complaining about the lack of mobile service in their area.

(From personal experience of a village near where I live)

Ruggedized phone group takes the Bullitt, calls in PWC as administrative receiver

Re: The final death of phone design in the Thames Valley

Several of those even manufactured handsets in the UK. Such a quaint idea nowadays.

5G network slicing finally shown to be more than pipe dream

Re: "I have yet to speak to an enterprise which is planning to buy one"

Most recent 5G devices already support SA and network slicing.

They can be turned on via software updates.

But vendors would like to have something to test it against before doing that. A novel idea in tech, I know.

UK merger of Vodafone and Three in competition watchdog's crosshairs

Re: Forbid

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.

Re: Forbid

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.

Seoul restores smartphone subsidies because premium handsets are apparently essential

Re: Define “ premium device“

Premium is a marketing term and moves with what the market will tolerate.

If you knock a hundred or two off the lowest priced current-year Apple, you'll be in the right sort of area.

With an iPhone 15 at £800, that puts the current boundary at £600-700.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

To be fair, there have been a handful of MPs banging away at this for years.

Unfortunately that sort of behaviour is definitely not what is wanted in potential government ministers, so they never had the power to do anything about it.

Motorola loses appeal to kill price cap on UK Airwave emergency services contract

Re: Let me get this straight...

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.

Is it time for 6G already? Traffic analysis says yep

Re: 5G speed not just affected by signal

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.)

Re: 5G speed not just affected by signal

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

Re: Wasted

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)

Vodafone and Wi-Fi vendors play tug of war over 6 GHz

Re: This doesn't seem right...

As someone noted above, 6GHz doesn't play nicely with walls.

But it's not inherently better for either technology - just make sure there's no wall between you and the access point / cell tower.

Re: Phone calls

So... WiFi calling it is then :-P

Telco giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 staff as part of its turnaround plan

That's not been allowed in the UK for some years now. Still a thing elsewhere in the world though.

India calls for all mobile phones to include FM radios

Well..

..technically speaking, they *all* contain an FM radio. And most have more than one.

Meta chops another 10,000 employees, closes 5,000 vacancies

It's an ironic admission for a company that's pushing "metaverse" as the solution to everything though.

Financial red tape blamed for London losing Arm IPO

>our finance sector has been far more risk adverse about losing large sums of money than the US has been.

Except when they're losing it *within the finance sector* of course. There you can have all the funding you want.

Telecoms networks could provide next-gen GPS services without the need for satellites

Re: Sorry which bit of this is new?

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)

Tech companies in the crosshairs as China proposes antitrust law revisions

A lot of that sounds very familiar...

...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/

EU proposes regulations for tablet battery life, spare parts

Re: 15 parts must be carried?

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

Re: "spare parts for at least five years"

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.

A character catastrophe for a joker working his last day

We had a similar rule when I worked in academia - never let a professor into the lab.

Prototype app outperforms and outlasts outsourced production version

Neither. As none of the people presenting it were at the company when I was there, I asked how to make it do xyz - which had been in the phase 2 deliverables list, but not the demo I wrote. Guess what their product couldn't do?

I suspect there are many "just for a demo" VB front ends that outlasted the system they originally front-ended for.

I discovered one of mine was still in use 15 years after I moved on when my former employers tried to sell it to my current employers. That was a fun meeting!

Shut off 3G by 2033? How about 2023, asks Vodafone UK

Re: Pretty sure 3G and 4G can work at the same time...

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.

Re: 2G?

"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.

Shared Infrastructure

Yes. It's in progress, but going about as quickly as you'd expect for something involving four competing companies, a regulator, various central government departments and hundreds of local councils. Details are here https://srn.org.uk/

2G?

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.

Aircraft can't land safely due to interference with upcoming 5G C-band broadband service

The article specified 3.7-3.98 GHz.

3.7-3.8 GHz is already widely deployed outside the US (as band n78), and 3.8 - 4.0 (n77), while less common, is reasonably widespread. Planes are still flying in the countries that have these.

So either the US has some seriously naff electronics controlling their planes, or this is an FAA / FCC turf war.

2033 is doomsday for 2G and 3G in the UK

The shared rural network is supposed to address that. It's 4G only though.

TBF there is a 4G version of eCall, and anything being sold now is on that version.

Cars tend to last longer than handsets though, so likely to be quite a few still using the circuit switched system in 2033.

Smartphone chip house Ziguang Zhanrui records 14,726.1% growth in China

Doubt it's due to Huawei

>Ziguang Zhanrui is filling a gap left by the decline of Huawei HiSilicon

Not so much. HiSilicon chips are mainly high spec, while Unisoc is in the value tier.

They're more likely picking up business from Mediatek's attempts to move upmarket, alongside Chinese networks efforts to move 2G/3G users onto 4G. The latter is significantly increasing the number of entry level 4G handsets being sold.

Pretend starship captain to take trip in real space capsule

Re: You don't want to be the company

And hopefully doesn't it turn into a five year mission either...

China passes half a billion 5G subscriptions and adds at least 190k new 5G base stations in six months

Re: 5G?, Decent 4G and Voice Would be nice In Hertfordshire

But perversely, non line-of-sight can be faster if you have a decent signal strength to start with - MIMO needs multiple reflective paths to work. (Clearly this means MIMO transmission is witchcraft.)

Huawei says its latest flagship smartphones lack 5G, blames US sanctions

Re: Mediatek

Yes they do. As do Unisoc.

MTK seem to have a healthy order book at the moment, but Unisoc could do with some more customers

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

A beer for the headline writer!

Although I will now have that Wurzels tune in my head all day....

Impromptu game of Robot Wars sparks fire in warehouse at UK e-tailer Ocado

Re: But a collision of robots resulting in a fire?

Good job it wasn't carrying custard powder!

BT to phase out 3G in UK by 2023 for EE, Plusnet, BT Mobile subscribers

Re: Rural coverage is still very poor

The spectrum currently used for 3G doesn't go away though - it just changes from 3G to 4G. Coverage of that spectrum stays the same.

It's even possible coverage will improve, but for a different reason; the networks are under OFCOM pressure to hit 90% geographic coverage. A site they are already visiting for a 3G-4G switch is a prime candidate to have 700/800 added at the same time. And that spectrum goes much further.

(You still need a VoLTE handset to use it though)

Re: Provided...

There are a decent range already. You won't find many in operator stores, but they frequently appear in the Sunday supplements. Doro seem to be the market leader in the UK.

Re: Shame, but inevitable

The UK operators have been refarming 3G spectrum to 4G, so where you used to get 10 MHz bandwidth (assuming a DC cat 24 handset) you probably only get 5 now.

UK competition watchdog sniffing around Motorola profits after delay to replace company's Airwave service

Re: Well if you'd specified a valid replacement

If only someone in the CMA had anticipated that might happen before the merger was approved.

Perhaps they would like to employ a few of El Reg's commentards in future?

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2015/12/04/motorola_splashes_817m_on_airwave/