Orange's spectrum?

So, what are Hutch going to do with the 800MHz spectrum left over when
they retire the Orange CDMA network in Aug.? [1] They have 825-835MHZ in
MEL and SYD (and 825-830MHz in "Remote Central"?) and matching
allocations in 870-880MHz.

Will Three start deploying 850MHz UMTS once Telstra have the bugs ironed
out of the technology in "the bush"? Will Hutch flog the spectrum to
Telstra for their SYD/MEL deployments?

PD

[1] http://australianit.news.com.au/wire...075832,00.html

--
Paul Day
Web: http://www.enigma.id.au/

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› See More: Orange's spectrum?

I have been looking at this myself, it would seem like a good idea for
them to deploy UMTS 850, but smarter to wait until Telstra has gone to
the expense of getting the tech to work right, or maybe they'll blindly
jump in.

The question is, do they have the customer base to support such a move.
In my opinion, not anytime soon. But I wait for them to prove me
wrong.

http://web.acma.gov.au/pls/radcom/sp...sults?pCAT=520

You'll also notice that AAPT owns everything that was not bought by
Telstra and Hutch, which they licenced out to Hutch in some areas (eg.
Bris & GC). This would make it extremely difficult for anyone to get
good coverage, especially since W-CDMA / UMTS uses 5Mhz channels. One
channel per area also doesn't work well in an urban environment, and
can be iffy in rural areas. Yes, 2 UMTS towers can exist on the same
channel, but it does begin to become technically complex (to many cells
near each other will degrade performance to all users in said area).

The fun will start when UMTS 900 is seriously looked at as an option,
but each carrier on GSM only has a little over 8Mhz spectrum available,
and any other available spectrum around the 850 & 900Mhz bands is
currently in use, and guess what, Telstra owns a lot of that (mostly in
the form of narrow bandwidth voice and data).

And current spectrum is locked up for a while, I have gathered info
here: http://www.mabsoft.org/wacko/CellBandFrequencies

Tech. info on UMTS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS

mabs wrote:
> I have been looking at this myself, it would seem like a good idea for
> them to deploy UMTS 850, but smarter to wait until Telstra has gone to
> the expense of getting the tech to work right, or maybe they'll blindly
> jump in.

The 10MHz of the 20MHz that Telstra doesn't have a licence for is in the
metro areas where it will be of secondary use to the primary 2100MHz
spectrum for 3GSM. The primary advantage of the 870-890MHz spectrum is
in its propagation and range from base stations so it will be used
primarily in rural areas. The 2100MHz spectrum will provide relief on
the 850 band in metro areas so there is little demand for Telstra to
require more than 10MHz in the 850 band in metro areas.
This of course may change if wireless data demand rapidly escalates in
the coming years, but Telstra won't consider making a bid for the extra
spectrum unless it can get it cheap. It would certainly be considerably
easier for Telstra to increase its bandwidth allocation on existing 850
band installations than for a competitor to establish a totally new
network or new operating band in the 850 band.

>
> The question is, do they have the customer base to support such a move.
> In my opinion, not anytime soon. But I wait for them to prove me
> wrong.
>
> http://web.acma.gov.au/pls/radcom/sp...sults?pCAT=520
>
> You'll also notice that AAPT owns everything that was not bought by
> Telstra and Hutch, which they licenced out to Hutch in some areas (eg.
> Bris & GC). This would make it extremely difficult for anyone to get
> good coverage, especially since W-CDMA / UMTS uses 5Mhz channels. One
> channel per area also doesn't work well in an urban environment, and

Eh? It works great for CDMA and W-CDMA. How many channels do you think
the Hutchison/Telstra & Vodafone/Optus networks are using for 3GSM?
Mainly one but they have a maximum of TWO possible channels in each
provider allocation in the 2100MHz band.

> can be iffy in rural areas. Yes, 2 UMTS towers can exist on the same
> channel, but it does begin to become technically complex (to many cells
> near each other will degrade performance to all users in said area).

With CDMA the more cells on the same frequency will actually improve
performance since average handset power levels drop which results in
reduced 'near-far' problems with desired user signals being swamped.
Single channel use also improves performance in recovery from multi-path
fading (particularly in urban environments which have more sources of
signal reflection). It is also technically easier since it eliminates or
at least reduces frequency planning requirements.
The only technically complex aspect is the difficulty for some people to
understand the principal of orthogonality!

>
> The fun will start when UMTS 900 is seriously looked at as an option,
> but each carrier on GSM only has a little over 8Mhz spectrum available,
> and any other available spectrum around the 850 & 900Mhz bands is
> currently in use, and guess what, Telstra owns a lot of that (mostly in
> the form of narrow bandwidth voice and data).
>
> And current spectrum is locked up for a while, I have gathered info
> here: http://www.mabsoft.org/wacko/CellBandFrequencies
>
> Tech. info on UMTS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS
>

> Eh? It works great for CDMA and W-CDMA. How many channels do you think
> the Hutchison/Telstra & Vodafone/Optus networks are using for 3GSM?
> Mainly one but they have a maximum of TWO possible channels in each
> provider allocation in the 2100MHz band.

That make more sense in a way, I was under the impression 2 or 3 would
be needed to deploy a network properly.

> With CDMA the more cells on the same frequency will actually improve
> performance since average handset power levels drop which results in
> reduced 'near-far' problems with desired user signals being swamped.
> Single channel use also improves performance in recovery from multi-path
> fading (particularly in urban environments which have more sources of
> signal reflection). It is also technically easier since it eliminates or
> at least reduces frequency planning requirements.
> The only technically complex aspect is the difficulty for some people to
> understand the principal of orthogonality!

I do understand it to some extent, including the mathematics. What I
meant is that 2 cells serving many handsets and data terminal between
them are still limited by physics. But you have a better grasp on this
than I do, I need to do more research I think.