3G Licencing Fallout Continues.

spongebob

3 Years after paying €8.5 BILLION for a 3G licence in Germany , Mobilcom have simply handed it back to the Telecoms Regulator. Announcement and Story .

I believe that the 3G operators in Ireland have c.300 live connections between the three of them, all in a small area of Dublin I understand.

I wonder which one will bottle out first ?

M

SkepticOne

The only worthwhile aspect of 3G was that many countries made a lot of money selling 3G licences to the mobile firms.

Not in Ireland, though. The ODTR decided not to charge large amounts in the hopes that there would be more money to roll out the networks. Of course, whatever money saved in Ireland is a mere drop in the ocean compared to what these companies owe abroad so it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.

Shame. The country could have made a couple of billion or more out of flogging 3G licences.

dahamsta

The licencing auctions around Europe were ludicrous and idiotic, I'd congratulate the ODTR that was for not bending to Charlie McGreedy's whim. They made the right decision. Two pigopolist f*ckups don't make a right.

Christ, I sounded a bit like the Anti-Cork there.

adam

spongebob

The 3G licencing rounds which delivered such a windfall to the exchequers of both the UK and Germany did not happen in Ireland.

The ODTR was not ready to auction the licences in 2000 simply because the ODTR were too imcompetent to string together a licencing round for 3G. They made a compete balls of the licencing rounds for other chunks of spectrum around that time, 3.5Ghz being one, and were stuck in a court battle with Orange because they were almost proven to have made a balls up of the Meteor 2G licence.

Thanks to the incompetence of the ODTR we missed out on the opportunity get the price of a complete Cork -Dublin motorway out of Biddy/Hutchison/BT , all of whom could have well afforded to shellack the necessaries at the time. By the time the 3G licences were awarded they were worth feck all to anybody except the multinational operators.

The conditions attached to the licences are so weak that O2 Vodafone and 3 are all Fully Compliant with Etains licences while there are about 300 users in the whole of Ireland on 3 networks. Another triumph for the ODTR 'way' of doing things and another disaster for the Irish taxpayer/consumer. I think I'll keep the sig below for another while.

Thanks again for that Adam and Happy Christmas y'all .......unless you work for Comreg.

M

Matfinn

Heres a question.

Why are people bothering their arses with 3g??
There are loads of better and newer technologies out there like 802.11x wireless networking and 5g, so why not use them?

Matt

JTMan

Originally posted by Muck

I wonder which one will bottle out first ?

Probably none of them.

If Vodafone, O2, Orange, 3 or T-Mobile can prove next year in the UK that 3G can work successfully then they expect the 3 Irish networks to launch. On the other hand if another 2 years pass without a successful launch in Europe and/or mass-market adoption of an alternative technology comes on board then expect Comreg to get the licenses back.

yossarin

There are loads of better and newer technologies out there like 802.11x wireless networking and 5g, so why not use them?

'cos telcos are the only ones with pockets deep enough to put access points / base stations around the country and invest in the other infrastructure needed to push mobile communications.

its mad though - the traditional rift between telecos and data networkers is still going strong:
phone communication is generally complicated and claims 99.99% reliability, while data communication is relativly simple but only claims about 80% reliability (not sure of exact figure). The former is usually propreitry while the latter is usually open.

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by Matfinn
Heres a question.

Why are people bothering their arses with 3g??
There are loads of better and newer technologies out there like 802.11x wireless networking and 5g, so why not use them?

Matt

Do you care to mention these technologies, particularly interested in the 5G standards??

Current standards use cells to manage coverage, do the various 802.11 offer the same flexibility as the likes of GSM and UMTS do? Does it offer the same capacity?

4G standard are still only pipe dreams to be honest and not even NTT DoCoMo forsee them beeing introduced before the end of the decade, so I cant imagine how far 5G standards are in development. The only concrete advancement on UMTS seems to be the "3.5G" standard High-Speed Downlink Packet Access ( HSDPA ) which offers speeds og 10mbps..

I wonder which one will bottle out first ?

Vodafone have had their 3G network up and running now for 6 months and offers something like 50% population coverage already. O2 recently launched their network and offer a similar level of coverage. The networks are going to be launched to the public sometime over the summer period (please god now that I have said that). This is going to happen, regardless what happens in other countries in the meantime.

spongebob

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
Vodafone have had their 3G network up and running now for 6 months and offers something like 50% population coverage already.

How come I have never seen 3G in operation (in Ireland) and neither have my mates. Would that be because 3G will only work in the major cities anyway with handover to 2G once one passes the Celbridge Interchange?

That then begs the question.......why should we waste valuable spectrum in rural areas on these multinational assholes?......such as the expansion bands around 2.5-2.7Ghz .

M

jesus_thats_gre

How come I have never seen 3G in operation (in Ireland) and neither have my mates.

It is operational, I have had the oppurtunity to play with the 6650 on a few occassions and recently got a look at a data card at 384kbps.

As for the rural areas, that Spectrum has been allocated by the ITU as its suits the majority of the world. Obviously UMTS will be rolled out in Urban centres as first, but overtime it will be rolled out to rural areas. Surely you dont support messing with the ITU's plan for a worldwide wideband cellualr standard just for some half arsed rural BB scheme do u

Moriarty

Drivel cut and moved to the recycle bin. Next person to flame, troll or throw out one more personal attack gets a weeks ban. Consider it time to cool down.

spongebob

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
Surely you dont support messing with the ITU's plan for a worldwide wideband cellualr standard just for some half arsed rural BB scheme do u

1. It is NOT a worldwide standard. The US and European versions are incompatible as were the 2g systems. While the European GSM standard won that battle I suspect the US system will win the 3g standards war ...over time. The Janapese and Chinese have their own flavours too so that makes 4 standards.

2. The spectrum is globally allocated in the form of CORE spectrum and EXPANSION spectrum. The core spectrum must be made available for 3G everywhere in the world but the expansion spectrum may be allocated according to National requirements. This includes the 2.5-2.7Ghz band I specifically referred to should you wish to check on the ERO site .

3. I fail to see how one functioning cell in the middle of Galway entitles the likes of Voodoofone or any other multinational to an entire expansion spectrum band in the entire county ....especially if there is no 3G system within 50 miles as will be the case in Connemara .

4. Given the less than useful repsonse from the incumbent 2G operators (bar maybe Meteor) to a proposal to split the 1.8GHz band (in mid 2003 with a view to providing Nomadic systems on the spectrum in Rural areas) I hold out very little hope that there will be any meaningful co-existence between these operators greed for spectrum and the requirements of rural areas for NLOS spectrum ...... productively used.

5. I would simply immediately allocate the spectrum (if not in use for MMDS as per its current allocation in rural areas) to Broadband FWA and let the 3G operators swap those systems out IF they SHOW they need the spectrum in future at their own expense of course. They already have the core spectrum which should be adequate for their requirements for a long time to come.

6. The national allocation of spectrum to operators where the net result is that they will squat on it is a half arsed idea. Seekig to justify this policy is half that again IMO but I would love to hear a rationale for it from the bowels of Vodafone.

M

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by Muck
1. It is NOT a worldwide standard. The US and European versions are incompatible as were the 2g systems. While the European GSM standard won that battle I suspect the US system will win the 3g standards war ...over time. The Janapese and Chinese have their own flavours too so that makes 4 standards.

]


I am not gonna argue with you on the allocation of spectrum and its uses, I dont know nearly enough to go down that road. All I can say is this, whether the spectrum is being used in Connemara and other similar places is not really an issue, it will be used in the future.

As for you argument as to whether UMTS, or even GSM, are worldwide standards is a bit pointless. GSM has been deployed by over 500 networks in over 200 countries worldwide. Thats makes it a worldwide standard. The fact that some American operators deployed IS-95a networks does not detract from its overall success.

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml

Here are the status of UMTS networks in Europe and in Asia:
http://www.umts-forum.org/servlet/dycon/ztumts/umts/Live/en/umts/Resources_Deployment_index

No American operators are mentioned, but those running TDMA and GSM networks will move to UMTS, while those running IS-95a will probably move to CDMA2000. CDMA2000 has already been rolled out in parts of Asia.

Even if you want to mantain the argument that it is not true wordlwide standard, it is the European standard, and that is good enough!

spongebob

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
]
Even if you want to mantain the argument that it is not true wordlwide standard, it is the European standard, and that is good enough!

Europe is not the World. The World is not Europe. There is NO worldwide 3G standard as I said.

Any thoughts on the other points

"3. I fail to see how one functioning cell in the middle of Galway entitles the likes of Voodoofone or any other multinational to an entire expansion spectrum band in the entire county ....especially if there is no 3G system within 50 miles as will be the case in Connemara .

4. Given the less than useful repsonse from the incumbent 2G operators (bar maybe Meteor) to a proposal to split the 1.8GHz band (in mid 2003 with a view to providing Nomadic systems on the spectrum in Rural areas) I hold out very little hope that there will be any meaningful co-existence between these operators greed for spectrum and the requirements of rural areas for NLOS spectrum ...... productively used.

5. I would simply immediately allocate the spectrum (if not in use for MMDS as per its current allocation in rural areas) to Broadband FWA and let the 3G operators swap those systems out IF they SHOW they need the spectrum in future at their own expense of course. They already have the core spectrum which should be adequate for their requirements for a long time to come.

6. The national allocation of spectrum to operators where the net result is that they will squat on it is a half arsed idea. "

Yours in hope !

M

Hobart

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
] As for you argument as to whether UMTS, or even GSM, are worldwide standards is a bit pointless. GSM has been deployed by over 500 networks in over 200 countries worldwide. Thats makes it a worldwide standard.

I like your understanding of standards. Ever tried roaming in the US?

No American operators are mentioned, but those running TDMA and GSM networks will move to UMTS,

And what do you base this on? That is simply not true.

Even if you want to mantain the argument that it is not true wordlwide standard, it is the European standard, and that is good enough!

Ah! I see. :rolleyes: