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3 and T-Mobile Network Sharing Deal


Guest battletank

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Guest Br1an_g

an old thread again..realised 3 will save on 2g roaming as they will have 98% 3g coverage so there will be no need for 2g roaming..lol

i though the network share was rolled out already in a few cities? and was working ok?

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest Retronana

I thought I'd give this a bump for my own interest...

I'm on T-Mobile, nothing on 3G or HSDPA at my home address and little sign of T-Mobile looking to get our 2G network upgraded to 3G in my area :angry

Girl that live next door is on 3 network, lovely 3G signal from her house, I thought the network share agreement would allow areas like mine to use the 3 network and if some area where 3 have no 3G coverage they would use T-Mobiles, and piggyback deal of sorts.

Is this not the case ?

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Guest humph12345

What I am seeing on the ground is 3 cabins being removed and the equipment being relocated into the nearest T-mobile cabin or at least planned to. Both networks remain seperate, but go up the same antenna.

This is only happening on certain sites, of the work I do only around 10% are designated as site shares.

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Guest humph12345
I thought I'd give this a bump for my own interest...

I thought the network share agreement would allow areas like mine to use the 3 network and if some area where 3 have no 3G coverage they would use T-Mobiles, and piggyback deal of sorts.

Is this not the case ?

What they will do is install 3 equipment in the local T-mobile site. The big stumbling block is BT, they need to provide new links and they take forever.

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  • 3 months later...
Guest FragMeister

As I had heard nothing about this for a long time, I thought I would ask T-Mobile what the current status is, as I only get an average 2G signal at home whereas "3" have a good 3G signal.

Here is their reply, suggesting I should contact their Press office. I think that offshoring T-Mobile customer support means that any reply to a question that isn't in their standard list isn't worth asking, even more than once!

Thanks for your email FragMeister, asking me to investigate about the deal between 3 network and T-Mobile.

I've check the information for you and regarding the "Mast Sharing" agreement you'll need contact our Press Office team on 07017 150 150, there are available Monday to Friday 8.30 am to 5.00 pm.

Thanks again for contacting me FragMeister, I'm sure they'll be able to help you.

If you have any further questions please feel free to email me and I'll be more than happy to help you. Or you can visit our help and advise section by clicking here.

Kind regard

Unissa Kauser

Customer Services Email Team

T-Mobile

On 28/01/09 09:20, FragMeister wrote:

I am slightly surprised by your answer as a "mast sharing" agreement was jointly announced by your Chief Executive in December 2007.

http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/Dec2007/5531.htm

Please can you investigate further and let me know if this is going ahead, or if the deal with "3" fell through.

Many thanks;

FragMeister

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 4:26 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:

Thanks for your email FragMeister, asking me when T-Mobile and 3 network are joining forces to provide services.

T-Mobile is an independent network service provider and as of now has no plans of joining hands with any other service provider.

Regarding the 3G coverage in your area, we are planning to improve on the 3G coverage in many places in the UK.

But I can't assure anything right now as this depends on different aspects.

Thanks again for your email FragMeister. I'm sure this helps answer your question accordingly.

For any other questions, please feel free to reply to my email or visit our help and advice section online by clicking here.

Kind regards

Ruby Gager

Customer Services Email Team

T-Mobile

On 26/01/09 20:23, FragMeister wrote:

message:I heard a long time back that T-Mobile and "3" were joining forces in order to provide a better level of 3G services. I live in #######, East Sussex (BN# ###) and although I have a good "3" HSDPA service, the T-Mobile coverage checker is still showing only 2G. Please can you tell me when the "mast sharing" with "3" is going to start in my town.

Thank you.

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Guest pd.ryder
As I had heard nothing about this for a long time, I thought I would ask T-Mobile what the current status is, as I only get an average 2G signal at home whereas "3" have a good 3G signal.

Here is their reply, suggesting I should contact their Press office. I think that offshoring T-Mobile customer support means that any reply to a question that isn't in their standard list isn't worth asking, even more than once!

I find this type of response to be typical of corporate customer services. It's as though their "reply machine" sucks keywords out of your email and then constructs an 'appropriate' reply without ever actually addressing the question asked :)

Edited by pd.ryder
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Guest humph12345

Everything I have seen on the ground points to Three giving up their existing base stations and moving their equipment into the nearest T-mobile site or should I say sharing T-mobiles existing 3G equipment.

But to remain seperate, they won't be merging, they are using seperate antennas and this is where the problem lies.

Both 2g and 3g networks use recieve diversity to improve coverage and reduce noise, to do this, each cell uses two antennas, one to transmit and recieve and one to recieve only, the two recieve signal are the compared, the result is a better recieve signal, ie. from your phone.

Now what they have done, rather than fit new antennas for Three to use, they have dumped recieve diversity and are using the second recieve antenna for Three.

Noise is a bigger problem in 3G networks, especially phase noise. This cheap fix will have a detrimental effect on coverage and will lead to more dropped calls.

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Guest Confucious

Oh dear - that doesn't sound good :(

My T contract ends in April and so far all they've offered me to renew is a £5/month discount.

As I have a £15/month discount at the moment I would be paying £10/month more to stay with them!

If the service level goes down it looks like I will have to look around.

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Guest pd.ryder

I'm in a similar boat Confucius. This news is not inspiring me to stay with T at all as the current service I receive in Gloucester is diabolical. I can't find myself a decent data competitor though, and although I'm not prepared to pay T's outrageous 'upgrade' prices for the Vario IV (I really wanted a Touch HD but they haven't materialised yet) the thought of having tp pay through the nose for a gig of data a month has me in a rare old pickle.

This news might well just tip the apple cart...

Humph -- I wouldn't expect you to id yourself, but could you say which team you work for or at what level? I'm likely to throw this at T when trying to negotiate a reduced upgrade figure and to say "someone on the forum said..." won't carry much weight. To say it came from a supervisor / technical lead etc would obviously carry far more bang-per-buck :(

Edited by pd.ryder
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  • 1 month later...
Guest humph12345
Humph -- I wouldn't expect you to id yourself, but could you say which team you work for or at what level? I'm likely to throw this at T when trying to negotiate a reduced upgrade figure and to say "someone on the forum said..." won't carry much weight. To say it came from a supervisor / technical lead etc would obviously carry far more bang-per-buck B)

I finished working on T-mobiles network about a month ago.

It is possible that this will only be a short term situation until new equipment is fitted.

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Guest Confucious

humph1234 -what do you think of O2's network?

With my T-Mob contract running out in a couple of weeks they have offered me the same terms but I mainly use data and have got an O2 PAYG SIM with a years free data (provided I top up each month) so am tempted to ditch T for that.

Yesterday I got a colleague to run speedtest on his iPhone at work on O2 - he got about 580kbs and on T-Mobile I got about 1400kbs - is this typical?

Thanks.

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Guest humph12345
humph1234 -what do you think of O2's network?

With my T-Mob contract running out in a couple of weeks they have offered me the same terms but I mainly use data and have got an O2 PAYG SIM with a years free data (provided I top up each month) so am tempted to ditch T for that.

Yesterday I got a colleague to run speedtest on his iPhone at work on O2 - he got about 580kbs and on T-Mobile I got about 1400kbs - is this typical?

Thanks.

I would say that would be typical. O2 have invested very little in the network over the past 2 years and are starting to drop behind.

Capacity wise T-mobile have the highest. Vodafone are doing a very minor expansion at the moment and Orange are about to swap from Nokia to Ericsson equipment.

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Guest Confucious

Thanks for the reply - I just posted in another thread how disappointed I am using an O2 PAYG SIM - not only is 580 about the max i get but it flutuates wildly between 580 an 0 !

I hope it's not to late for me to renew my T contract on the same terms.

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