Orange the fastest GPRS network in Europe

[Guest mattscholey]

Just phoned up 150, and spoke to a very nice customer service guy, to check that my GPRS pack had been increased as asked. After confirming this, he went on to ask me how I found GPRS on the phone (I said it was good except for the dialing problem).

He then told me a bit about GPRS on the network. He said it was really installed as really a temporary service for a few years, to soon be replaced by 3G. But Orange had found far more people using the service than they had anticipated, so worked with Sony Ericsson to upgrade the GPRS service. This should be finished around December, but when done, it will have more timeslots (therfore be faster) than any other GPRS network in Europe. And this should sort out problems dialing.

Is this true? He seemed to know what he was on about, and if so than this is very good news. (Have searched, haven't found anything else on this, so decided to post.)

Hope your interested,

Matt

[Guest chucky.egg]

The dialing sticking problem is an "undocumented feature" (bug) in the SPV and/or E100 (read the thread about the 1.6 build)

It might be that the guy you spoke to didn't know about the issue, and assumed it was a capacity issue with the network.

Either way more reliable, faster GPRS can hardly be a bad thing. What I really want is 3G speeds not in a "walled garden"

[Guest broeren79]

Is 3G the same as UMTS?

[Guest roke]

Yes, 3G is considered being UMTS.

And for that "fastest GPRS" thing: Are you sure? We don't have Orange in Belgium, although Mobistar here is from the Orange Group, and they are the slowest net on GPRS... and they will never be faster, just because they don't have enough timeslots to provide connections for a lot of gprs cmrs.

You see, every antenna has a fix amount of timeslots available. and you believe all of a sudden it can provide more? the only way of doing that would be to place more antennas and that's one thing they can't do on such a short notice.

[Guest mattscholey]

Well the guy said it was the fastest in Europe. This is Orange UK btw.

Matt

[Guest roke]

I've been there a few months ago, but it wasn't that fast. I think it will just be idle talk from someone who just knows nothing about those things...

One thing is possible though: that Orange is preparing for EDGE, but still...

That will only work on handsets that actually support EDGE, and there are none available yet.

[Guest statscat]

I have to say I've noticed an improvement over the last 6months where I work (city centre) but not so much when I am at home.

I guess if they are improving speeds by network upgrades (base statiosn etc) etc then it might just be round major city centres (I bet bristol has pretty good coverage) ......

[Guest roke]

Well anyway, I don't think they can claim that they are the fastest on gprs, because 2 out of the 3 networks here already function on the maximum speed. Can anyone go faster? I don't think so... :lol:

[Guest clv101]

You see, every antenna has a fix amount of timeslots available. and you believe all of a sudden it can provide more? the only way of doing that would be to place more antennas and that's one thing they can't do on such a short notice.

Capacity or speed has nothing to do with the actual antenna - a single antenna can be connected to the smallest base station in the country with just 8 timeslots or a monster of a site with almost 300 timeslots. The way current sites are set up a few timeslots will be dedicated for GPRS and others can be used but voice traffic has priority - there's nothing to stop an operator allocating more timeslots to GPRS. And you certainly don't need a new antenna - most of the operators use dual band antennas so you don't even need a new antenna for 3G services.

[Guest kingdom master]

I GET 115 WHEN CONNEcted to my laptop, which is cool. and very weird,lol

[Guest clv101]

That's reporting the speed of the connection beween your phone and laptop, not your phone and the base station.

[Guest roke]

Capacity or speed has nothing to do with the actual antenna - a single antenna can be connected to the smallest base station in the country with just 8 timeslots or a monster of a site with almost 300 timeslots. The way current sites are set up a few timeslots will be dedicated for GPRS and others can be used but voice traffic has priority - there's nothing to stop an operator allocating more timeslots to GPRS.

True, but if those timeslots are not available you need an extra antenna to provide more timeslots.

Here in Belgium, we can even get a "network busy" warning for a normal voice call on certain networks. If you have a network overload on one voice call, which already has priority over gprs, do you think the net can provide an amount of timeslots for gprs? That's what I meant :wink:

And you certainly don't need a new antenna - most of the operators use dual band antennas so you don't even need a new antenna for 3G services.

Just be real about one thing: let's say a dual band antenna has 380 timeslots available (200 for 1800Mhz and 180 for 900), do you really think you can provide lots of umts connections? They consume a serious amount of timeslots, you know... :lol:

You could do that if you have only a few cmrs using umts on your net, but if anyone can take a subscription, you would have a constant network overload. :wink:

[Guest mattscholey]

Here in Belgium, we can even get a "network busy" warning for a normal voice call on certain networks.

I got that occasionaly here when I was on Virgin Mobile - it's pretty annoying.

Matt