Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
3G reception reaches about 80% of the population, depending on your operator, which is not at all bad, but in geographical terms it's hardly accurate to say the only place it doesn't get to is 'a few islands and valleys'. There are massive swathes of this country that get no 3G signal. The operators have concentrated on the major population centres and the principal transport routes, much the same as they did when 2G was rolled out. It will be years before 3G gets anywhere near the coverage levels that 2G has in the UK.
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The thing is, mobile network operators cannot afford it! Some are already in a finacial mess and if they spend to much they will find themselves facing bankruptcy.
These mobile networks are focusing on the wrong things like homephone and home broadband which also needs a lot of costly upgrade work! They should stick to mobile technology and let BT,Virgin,Cable and Wireless,Verizon and COLT look after ADSL,Cable Broadband,Voip and Telephone services!
Hutchison 3G tried the whole '3G only' policy when it first started but nobody could get a signal indoors and about 2 or 3 bars outdoors and out in the sticks virtually no signal. They then partnered up with O2 to provide a 2G backup, they switched to the Orange network in 2006, by 2013, 3 should be able to provide 100% 3G coverage equivalent to the 2G network.
With regards to Japan, japan is much more advanced than the UK, Analogue mobiles went in the mid 90's whilst Vodafone and Cellnet was still providing Analogue reception up until early 2000.
Mercury One2One now T-Mobile UK was the worlds first Digital mobile network,however, its frequency and reception has problems with indoor usage and they have developed quite slowly over the past 15 years. Orange over took them with there network coverage which is why they have always had a larger customer base.
O2 has the worst 3G coverage in the countries it operates in compared to its rivals, It rolled out 3G much later than its competitors due to the demerger from BT, it then had to sell off its Dutch operations to fund the 3G rollout. The Netherlands has a much smaller user base of mobiles than the UK, Orange sold its customer base to T-Mobile in Holland and has since merged its network to provide better network coverage, that brings up T-Mobile's customer base in holland to about 5 or 6 million.