back to article EE unveils sky domination plans with drones, balloons

EE has revealed plans to launch balloon and drone "air masts" to connect remote parts of the UK in the wake of disasters such as major flooding, in its yet-to-be-patented technology unveiled today. For those who can't bear to enjoy the solitude of nature without being able to instantly post to Facebook, chief exec of EE Marc …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The vehicles will be equipped with a 3.35m (11 foot) mast and will provide bandwidth of 800MHZ and 1800MHZ within three hours to areas which do not have a coverage overlap with other 4G sites."

    Better park that vehicle on a big hill then to ensure decent coverage. Cos an 11 foot mast is going to do bugger all if parked in the wrong area.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Looking at an image, more like 11m not 11ft.

      http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3005031/ee-to-deliver-4g-via-drones-heli-kites-and-vans-for-rapid-response-vehicles

      1. Neil 44

        How long before they enhance the incident...?

        ... by driving off with the mast up and take out power/telecom/.... lines?

        (very few of this sort of vehicle has any sort of interlock to stop them driving off :) )

        Incidentally, how will they manage backhaul in these "very remote" areas? Can they have a chain of the trucks providing links back to the main network? (I'm thinking of remote Scottish areas...)

        BTW can we have one permanently parked round here to provide us with 4G?

        1. Commswonk

          Re: How long before they enhance the incident...?

          ... by driving off with the mast up and take out power/telecom/.... lines?

          (very few of this sort of vehicle has any sort of interlock to stop them driving off :) )

          Um; not sure that's true. I know that the vehicles used by a well - known broadcaster at least had alarms to tell the driver that the mast wasn't fully nested.

          The (much) greater risk is that a mast is deployed during the dark straight into an overhead power line resulting in fatalities. Now that has happened, but no amount of "interlocking" can do anything about it; making sure the operators are properly trained is the only way of managing the risk. Easy with technical personnel, less so with non - technical. In the case of anyone deploying a "casual" cell for an emergency one would expect that the personnel involved would be "technical".

          Hope springs eternal in the human breast...

        2. Mage Silver badge

          Re: How long before they enhance the incident...?

          Satellite backhaul. Expensive, low capacity and high latency. But quite useful for emergencies. Though hooking up a two way sat link to an emergency mobile, 45 ft (telescopic plus tilt) mobile phone base is over 15 year old tech I think.

          Nothing new here.

          1. Commswonk

            Re: How long before they enhance the incident...?

            Satellite backhaul. Expensive, low capacity and high latency.

            Not sure about that. TETRA certainly would not work that way; the delay would be far, far too long for the system to work; there is finite maximum delay ("latency") beyond which the synchronisation fails (for want of a better way of putting it) and 4G and later may be similarly affected.

        3. Sgt_Oddball

          Re: How long before they enhance the incident...?

          They use satellite up links for the backhaul.

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: How long before they enhance the incident...?

          Think the clue is in the photo from the link posted above.....

          http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3005031/ee-to-deliver-4g-via-drones-heli-kites-and-vans-for-rapid-response-vehicles

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        re: Inquirer article

        I like the statement "The heli-kite is perhaps the most impressive of the three pieces of kit that EE will be using."; obviously, not that impressive as they didn't include a photo of it in the article, nor state how long it could actually remain hovering (15 minutes?).

        I also like the idea that any of the mobile masts they demonstrated had any real ability to operate in an extensively flooded area of the UK. If the 4x4 was actually amphibious I might believe it could be used.

      3. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Commswonk

      Better park that vehicle on a big hill then to ensure decent coverage.

      Can be a bit risky; "over - good" coverage can result in screwing up frequency re - use calculations and degrading coverage over a wider area. Hence existing cellular systems (inc TETRA) don't necessarily try to occupy what appear to be highly advantageous sites.

      Requires careful planning and a sprinkling of good luck.

    3. Cynic_999

      The article states that the estimated coverage is within 10km of the vehicle. A height of 11 meters equates to a distance to the horizon of 11km, so on fairly flat territory and assuming the other station is at ground level, it seems about right.

    4. Alan Edwards

      Power?

      Do those pickups have generators, or so they need a mains power connection?

      I was thinking these would be 7.5 ton size trucks with diesel generators in the back. It's not going to run for long off a L200's battery.

      1. Sgt_Oddball

        Re: Power?

        It's got a diesel on board and can use the l200s engine as a backup if required

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I've seen it deployed and think the correspondent means 11m, as 11 feet isn't going to do much!!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "We are obsessed about having customers connected all the time"

    If that's the case, why's their coverage so shit in areas where they could do something about it?

    Then again, I supposed "obsession" doesn't imply doing anything about the matter.

  3. wyatt

    1st, they'll be putting better coverage in some areas that they had before, then taking it away again. That'll go down well.

    2nd (as mentioned by Neil 44), how're they planning to access the network from these vehicles? It'll take one heck of a lot of new infrastructure to provide this unless they're going to have a access vehicle for the other end of the link at a network point.

    Maybe they should buy the old British Military Ptarmigan SCRA(T) SCRA(C)s? They should be going cheap with loads of operators made redundant over the last few years..

    1. ZiggyZiggy

      Space

      A satellite on the vehicle in the pics at http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3005031/ee-to-deliver-4g-via-drones-heli-kites-and-vans-for-rapid-response-vehicles so I would assume (dangerous I know!) that will provide the backhaul.

    2. Commswonk

      Just in case anyone doen't know what the above acronyms mean:

      SCRA = Single Channel Radio Access

      (T) - Terminal

      (C) = Central

      Still wouldn't necessarily solve the connection to the "network" though.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Isn't three hours rather a long time for emergency services to be without comms? What does TETRA provide in this regard?

    1. John 104

      @AC

      I think you misunderstand. Emergency services have their own coms. The frequencies described here are just for cellular access.

      1. JimboSmith Silver badge

        Nope I think you misunderstand the emergency services are moving to 4G from Tetra/Airwave. See this from the article

        The 4G ESN network is due to go live at the end of 2019, and will replace the £2.9bn Airwave contract which is due to be switched off by 2020. However, MPs have warned that the life-critical network needs more testing and is likely to face delays.

        The ESN mentioned is the Emergency Services Network.

    2. Cynic_999

      I would hope that emergency services have at least one standby satellite phone or HF radio per division for use when everything else is down. I would also hope that there is either a way for emergency personnel on the ground to use peer-to-peer comms on their mobile radios, or an emergency base station that would allow person-to-person communications, though maybe I'm being too optimistic and they would be better off with CB radios in such a situation.

      1. Commswonk

        i.e. Direct Mode Operation in TETRA - speak, with the enhancement of Direct Mode Repeat if the right hardware is available, possibly in a well sited car. Not possible via standard TETRA cell site.

        It all depends how well the ESN has been specified, but on present showing it ain't going to end well for the down - with - TETRA enthusiasts.

        Forget HF.

  5. Commswonk

    I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again...

    EE has revealed plans to launch balloon and drone "air masts" to connect remote parts of the UK in the wake of disasters such as major flooding, in its yet-to-be-patented technology unveiled today.

    I wonder if that should have read: "EE has revealed plans to launch balloon and drone "air masts" to connect remote parts of the UK in the wake of disasters such as major flooding, in its yet-to-be-patented made to work technology unveiled today."

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nigel Brown, lead for resilient ICT strategies at the Cabinet Office, described the technology as "hugely impressive". He said: "[4G technology] will do to the emergency services what it has done to the rest of society, which has been awesom."

    Awesome? What planet is this idiot on?

    It's the emergency services, we don't want "Awesome", "Amazing", "Superfast" or any other bullshit term. We just want something that works and works everywhere all the time. Trying to compare it to the extra fast viewing of cat videos on facebook that the majority of 4G user love just makes you look as stupid as them.

    1. Commswonk

      Awesome? What planet is this idiot on?

      Unfortunately the same one as the rest of us.

      I suspect this is an example of the military concept of "Bullshit baffles brains".

    2. Cuddles

      ""[4G technology] will do to the emergency services what it has done to the rest of society, which has been awesome" It's the emergency services, we don't want "Awesome", "Amazing", "Superfast" or any other bullshit term. We just want something that works and works everywhere all the time. Trying to compare it to the extra fast viewing of cat videos on facebook that the majority of 4G user love just makes you look as stupid as them."

      I'm more confused about why he thinks 4G has had any noticeable effect on society at all. Broadband and 3G certainly made huge changes to how people interact. All 4G did was make it slightly faster for some people, in some locations, in some situations. It's like crediting blu-ray with the changes to video viewing habits while completely ignoring the existence of VHS and DVDs.

  7. John 104

    Patent?

    yet-to-be-patented technology unveiled today.

    What patent? Hanging a radio off of a balloon? Surely prior art.

  8. Mage Silver badge

    Yet-to-be-patented technology

    There should be NOTHING patentable about this.

    The ideas and even deployment are over 100 years old.

    You can buy gear off the shelf.

    Balloons have been used for radio over 100 years and useless in bad weather, tethered or not.

    Kites are worse! Also been used since radio was invented.

    Sat links and mobile towers with any comms type desired are off the shelf.

    This is PR nonsense.

    1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

      Re: Yet-to-be-patented technology

      "Kites are worse! Also been used since radio was invented."

      I have a WW2 box kite used by downed airmen to elevate a rescue beacon antenna. Flies really well.

      1. Cuddles

        Re: Yet-to-be-patented technology

        "I have a WW2 box kite used by downed airmen to elevate a rescue beacon antenna. Flies really well."

        The trouble is that there's a difference between useful as a last resort for a short time, and useful as a semi-permanent installation. A rescue beacon is not likely to be used for more than a few hours at most, while kit used during flooding and to replace damaged infrastructure might need to operate continuously for weeks. And of course, emergency responses to things like flooding and storm damage tend to be needed in exactly the sort of conditions that make it difficult to keep things airborne (or alternatively easy to keep them rather more airborne than intended).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yet-to-be-patented technology

      "This is PR nonsense"

      Exactly. They may have the equipment ready to deploy, but until then it's still in development and not fully tested. Let's see what happens after a disaster and how awesome their coverage was, and how many emergency cat videos were successfully transmitted out of harms way, then we'll know this was not PR nonsense. If they have systems that can outfox Mother Nature, deploy and conquer, THEN announce your victory!

      Back in the olden days™ of "hardwired" telephones (here in the US) the emergency services that they could provide revolved around how many hours the batteries can keep the central office running, and the 20% trunking problem; there was only enough "telephone bandwidth" available for 20% of subscribers at any one time. Anything above that number of "Ings" trying to initial calls is met with something other than a dial-tone. That's why they tell people "not to call unless you really have an emergency," because calling your grandma to check on her cat ties up the available bandwidth. Anyway, as long as the telephone lines between you, the CO, and the emergency services people were in service, you were a phone call away from help.

      Nowadays, most people are on the cell network and do not have a land line. There should be much more available voice bandwidth, and you'll soon be able to text your emergency services, or Tweet them, anything is possible. I should be able to send a "help me!" GIF to my local police and have them answer that. So, it makes sense to prop up a suitable, modern version of begin able to call for help during an emergency. How well it works is anyone's guess, but I suspect they will give it their all, and hopefully their choice of temporary infrastructure will serve its purpose. Fail or succeed, it will make a great news item. :)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Patent?

    Good luck EE with patenting that: Verizon have already been trialling using drones as temporary base stations. http://fortune.com/2016/10/06/verizon-drones-emergency/

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