Radical 5G rules proposed, but UK can address woeful coverage right now

Femtocells / coverage

The village I live in has some 200 properties. I don't know anyone who can make calls reliably (i.e. that don't drop) from indoors. Some (like me) can't even send/receive text messages indoors.

We are only a few miles from a major town, significant areas of which only have 2G data.

My provider (vodafone) offers "Wifi Calling", which allows them to use my internet to charge me for making calls. It does not support text messages (though the standard does) and they don't seem to want to provide that facility.

I used to use a "Sure Signal", but that was useless as phones keep latching on to the weak mast signal (they say this is "by design") and only switch to the much stronger femtocell when the call drops.

I think the providers should be told they can't use any 5G services until they get areas like this to the point where we can use 2G services without having to stand outside!

Perhaps...

Perhaps all of those *cough* industry experts, service providers, municipals, councils and .Gov will have agreed a way forward by the time 9G arrives.

Wow the 5G bandwagon is certainly gathering momentum.

Why all this talk about coverage? 5G is about capacity/bandwidth. not coverage; good luck providing any sort of coverage in the proposed 28GHz or 60GHz bands, for example.

"Availability" <> Geographic Coverage

"it currently lies below far poorer economies like Albania, and countries with far more challenging size and terrain, like Peru"

Much as I'd like to join in the general moaning about 4G availability in the UK, I don't think that the UK is really behind Peru in 4G "availability".

The measurement methodology used for these "statistics" is questionable at best, using self selection (existing 4G users) and no standardised signal testing. Instead they simply measure the number of times a user switches between 4G and 3G networks. This can be massively skewed in a country with only a few 4G users and one small area of 4G coverage; in this case most users won't be swapping between 3G and 4G, they'll either be in 3G all the time (or even no network at all) or in 4G.

Here's a link showing that Lima has good 4G for Movistar (but not the other three networks) and little coverage elsewhere:

https://www.nperf.com/en/map/PE/-/13758.Bitel/signal/?ll=-12.09766521837018&lg=-76.934988861084&zoom=12

UK networks certainly need to improve, but you won't convince them with shoddy statistics like the ones being bandied about in the news.

Ofcom missed an opportunity...

In another recent proposal to the UK government, the British Infrastructure Group – a cross-party group of members of parliament - proposed compulsory roaming for all MNOs in rural areas, a suggestion which the operators have opposed vociferously.

In rejecting the Three takeover of O2, Ofcom missed an opportunity to place such a coverage caveat on Three, as Three/O2 would be providing services across both of the UK's mobile consortium's national infrastructures and thus would have had a commercial requirement to facilitate interworking/roaming across the two infrastructures, plus an Ofcom requirement to ensure that one or both of these networks were extended to provide rural area coverage, which would have benefited the other MNO's and MVNO's and thus delivered real benefit to consumers...

Housing Control in 5G Standard?

Given that large numbers of folk live in partial or complete Faraday cages, how is 5G going to sort that out?

Small cells ? 5G ? Oh please, it is so much simpler than that

Sigh, someone needs to go on a basic physics course.

If you want coverage the answer is (and always will be) a low frequency band + high output power radios. It is that simple and the UK has a perfectly good low frequency band available, Band 20 at 800MHz.

By the way, when people complain that all they can get is 2G or 2G data, then at that spot could easily be covered by 4G/LTE on band 20.

2G/GSM uses band 8 for coverage which is 900 MHz and LTE on Band 20 has the same coverage grid.

So there is no technical nor spectrum shortage for operators to provide LTE coverage on par with GSM, all they have to do is equip their 2G sites with 4G on band 20.

So why don't they ? Economics. It is expensive to build out a site, it is expensive to bring high speed IP links to a site (via fiber or microwave) and often landlords raise the site rental when you add new equipment to the site.

So operators do the absolute minimum to meet regulatory requirements and only add extra sites where it makes economic sense (i.e. where they can cover enough people who are willing to pay extra for a 4G subscription).

If you want coverage, mandate a minimum geographical coverage in % and not a population coverage in %.

Small cells provide capacity, not coverage. Pretty simple physics, a small cell covers a smaller area, a smaller area has fewer people in it and therefore the radio spectrum, which is a shared resource, is shared among fewer people, thus each person gets access to more bandwidth and thus more capacity.

Simple trade off. Large coverage, lower capacity. Small coverage, higher capacity.

However 4G/LTE is much more spectral efficient than 2G for delivering data, so even a "low capacity" but large coverage LTE cell on band 20 can easily deliver 20 to 50 Mbps of data connectivity Vs 0.2 Mbps (200 kbps) on 2G.

And 5G ? 5G will be in high frequency bands and is all about capacity. The lowest 5G frequency band will be 3.5Ghz (3500 MHz) and the other bands will be up around 15, 28 or even 60 GHz.

High frequency bands are fantastic for capacity, but hopeless for coverage. So about the only thing 5G won't be solving, is coverage.

What Coverage?

I live in a 33,000 population town in Essex. We are 12 miles from the M25. Even here Vodafail couldn't provide adequate 2G coverage such that I could make and take calls from my sofa. The 3G coverage for all providers on Britains busiest motorway (largest carpark),...(the M25) is atrocious. So, if the incompetents,... sorry, incumbents cannot provide adequate coverage to their PRIMARY market, what chance is there for rural communities and other low usage areas. What is the answer? Dunno, but the current system has led me to lose interest in the latest/greatest phones as there is no point in having and paying for a super-dooper-whizz-bang phone with 10Gb data per month when you can never get anywhere near that usage due to inadequate coverage.