<tin foil hat to avoid mobile phone death rays on>
Orange / T-Mob will have 99.5% 4G coverage by the end of 2015 – they are already at 98% ish. They’ve been busy upgrading their base stations for the last 18 months (with Huawei) to do a couple of things:
– swap out al of the hardware at 27,000 macro cell sites
– enable 3G from all base stations on the current T-Mob / Orange networks – even in rural areas
– Enhance the quality and range of the 2G service
– Put in the hardware that supports 4G at 800, 1800 and 2600 Mhz
– plug in a huge amount of IP backhaul to enhance speed and capacity (the first sign of this will be nationwide HSDPA+ by the end of this year).
The new base stations are software upgradeable, so come September a lot can be switched to 4G at 1800Mhz very quickly – with the rest coming on line over the following 24 months via the existing upgrade project.
4G will actually come in two tranches – the first will be the 1800 flavour that we’ll get in the autumn, with further tranches at 800 and 2600Mhz when the spectrum auction concludes next year – the former will give great coverage in rural areas and will be less prone to cell site breathing (whereby the 3G coverage shrinks as more people use it).
Orange have pretty much sold on part of their 4G spectrum to Three (with whom they have a mast sharing agreement) so Orange will deploy 4G first with Three not far behind – it should also give Three access to 2G at 1800Mhz.
</tin foil hat to avoid mobile phone death rays off>