Meteor coverage agreement??

richieg

Meteor currently have an agreement with O2 to use their infrastructure for network coverage. I think this is up for renegotiation in March. Since Eircom aquired meteor I have heard O2 are not too keen to resign the agreement. Does anyone know if there is any truth behind this and what this means for meteor customers if it does happen?

JTMan

O2 roaming on Meteor ends on Feb 28th 2007 - not this year. Well that is the date they signed for the agreement to end.

The impact will not be huge because of the big improvement in Meteors coverage in the last year. Hopefully by March 2007 they will have covered the few remaining rural blackspots that O2 covers for them.

chrislad

O2 coverage on Meteor is negliable at best. It's really only the extreme west of Ireland. Check GSMworld.com for coverage maps and compare.

1huge1

when is the 3 agreement up with vodafone? considering the rate they are deploying 3G is will become useless for them anyway
i mean i live close to the middle of no were and got a 3G reception with them

Slice

I don't think there's going to be an end-date on 3's 2G agreement with Vodafone. Basically 3G is never going to provide as extensive a coverage as 2G networks so it's always going to be the case that 3 customers roam on Vodafone in non-3G areas/

Jam Man

3 is already at 72(?)% coverage. Do you really thing they will bother with a roaming agreement once they get into the 90's?

1huge1

have to disagree with you there 'slice'
like jam man said 3 already has 72% 3G in the republic probably gone higher than that by now
they are increasing very fast and basically the whole point of 3 is 3G so soon the agreement with be obsolete

1huge1

1huge1 wrote:

have to disagree with you there 'slice'
like jam man said 3 already has 72% 3G in the republic probably gone higher than that by now
they are increasing very fast and basically the whole point of 3 is 3G so soon the agreement with be obsolete

I wouldn't completely rule out what Slice said, not unless another UMTS band is implemented at a lower frequency. UMTS at 2100MHz will never travel as far as GSM at 900MHz, its the nature of a higher frequency signal. In my area I can get a good GSM signal fairly easily but 3G - forget about it. And both cells are on the same site.

I suppose the question is, will 3 be willing to install more masts than everyone else to achieve higher coverage on 3G?

1huge1

well considering that the whole point of 3 is 3G i suppose they have to do it more than anyone else
and so far they are doing a very good job of it
i mean 72% in a few months is a amazing figure
already killing vodafone and i live in outside a reasonably sized town in limerick (hospital if any of ya know it) and i have a 3G signal
still amazes me

Slice

3 are at 72% population coverage. What's more they are only required to provide 80% population coverage under the terms of their liscence. Even at 80% population coverage anyone who travels around will notice deterioration in reception simply because 80% population coverage still leaves huge parts of the country uncovered. It'll probably make more financial sense to continue with the roaming agreement with Vodafone than it would to build and maintain a 3G network in sparsely populated areas, especially when 3G networks cost more as they require higher density of cells.

1huge1

Slice wrote:

3 are at 72% population coverage. What's more they are only required to provide 80% population coverage under the terms of their liscence. Even at 80% population coverage anyone who travels around will notice deterioration in reception simply because 80% population coverage still leaves huge parts of the country uncovered. It'll probably make more financial sense to continue with the roaming agreement with Vodafone than it would to build and maintain a 3G network in sparsely populated areas, especially when 3G networks cost more as they require higher density of cells.

true but 3G is 3's main attraction
the whole point of 3 is delivering a 3G service
i cant just see them stopping at 80% because they would be lossing out of loads of customers imo (its not like they have that much as it is, does anyone know a figure?)

Jam Man

Doubt they's release their numbers until they get to a milestone amount.

Probably when they launch prepay they'll start making more noise...