Four firms to pay €854m for spectrum rights

godtabh

Four firms to pay €854m for spectrum rights

Four telecoms companies will pay the State a total of €854.6m to buy new licences to offer next generation mobile services.


Vodafone, Meteor, O2 Ireland and 3G Ireland to pay €854.6m for spectrum licences
The four companies are Vodafone, Eircom's Meteor, Telefonica, which owns O2 Ireland, and Hutchinson 3G Ireland.

I wonder how soon we'll see 4g services launched? Are there any phones on the market that could use 4g?

evolutionqy7

godtabh wrote: »

Four firms to pay €854m for spectrum rights



I wonder how soon we'll see 4g services launched? Are there any phones on the market that could use 4g?

All reports point to H1 of 2013

There are no 4G phones for sale right now. Won't be till actual LTE launches as well

Sponge Bob

I think the first phone was launched in Germany last month, a new variant of the Samsung Galaxy S3.

godtabh

I wonder will the role of 4g follow the same rollout of 3g? 3g was so new there was a "wow" factor cost added to it. Will data costs go up with 3g?

Queerdub

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I think the first phone was launched in Germany last month, a new variant of the Samsung Galaxy S3.

The Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 support LTE, HTC 8X also. Only a software update is required for the function to work, in addition to provision of network of LTE sim etc.

ballooba

How do the individual spectrum slices look for provision of high quality service?

godtabh wrote: »

I wonder will the role of 4g follow the same rollout of 3g? 3g was so new there was a "wow" factor cost added to it. Will data costs go up with 3g?

What's happened in other markets? e.g. UK.

godtabh

Some 4g/LTE phones

For an iphone 5

T=mobile wrote:

41.00 24
months 600
mins 500
texts
Extra
1.5GB
£49.00

1GB
£41.00 A MONTH
24 MONTH PLAN
Unlimited Calls/Texts

Device cost

£109.99

Small differences in what is offered

dloob

The Irish bands are 800Mhz, 900Mhz and 1800Mhz
Three didn't get any 800Mhz, and O2 won't have 1800Mhz support until 2015.
The O2 one is interesting because a lot of the current LTE phones like the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 use 1800Mhz.

Elessar

Wait is this 4G or LTE? I thought 4G was just a marketing name for LTE?

Who will support the iPhone 5/iPad LTE first I wonder?

evolutionqy7

I dont think any of the current phones on sale today in Ireland can support LTE.

I doubt any software update can fix it, do they not need a separate aerial?

Queerdub

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

I dont think any of the current phones on sale today in Ireland can support LTE.

I doubt any software update can fix it, do they not need a separate aerial?

The Lumia 920 for example has five LTE radio frequencies.

http://wmpoweruser.com/are-hsdpa-nokia-lumia-920-handsets-still-lte-ready/

evolutionqy7

Queerdub wrote: »

The Lumia 920 for example has five LTE radio frequencies.

http://wmpoweruser.com/are-hsdpa-nokia-lumia-920-handsets-still-lte-ready/

Well thats for the Lumia 920, when I look at the radio list on an iPhone 5 or any other handset that has LTE in the US I cant see the extra LTE frequencies on board. Unless their hidden in fine print somewhere?

As far as I remember there are LTE and 3G variants. We get the 3G variants over here since there is no real need for an LTE aerial in the phone

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

dloob

Captain Morgan wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

There are three iPhone 5 models, another GPS one which only works with north american LTE bands and the CDMA one which has the same bands as the Euopean/Asian model plus a few extra for Verizon and Sprint.
The worst thing in the US is you can change network and find the LTE won't work on that iphone model.

I guess it's going to take a while to get radios that can support a broad range of the 38 possible LTE frequencies.

Going by gsm arena there are a good few phones right now that support the 1800 band so they should work in Ireland.
Only three phones currently support all three irish bands right now, the two new Lumia's and the Galaxy Note 2

dloob

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

Well thats for the Lumia 920, when I look at the radio list on an iPhone 5 or any other handset that has LTE in the US I cant see the extra LTE frequencies on board. Unless their hidden in fine print somewhere?

As far as I remember there are LTE and 3G variants. We get the 3G variants over here since there is no real need for an LTE aerial in the phone

Some phones here are just the 3G variants all right.
The Galaxy S3 would be a popular one.

dave oc

How does it work that 3 have paid less for their share of the spectrum? The article on silicon republic shows the break down of the auction but I dont really know what this means for each network (I know the bands used for 4g are 800,900 and 1800 just not the 2x10MHz etc). Anyone able to elaborate on the diagram in this link?

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/30238-comreg-reveals-4g-auction-r

Max Power 2010

Three only have spectrum in the 2100 band as they are 3G only,the other operators have 2G networks in the 900 & 1800 bands so they extended their licences in those bands as well as buying additional spectrum in the 800 band.

Three only had to buy additional spectrum for 4G.