Mobile Operator Grabs 4G Lead In UK — But Will Anything Work On It?

pbahra writes "Finally, the U.K. is going to get a 4G mobile-Internet service. For a country that was once at the cutting edge of mobile telephony, its lack of high-speed mobile broadband was becoming a severe embarrassment. Everything Everywhere, Britain's largest mobile network operator, has been granted permission by U.K. regulator Ofcom to provide next-generation LTE services as early as Sept. 11. Although Ofcom's ruling is a significant step for the U.K.'s telecoms future, the choice of frequency — 1,800 MHz — means that devices that can take advantage of the much faster data speeds that LTE offers — theoretically up to 100 megabits a second — are limited. Currently the only significant market using the frequency is South Korea. While 1,800 MHz is in use in a small number of European countries, and in Australia, numbers of users are small in comparison to the U.S. This means devices may be harder to get and cost more. So, anyone who thinks their new iPad is going to zip along at 4G speeds is going to be disappointed; the new iPad only supports U.S. LTE frequencies. For the same reason, those hanging on for the new iPhone, expected to be announced on Sept. 12, in the hope that it will be LTE-compliant are unlikely to have good news. Even if there is a new iPhone, and even if it is LTE-enabled, will it operate on Everything Everywhere's frequency?"

Comments

Re:Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

For Japan at least, I think you're referring to 1seg which is a separate lower resolution digital TV broadcast channel. So the OTA TV comes over ISDB, not the cellular network. All it requires is a 1seg tuner built into the hardware. Nothing at all to do with LTE, or indeed mobile telephony for that matter.

Asia and Australia on 1800MHz

[johnjones]

most of Asia (not all) is scheduled to operate on 1800MHz

Apple got fined for not working on this frequency and claiming 4G in australia so they are more than aware !

1800 is great for Everything Everywhere as they get first mover advantage and use the same as other countries

regards

John Jones

Re:Asia and Australia on 1800MHz

[JasterBobaMereel]

What a US centric report of a UK news story

The LTE frequency the UK is using is the same as Australasia, Asia and most of the world ...

The only device that cannot use the Rest of the world LTE is the iPad and they have been fined already for advertising 4G when it cannot work outside the US

Mobile coverage in the UK, 3.5G Coverage, and Broadband coverage is better in the UK than the USA ... (Behind quite a few countries in Europe though)

The LTE frequency conundrum is a big headache

[wesley96]

The article seems to imply that the carrier should have adopted US LTE frequencies.

The problem is, the North American LTE frequencies are quite different from the rest of the world. You have to expect that any NA-bound LTE devices wouldn't work on Europe or any other place.

Here's a basic rundown of the major frequencies in use:

North America: band 2 (1900MHz), band 4 (1700/2100MHz), bands 12/13/17 (700MHz)

Europe/Asia/etc.: band 3 (1800MHz), bands 5/20 (800MHz), band 7 (2.6GHz)

Because of this, even the current LTE chips with multiple frequency support has to choose between North American and European baseband firmware, necessitating separate models for NA and Europe release.

In terms of number of carriers behind each frequencies, 1.8GHz is the second most preferred after 2.6GHz. So I think it was sensible for the UK carrier to get behind it.

Personally, I'm waiting to see if there will be an LTE iPhone with non-US LTE frequency support. If this happens, device provision issue should lessen, as it is a popular phone - there will be a lot of demand and the competitors will release models with similar frequency support to prevent losing market share.

Re:The LTE frequency conundrum is a big headache

[arkhan_jg]

It's mainly that 4G rollout is still in its infancy in the EU. We're all going to be using the same frequency bands, mainly 2.6Ghz and 1.8Ghz - the plan is to eventually retire all the 2G frequencies and re-use them them for 3G, 4G or other services.

The UK using the same bands as the rest of the EU (and most of asia) has been the plan for a long time. In this specific case, the public auctions of spectrum for 4G have not yet taken place - we have to finish turning off analog TV to free some of the spectrum planned, though it's nearly done. But EE (merged tmobile & orange) already have some spectrum 'in hand', in the 1800Mhz band that is due to be allocated to 4G, so they've been allowed to go ahead with an early 4G rollout on the frequencies they already have in the UK.

In any case, the 700MHz band in the US is already in use by freeview (OTA digital TV), 2100Mhz is in use by 3G; I forget the others, but it's already all in use, so there was never any chance a US-bound 4G device would work in the UK, or the rest of the EU. While the old 'quad band' approach may eventually work, currently there's too many bands to support in each area; you'd need something like a 9 band 4G device for true global coverage! Too expensive, too power hungry.

So currently ipads, iphones ship with US 4G frequency support, no matter where you buy them; which was always going to be useless outside the US, and apple got rapped for advertising 4G support prominently on their devices in the UK when they knew that they would never work in the UK or the EU. Same happened in australia, which uses the same bands.

Eventually they'll presumably ship EU/asia 4G devices, same as they did with the 3G support where the same problem exists.

Re:Not a problem

[ozmanjusri]

Exactly.

There's no shortage of 4g capable Android phones and tablets. Samsung devices (Galaxy SII, SIII etc) are all 4g multi-region capable, as are most recent phones from other vendors.

Who cares if Apple can't get their act together with a multi-region chipset?