What you are not told about temporary lockdown spectrum

[Jamie McKane]

What you are not told about temporary lockdown spectrum

When President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a three-week national lockdown in South Africa, many people realised that broadband networks would take strain.

Millions of South Africans would work from home, and many of them use mobile networks for Internet access.

 

[Geoff.D]

As I posted in another thread, just a political stunt by a department desperate to jump on the Covid 19 bus for some brownie points. Which have just been wiped out entirely by the shenanigans of the Minister.
Nothing is going to come from this exercise.

 

[TheRoDent]

Absolutely correct. Many radios do have fairly wide band support, but it requires an appropriate antenna and sometimes filters to be installed to handle specific channels as well.

Saying "here's some spectrum for a short while" and then running away doesn't help.

 

[Stokstert]

And then one gets idiots who try to download the internet by downloading 75 TB, IIRC.

 

[Geoff.D]

And then one gets idiots who try to download the internet by downloading 75 TB, IIRC.

Or the reported DL is just rubbish.

 

[Gaz{M}]

Just like that "Emergency Power Generation" stunt from the Energy minister. 6 - 12 months just for paperwork. By then we will all be loadshed to the 14th century.

 

[Joseph matane]

So we just forget about network improvement?

 

[Geoff.D]

More spectrum is not going to make a short term difference ---- just a pipe dream. If the network operators have the equipment already ready to go, maybe

 

[TheRoDent]

And then one gets idiots who try to download the internet by downloading 75 TB, IIRC.

Fortunately not on a mobile operator's network. That'd mess things up royally

 

[Ockie]

The operators said the networks are 5G ready and they just need the spectrum allocated though did they not? So surely the radios and transmitters that are in place are capable making this work?

 

[TheRoDent]

The operators said the networks are 5G ready and they just need the spectrum allocated though did they not? So surely the radios and transmitters that are in place are capable making this work?

Radios have wide band and multi protocol support yes. But then antennas and filters for specific frequencies need to be installed. You don't just install them on a thumbsuck frequency.

A 3.6Ghz MIMO antenna is a beast.

 

[Ockie]

Radios have wide band and multi protocol support yes. But then antennas and filters for specific frequencies need to be installed. You don't just install them on a thumbsuck frequency.

A 3.6Ghz MIMO antenna is a beast.

What about 700 and 800Mhz? Surely the already installed equipment would support that and can just be software configured. That would also give much better coverage pretty much instantly. Then the higher frequencies used to add more capacity if and where needed.

 

[Geoff.D]

What about 700 and 800Mhz? Surely the already installed equipment would support that and can just be software configured. That would also give much better coverage pretty much instantly. Then the higher frequencies used to add more capacity if and where needed.

Depends. No one can generalise. The radio transmitter and receiver might be wideband tunable and "5G ready" (whatever this catch-all phrase is supposed to mean), it is not the end of the story, It depends entirely on the antenna system, their design and any filtering that might have been introduced in between the radios and the antennas.

700 and 800 MHz are fairly close together anyway, but 700/800 is far removed from 1800/1900 MHz, which are all one hell of a long way away from 2.4/3.5/5 GHz.

Only the operators and their technical personnel will be able to say whether the networks are able to easily move to "5G".

 

[Ockie]

Depends. No one can generalise. The radio transmitter and receiver might be wideband tunable and "5G ready" (whatever this catch-all phrase is supposed to mean), it is not the end of the story, It depends entirely on the antenna system, their design and any filtering that might have been introduced in between the radios and the antennas.

700 and 800 MHz are fairly close together anyway, but 700/800 is far removed from 1800/1900 MHz, which are all one hell of a long way away from 2.4/3.5/5 GHz.

Only the operators and their technical personnel will be able to say whether the networks are able to easily move to "5G".

Dont even really care about 5G. No one in this country has a phone that is 5G capable anyway, unless imported. Talking about 4G. Use the bands up until 2.3 and 2.6 to expand and cover us with 4G as much as possible, including 700 and 800mhz.

 

[Geoff.D]

Exactly! This hype about a pretty fictitious "naming" of generations of mobile technologies is just BS anyway.
There are no "frequencies" suitable for any generation of mobile technology. It exists in the minds of greedy manufacturers and regulators trying to extract taxes out of all of us.

It is about capacity and number of simultaneous communications sessions that are possible. When dnawidth gets used up, you can't increase capacity or the numbers of customers, end of story.

 

[TheRoDent]

Exactly! This hype about a pretty fictitious "naming" of generations of mobile technologies is just BS anyway.
There are no "frequencies" suitable for any generation of mobile technology. It exists in the minds of greedy manufacturers and regulators trying to extract taxes out of all of us.

It is about capacity and number of simultaneous communications sessions that are possible. When dnawidth gets used up, you can't increase capacity or the numbers of customers, end of story.

Yeah, 4G/5G can "generally" run in any of these bands. There's very little difference between 4G and 5G, they're both just LTE basically.

 

[TheRoDent]

Dont even really care about 5G. No one in this country has a phone that is 5G capable anyway, unless imported. Talking about 4G. Use the bands up until 2.3 and 2.6 to expand and cover us with 4G as much as possible, including 700 and 800mhz.

Whether 4G or 5G, the antennas, filters and radio units still remain a problem.

These are the typical radios deployed by operators:
https://e.huawei.com/za/products/wireless/elte-trunking/network-element/dbs3900 (forget the fact that this is their "enterpriseLTE" description, the stuff is the same as the operator deployed units.

The BBU's (indoor unit) have wide band support, but each radio unit (RRU) (outdoor unit), has varying characteristics and frequency support, and is paired with a specific antenna as well.

Just have a look at the following table of RRU models as an example...



There are also other units that have multiband support and are less specific, but they still target specific ranges, and have to have appropriate antennas, splitters and filters installed for each band.

 

[cavedog]

Radios have wide band and multi protocol support yes. But then antennas and filters for specific frequencies need to be installed. You don't just install them on a thumbsuck frequency.

A 3.6Ghz MIMO antenna is a beast.

Of which Rain has plenty of in Gauteng.

All 5G towers are equip with these new antennas. If anyone Telkom and Rain stands to benefit the most with the temp spectrum but will they bite that is the real question. Rain will load more spectrum on their 5G and then run another 20MHz block on 2600MHz TDD giving them a similar setup to what Telkom is currently running on 2300MHz.

The hardware support is already there on all the 5G towers. Unfortunately not everyone will benefit especially those in towns. Vodacom has rolled out those Rain towers and share antennas with Rain. This means a very poor 2x2 mimo 1800MHz which ironically Vodacom customers also use to roam on so yeah Vodacom everyone sees what you are doing.

I hope Rain and Telkom can get some spectrum it's bands they already use and have support for. Telkom can have 3 carrier aggregation 2300MHz (20MHz blocks) x 3. That will easily see 230Mbps+ just on that setup.

 

[TheRoDent]

Of which Rain has plenty of in Gauteng.

All 5G towers are equip with these new antennas. If anyone Telkom and Rain stands to benefit the most with the temp spectrum but will they bite that is the real question. Rain will load more spectrum on their 5G and then run another 20MHz block on 2600MHz TDD giving them a similar setup to what Telkom is currently running on 2300MHz.

The hardware support is already there on all the 5G towers. Unfortunately not everyone will benefit especially those in towns. Vodacom has rolled out those Rain towers and share antennas with Rain. This means a very poor 2x2 mimo 1800MHz which ironically Vodacom customers also use to roam on so yeah Vodacom everyone sees what you are doing.

I hope Rain and Telkom can get some spectrum it's bands they already use and have support for. Telkom can have 3 carrier aggregation 2300MHz (20MHz blocks) x 3. That will easily see 230Mbps+ just on that setup.

Yep, operators already in 2.3 and 2.6 TDD would be more geared to use that spectrum, as the correct RRU's are already in place.

However, a filter would still need to be replaced potentially.

 

[Yskasmetnstoof]

And Rain has basically acknowledged their bad service and seems to be giving up. Why do I say this? They don't accept emails to support anymore. You now have to go to a support page that basically is a collection of FAQ's relating to mainly deliveries.
Meanwhile the internet connection on 5G LTE is as flaky as a meth junky. Oscillating between good speed and no speed totally randomly.