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BT to Expand 5G to Entire UK by 2028 Using Drones, Satellites, and Portable Cells, Will End 3G Service by 2023
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Not a 'natural' disaster, but during the London bombings in 2005 the mobile phone system was quickly overwhelmed and this impacted on the emergency service's ability to communicate.
OK - but, if there were broadly-speaking a repeat of that sort of event, do you you think that BT would be able to respond in the required timescales with sufficient capacity?
Right now, I know for sure that much of the coastline near me has no, or virtually no, 3G/4G coverage (and there is absolutely no 5G within 75 miles). Year after year, there are emergencies around the coast ranging from walkers getting trapped as the tide comes in upwards. Why, we have just seen a program of installing car park machines which allow payment by phone - many of which are in locations with zero coverage.
If they can't manage much, much better basic coverage, forgive me if I doubt their ability to handle much more difficult and urgent situations.
BT needs broken up, not allowed to become more of a monopoly incumbent.
Openreach and BT need completely severed.
BT should never have been allowed to purchase/merge with EE. Just like how Virgin and O2 should not have been allowed to merge.
They are the AT&T of the UK.
Good to see they are getting rid of the 3G network and refarming valuable spectrum. Would like to see both 2G and 3G shutdown and a full switch to packet based networks.
Openreach and BT need completely severed.
BT should never have been allowed to purchase/merge with EE. Just like how Virgin and O2 should not have been allowed to merge.
They are the AT&T of the UK.
Good to see they are getting rid of the 3G network and refarming valuable spectrum. Would like to see both 2G and 3G shutdown and a full switch to packet based networks.
As a Brit living in the US, the UK has fantastic coverage, even in remote areas of Scotland it was decent. In the US I can drive for hours and hours without a signal and the signal maps provided are worthless. Plus the cost of service is extortionate compared to the UK, it's cheaper for me to use my UK SIM in Canada or Mexico than my US SIM.
They already use drones for 4G. They have a video on it. This was in 2017, and I’m sure the technology will be even much better in 2028.
Not to be naysayer, but if I recall correctly, a regular phone (like an iPhone) does not have the capability to have its signal reach all the way to satellite orbit.
5G (aka "the evolution of networking technology") is more than just about benefiting consumers directly. It also greatly benefits the telcos. A single tower being far more efficient, being able to handle much more load, many more connections, etc. This is good for business, even if the users don't get as much benefit on a per-user basis. They benefit indirectly by the network being more resilient.
Loads of flooding events, both flash (eg from a couple of days ago https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57816647) to large multi day or even multi week riverine flooding (such as this one last year where houses in Worcester were flooded for the best part of two weeks https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-51640880).
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IMO 5G is a joke like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (aka Algorithms written by humans). All these executive big wigs talk all big and important it is. Supposedly it's going to solve all these problems.
The UK is about the size of one of America's 50 states, so they're hardly comparable.
I actually moved to BT, because I couldn't get a signal in my house from EE. (Even though BT bought EE's network!)
Every now and then, one of my friends will ask "I'm sick of <phone provider>, who's the best?" Cue a bunch of posts about every company, either horror stories or singing their praises, in equal measure.
Every now and then, one of my friends will ask "I'm sick of <phone provider>, who's the best?" Cue a bunch of posts about every company, either horror stories or singing their praises, in equal measure.
And you believe that BT will provide 5G in the required timescale?
Remembering that if you flood 100 houses, it might have very little impact availability of existing cellular connectivity. So that scenario might not be nearly as bad as many.
In order to cover all bases, they will have to be able to operate whatever they implement in severe weather, with civil commotion, in the face of fire, crashed aircraft, lost bridges, no land access, etc. A tall order. And expensive to deploy.
Just maybe they are angling to gain emergency service, even military, contracts by having 100% coverage?
The article/press release says ‘Portable cells in a fleet of rapid response vehicles will provide temporary mobile connectivity’ so yes they should be able to deploy them very rapidly-maybe not for the flash flooding events which tend to only last a few hours but certainly for larger riverine floods. While it may not make a difference in term of network capacity many flooding events occur in rural areas where coverage isn’t great (especially inside buildings where control/command and evacuation centres are likely to be set up) so anything to boost network availability will be useful.
I’m not happy about this 3G shutdown. The car I bought just 1 year ago uses 3G for a lot of its smart connectivity functionality such as checking fuel level, opening/closing windows, locking the car, sending navigation data, etc. and what, that’s all just going to stop working in 2023? That’s BS unless VW have forward-planned some sort of affordable upgrade to 4G (which I doubt).
I think there are also a lot of elderly emergency service systems that rely on 3G too.
I feel like they should give 3G to some sort of public entity to manage and make it free to use as a public service.
I think there are also a lot of elderly emergency service systems that rely on 3G too.
I feel like they should give 3G to some sort of public entity to manage and make it free to use as a public service.
If there’s one British company I trust to deliver on what they promise, it’s BT. Their OpenReach division has done a stellar job of managing the telephone/fiber network across the country.
/sarcasm
/sarcasm
Sorry - but I simply cannot see BT having a fleet ot heavy-duty all-terrain vehicles with the ability to run for days/weeks. Yes, some Ford Transits with a bit of 5G gear lashed to the roof, maybe even a telescopic pole.
And, it will be no good for those on non-BT contracts. So it acts as blackmail - join BT or suffer. But if you happen to find a location where BT don't cover, despite their intentions, you could suffer because you switched to BT.
A useful first step towards helping would be for ALL mobile companies to switch on within-country roaming for ALL customers in the affected area. Making use of what capacity is already available. This shouldn't be left to the operators - it should be something those in charge of handling emergencies can simply get switched on in seconds, even automatically.
Having been very much less than impressed by BT over many, many years, I have to accept some of that.
Where I live, a new-build house, we had appalling broadband. - though Plusnet so on BT hardware. So slow we struggled, and I often switched to a hotspot on my phone as it was much faster. Yet neighbours had good fibre. The builder had laid ducting, to a high standard, and there was no obvious reason for the problem.
Eventually, I mapped out every house on the estate and found an utterly random pattern of who could get what. At least one near-neighbour, in a house built after ours, had far better service. I sent the map to some politicians and BT. And, eventually, pressure built-up and BT agreed there were problems. They have installed fibre to the premises, available to every single house in the estate, and we now get a decent speed (upload improvements especially appreciated in these days of cloud storage).
We also now get easy access to BT Wifi in many locations - sometimes very helpful as we have many gaps on Three and EE mobiles networks in this area. Don't mention Vodafone...
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I was in the Cotswolds yesterday. It has been a while since I saw Edge on my data icon but that was about the only time it theoretically found a data signal. Most of the time, nothing. This was in Bourton, which is a popular enough town. Phasing out 3G in two years sounds overambitious to me. It would need introducing in some parts first.
I live in a 2014 “new build” and we have had a similar issue with fiber. The cabinet was full and when you eventually did get a line, it was able to achieve a pathetic 30Mb of advertised 70Mb (70 being actually quite slow for fiber these days).
The property developer and local council wouldn’t allow Virgin to lay their infrastructure either so we only have the choice of the usual scumbags all offering the same poor speeds but paying similar prices to people who get 400Mb. It’s a joke.
Oiurs was even worse than that - often less than 2 Mbps down and 256K bps up.
Virgin doesn't operate anywhere near here.
The wide area WiFi operators who exist simply do not cover areas where they expect BT to be available. They do provide a service in many less well-served areas.
We tried a 4G box - which was much faster, but unreliable. Lots and lots of very short interruptions which weren't too bad for email and cloud upload, but dreadful for interactive things. And very expensive in terms of per megabyte usage.
I live in a 2014 “new build” and we have had a similar issue with fiber. The cabinet was full and when you eventually did get a line, it was able to achieve a pathetic 30Mb of advertised 70Mb (70 being actually quite slow for fiber these days).
The property developer and local council wouldn’t allow Virgin to lay their infrastructure either so we only have the choice of the usual scumbags all offering the same poor speeds but paying similar prices to people who get 400Mb. Hi
Thats shocking. There needs to be money spent upgrading the entire fiber infrastructure here to an acceptable level where everyone has the option of 100Mb or higher. Services require faster and faster speeds for things like 4K, HDR, soon 8K and our connections are just being left behind and cannot use these things fully.
When I stream Amazon video sometimes it becomes completely broken up and looks like 480p stretched - presumably this is Amazon’s app saying “your speed is not fast enough.” And I live alone so I’m the only one using it - god help anyone with a family on these sort of lines!
Streaming iPlayer basic was often not possible. And would pause if you got an email while watching. Radio streaming was not good.
When the Welsh governement contacted BT, they went into overdrive. (No idea about the money or political pressures.)
One of their top teams of installers descended and installed the whole lot in a few days. Really pleasant people - hard working, and from across the whole of the UK.
We don't even mind paying a bit more through BT than we would have from another supplier but, just after the fibre was installed, no-one else would offer ANY contracts at all. They all said fibre to the premises was not available. But it was fibre to the cabinet we couldn't get. I think we now have a choice.