MaxTB.com

O2 and Voda agreed to share 3G infrastructure in the UK. I think they’re doing it on a site-by-site basis but it could colour in O2′s map quite quickly. Orange will naturally pick up T-Mobile’s masts real soon now. There is probably more overlap than they would like, but they also pick up some additional backhaul that might come in handy.

I pretty much agree with domsparks. O2 coverage sucks.

The OFCOM map is almost a year old, O2 have been spending money like crazy to update their 3G network this year AND have the better frequencies for 3G penetration, so whilst the orange map may look good, wait until you try to use it indoors….

The trouble with comparing coverage maps is that they don’t give you the full picture. There are other factors to consider, such as the capacity behind the coverage and the number of users depending on the coverage. It’s probably best if I explain using an analogy.

Imagine if you’re flipping through a catalogue of cakes. The photo of each cake is taken from directly above, and the lighting is arranged so that the cake casts no shadow. All the photos are scaled so that the cakes appear roughly the same size.

The problem that you get is that a fairly thin fruit flan looks almost identical in size and shape to a banoffee cheesecake or even a triple-layer chocolate sponge cake. But even worse, what if you thought you were getting the chocolate cake, only to find that it was a cheesecake with a bit of cream and dusting on top?

We’ve all experienced similar problems to this with voice, where we’ve had signal but been unable to make a call because the “network is busy”. It doesn’t happen as much these days, as voice networks are fairly mature and the infrastructure is pretty much static. The same thing can still happen with data though as networks are developed.

Going back to our cake analogy, suppose you bake your cake knowing that the people who come along to eat it have fairly small cake forks and only take small bites.

They graze along quite happily, knowing that there’s enough cake for everyone. Then someone brings out a fantastic new solid silver cake fork that lets you eat cake more quickly, but also makes the cake taste so much better.

All of a sudden you start running out of cake far too quickly. Customers get hungry and start to complain. But baking more cake to meet demand takes time- there are ovens to buy and chefs to hire- and there’s no magic cake making tap that you can just turn on.

Knowing that you only have a fixed pot of money with which to make more cake, would you open up more cake outlets elsewhere in the country, or would you focus on increasing the output of your existing cake shops in order to meet growing demand for your cake?

Surprisingly, networks are quite similar to cake. There are two elements to think about when using data: coverage and capacity.

Coverage helps to inform people where they can access the network, while capacity describes how much network there is for people to use. The trouble with the Ofcom maps is that they don’t show this further dimension and as a result, you might end up sharing a very thin flan with a lot of hungry customers.

As a matter of interest: looking at these maps, why is it (apparently) so important to have 3G coverage off the coast of Britain? Is there much call for data services for yachties and/or herring gulls?

That’s basically it. It’s a bit like a torchlight – it tends to get blocked by buildings, hillsides and so on. Out at sea there’s nothing to interrupt the signal, so cellsites based in costal cities such as Brighton tend to have some overspill.

A bit like a torchlight, the signal strength could be dimmed so that it doesn’t seep out across the water, but then it would struggle to penetrate buildings and provide indoor coverage. It’s a difficult balance to reach.