Antenna

Antenna – device for radiation and reception of radio waves. A. Assignor converts the energy of electromagnetic oscillations of high frequency, lumped in the output of the vibrational transmitter circuits, the energy emitted by radio waves. Conversion is based on the fact that, as you know, alternating electric current is a source of electromagnetic waves. This property is an alternating electric current was first established H. Hertz in the 80′s. 19. on the basis of works by J. Maxwell (for details, see emission and reception of radio waves). A. Admission performs the reverse function – transform energy propagating radio waves in the energy concentrated in the input circuits of the vibrational receiver. Shapes, sizes and designs AG diverse and depend on the length of the radiated or received waves and the appointment of A. They are used as a piece of wire, combinations of these segments, reflecting the metal mirrors of various configurations of the cavities with metallic walls, which cut the slit, the helices of metal wires, etc. Basic characteristics and parameters of A. Most of handing the radiation intensity depends on the direction or, as they say, AA has a direction of radiation. A. This property is graphically represented radiation pattern, showing the dependence on the direction of the electric field radiated wave (measured on the big and the same distance from AA). A. The direction of the radiation leads to increased tension of the wave field in the direction of maximum radiation, and thus creates an effect equivalent to the effects produced by an increase in power output. To quantify the equivalent gain in radiated power introduced the concept of directivity factor (CPV), which shows how many times you want to increase the radiation power by replacing this real hypothetical omnidirectional A. A. (isotropic radiator) to electromagnetic field remained unchanged. Not all delivered to the AG the power output. Some power is lost in the wires and insulators A., and A. Environment Programme (ground supporting A. constructions, etc.). The ratio of radiated power is supplied to the whole efficiency of A. The product is called the gain in efficiency of gain (CG) AG A. Admission is also characterized by shape pattern, gain, efficiency and corporate governance. Its radiation pattern shows the dependence of the emf created by AA at the receiver input, from the direction of arrival of the wave. It is assumed that the field strength at the receiving end does not depend on the direction of arrival of the wave. CPV shows how many times an input AV input circuit in the receiver output at the arrival wave from the direction of maximum reception of more than average (in all directions), the values of power, on condition that the field does not depend on the arrival direction of the wave. CPV receiving A. characterizes its spatial selectivity, which determines the possibility of allocating the received signal in the noise produced by radio signals, ranging from different directions and caused by different sources (see radio interference). Under the efficiency of the receiving A. mean efficiency of the same AA when it is used for transmission. KU reception AA is defined as the product of gain on efficiency. Study of pattern, gain and CG of any AA identical in transmission mode and in receive mode. This property is reciprocal processes of transmission and reception allows us to confine the characteristics of AA only in the mode of transmission.

“Brand” myth

Tags:gsm brand, signal coverage.

I wish to share my practical idea that the GSM phone brand doesn’t matter for the quality of the signal. Some people can say than having for instance Motorola will give you advantage vs Samsung in dedicated area. THAT’s not TRUE. The main idea is the location of sota (GSM transmitter/receiver antenna). The closer it will be, the better will be signal reception on your mobile.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.

GSM operators in the UK.

Tags:coverage, GSM, mobile operator, signal, UK.

Hello everybody,

Today I will share with you my experience of using UK GSM operator. You can look at the major operator here at this page.

Since I’ve came the UK in 2002 I’ve tried ALL available networks on the market. I couldn’t believe that it possible to have such a poor GSM signal quality in the country which is the member of G8. I’m not talking about the service or the price. I’m talking about signal quality and sound quality. That’s shit. Correct me if I’m wrong but I’ve changed 11 address around UK during 7 years and I know what I’m talking about.

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T-Mobile USA

T-Mobile USA is a cellular telecommunications provider and the United States based subsidiary of T-Mobile International AG, itself based in Bonn, Germany. The US company was previously known as VoiceStream Wireless or Powertel. In May 2001, VoiceStream was acquired by Deutsche Telekom for US$24 billion, and in September 2002 changed the company name nationally to T-Mobile. Headquartered in Factoria, Bellevue, Washington, T-Mobile USA is currently the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the U.S. market with 32.1 million customers as of the end of the second quarter 2008 and annual revenue of US$17.1 billion for their 2006 fiscal year.

T-Mobile USA tends to compete on price and advertises heavily to the youth market. Historically, they have also pioneered new features; they were the first U.S. carrier to launch a ringback tones service nationally (CallerTunes), video messaging and "HiFi Ringers" (ringtones which are clips of an actual song).
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AT&T

AT&T Mobility LLC (usually branded AT&T, and formerly named Cingular Wireless LLC) is the wholly owned wireless subsidiary of AT&T Inc. AT&T Mobility is the largest mobile phone company (in terms of number of subscribers) in the United States, ahead of Verizon Wireless. AT&T Mobility has approximately 72.9 million subscribers as of the third quarter 2008.

Formerly a joint venture between SBC Communications and BellSouth, Cingular Wireless soon acquired the old AT&T Wireless; SBC later acquired the original AT&T and re-branded as "the new AT&T". Cingular became wholly-owned by the new AT&T in December 2006 as a result of AT&T’s acquisition of BellSouth.

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Vodafone UK

Vodafone UK is a mobile telephone company, operating in United Kingdom.

Vodafone (UK) is currently the 2nd largest wireless operator in Britain, in terms of active subscribers, behind O2-UK.

Vodafone Australia

Vodafone Australia is a mobile telephone company, a subsidiary of Vodafone Plc operating in Australia. Vodafone Australia is a non-listed, wholly owned subsidiary of Vodafone Plc (which is based in the UK) focusing solely on providing mobile telephony services.

Phone products include 3G prepaid and postpaid mobile services, on the GSM mobile network. Vodafone live! is Vodafone’s mobile Internet service.

Vodafone’s Globalstar integrated satellite/digital service covers 100 per cent of the Australian continent and up to 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the mainland. The GSM mobile service covers 93 per cent of the population. In a media release issued on the 27th May 2008, Vodafone claimed 4.031 million mobile telephone customers connected across Australia (including 0.341 million connected to MVNOs).

Mobile phone saturation in Australia is at 90.1 per cent, and mobile phones now far outnumber fixed lines. There is strong growth in pre-paid services: as of June 2005, 47% of mobile users were pre-paid, and is estimated to grow to 54.4% by 2008.

Telstra

Telstra or Telstra Corporation (often abbreviated as Telstra Corp), (ASX:TLS, NZX: TLS) is an Australian telecommunications and media company, formerly state-owned. Telstra is the largest provider of both local and long distance telephone services, mobile services, dialup, wireless, DSL and cable internet access in Australia. Telstra is based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Formerly Telecom Australia, the company was renamed in 1993 to Telstra. The company has traded domestically and internationally under the Telstra brand, even after privatisation in 2006.

Telstra Mobile is Australia’s largest mobile telephone service providers, in terms of both subscriptions and coverage. Telstra operates Australia’s largest GSM and 3G UMTS (branded as Next G) mobile telephony networks in Australia, as well as holding a 50% stake in the 3GIS Ltd 2100MHz UMTS network infrastructure, shared with Hutchison (Three). As of September 2007, Telstra had an estimated 9.3M mobile subscribers. Telstra Mobile services are available in post-paid and prepaid payment types, known as Telstra Pre-Paid Plus.

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Optus

SingTel Optus Pty Limited is the second largest telecommunications company in Australia, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications (ASX:SGT). The company primarily trades under the Optus brand, while maintaining several wholly owned subsidiary brands, such as Virgin Mobile Australia and Boost Mobile in the mobile telephony market, Uecomm in the network services market and Alphawest in the ICT services sector.

To provide services, Optus owns and operates its own network infrastructure, as well as using the services of other network service providers, most notably Telstra Wholesale. It provides services both directly to end users and also acts as a wholesaler to other service providers. Through its OptusNet brand, it provides broadband, wireless and dial-up internet services.

The company was originally known as Aussat Pty Limited prior to privatisation, when it became Optus Communications Pty Limited. It was later renamed to Cable & Wireless Optus Pty Limited before changing again to its present name.

Early History

After privatisation, AUSSAT became Optus and its first offering to the general public was to offer long distance calls at cheaper rates than that of its competitor Telstra. The long distance calling rates on offer were initially available by consumers dialing 1 before the area code and phone number. Following this, a ballot process was conducted by then regulator AUSTEL, with customers choosing their default long distance carrier. Customers who made no choice or refused to respond to the mailout campaign automatically remained as a Telstra long distance customer. Customers who remained with Telstra could dial the override code of 1456 before the area code and phone number to manually select Optus as the carrier for that single call. Since 1 July 1997, consumers have the choice of preselecting their preferred long distance carrier or dialling the override code before dialing a telephone number.

The group began by building an interstate fibre optic cable and a series of exchanges between Optus’ interstate network and Telecom’s local network. It also laid fibre optics into major office buildings and industrial areas, and focused on high bandwidth local, (interstate) long distance, and interstate calls for business. In its early years, Optus was only able to offer local and long distance calls to residential customers connected to Telstra’s local phone network. Telstra would carry residential to residential calls to Optus’ exchanges, and then the calls would be switched to Optus’ long distance fibre optic network.

The Hybrid Fibre-Coax Rollout

These practices meant that Optus was (and still is) the single largest customer of their competitor, Telstra. To become competitive Optus would need to lay its own local phone network. To provide a killer application for this, the Australian Federal government sold subscription television licences. Optus, as well as the Seven Network, businessman Kerry Stokes and American cable company Cablevision, formed the Optus Vision consortium. News Corporation and Telstra created the rival Foxtel consortium.

Telstra’s local phone network did not have the capability to deliver Foxtel pay television to consumers in the early 1990s, so Telstra identified a need to create a broadband network to support this new product.

As Telstra and Optus could not agree on terms for a joint broadband cable roll out, they laid two competing cable networks, in addition to Telstra’s existing copper network, at a combined cost estimated at over A$6bn.

Whilst Telstra focused on creating a broadband network specifically for broadcast, Optus designed their cable network to provide telephony services in addition to broadcast television.

The network was initially used to broadcast Cable TV only. In 1996 the Optus "New Deal" promotion of 20 cent local calls was launched by the Australian Prime Minister John Howard making the first local call to an Optus customer supposedly using the new Optus network. This call however was made by the existing Telstra POTS network as the new Optus network was not ready for telephony by the advertised launch date. The real activation of Optus telephony services followed later on in 1996.

Takeovers

24.5% stakeholder Cable and Wireless bought out Bell South’s equal 24.5% shareholding in July 1997. The company returned to profitability in 1998 and changed its name to Cable and Wireless Optus Pty Limited[13]. Government relaxation of foreign ownership restrictions paved the way for the company to be floated[14] – with Cable and Wireless increasing its holding to 52.5%) – and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange on 1998-11-17.

During 2001, SingTel launched a takeover bid for Cable and Wireless Optus which was ultimately successful and the company became known as SingTel Optus Pty Limited.

In the 2003 & 2004 Financial Year, Optus reported a profit of AUD $440 million. This was an improvement of AUD $412 million from the previous year. The company has remained profitable since then.

In August 2004 Optus completed a AUD $227 million takeover of UEComm Ltd.

In July 2005 Optus announced it would acquire Alphawest Ltd. for AUD $25.9 million. The buyout was completed in November 2005 and Alphawest is now an operating division of Optus Business.

On 12 January 2006 Optus acquired the remaining 74.15% of Virgin Mobile Australia for U$22.6 m, giving it 100% ownership

BeeLine GSM

Tags:BeeLine, GSM, mobile operator.

Beeline is the trademark of the second largest cell-phone operator in Russian Federation, VimpelCom. Its headquarters are located in Moscow.

As of January 2005 Beeline has more than 25 million subscribers in 74 of 89 Russian regions, and in Kazakhstan, and less than 1% market share short of becoming the leader of the Russian cellular market in terms of subscriber base. Its revenue, profits and revenue per subscriber (ARPU) figures are slightly lower that competitor’s, Mobile TeleSystems’s, while being gradually improving in latest years.

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MTS – Russia

Tags:GSM, mobile operator, MTS.

Mobile TeleSystems or MTS is the largest mobile operator in Russia and CIS with over 89.64 million subscribers as of April 30, 2008.

Having started in the Moscow license zone in 1994, МТS in 1997 received licenses for further areas, and began expansion, later entering other countries of the CIS. On October 31 2008, Vodafone announced a partnership deal with MTS, whereby Vodafone services will be available to MTS subscribers; some form of co-branding will follow, and both companies have noted the potential for more efficient purchasing.

The MTS wireless network operates using the GSM standard. It currently holds licences to provide mobile services in 87 out of 89 regions in Russia and the entire territories of Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.MTS is currently the biggest mobile operator in Central and Eastern Europe.

Megafon

Tags:GSM, Megafon, mob.

MegaFon (previously known as North-West GSM) is the third largest mobile phone operators in Russia.It works in the GSM and UMTS standard. Its main competitors are Bee Line GSM and Mobile TeleSystems (MTS).

The name "MegaFon" in Russian looks exactly like a word for a megaphone; other connotations are mega- as "big" and fon as "telephone". Its headquarters are located in Moscow.

In 2002 the company changed its name from North-West GSM to MegaFon when it acquired several regional companies, becoming the first GSM company in Russia to cover all its territory.

As of February 2007, MegaFon had 30,657,864 subscribers.

Orange UK

Tags:GSM, mobile operator, Orange.

Orange UK is a mobile network operator and internet service provider in the United Kingdom which is owned by France Télécom. It was founded in 1994 by Hutchison Telecom which was later bought by Mannesmann AG and then in May 2000 sold to its present owners. Orange UK has over 17 million customers through its mobile and broadband services

Orange UK currently offers two mobile phone packages; pay as you go and pay monthly service plans.

As with other prepaid plans, pay as you go mobile users are given the option to top-up their phone via a swipe card, over the internet or via a credit or debit card.

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T-Mobile UK

Tags:GSM, mobile operator, T-Mobile.

T-Mobile UK was previously known as One 2 One, and before that as Mercury One 2 One. One 2 One was in its final days operated as a joint venture between Cable and Wireless and American cable provider Mediaone Group, which had a number of investments in Britain dating back to its days as the US West Media Group. One 2 One was the world’s first GSM 1800 network when it launched in September 1993. T-Mobile offers both pay-as-you-go and pay-monthly contract phones. The pay-monthly contracts are branded as Flext for both 18 month and 12 month contract customers as of February 2007; T-Mobile’s 12 month contracts were previously branded as Relax. The network also offers other contract options for off-peak users and customers who call within network predominantly. T-Mobile launched their 3G UMTS services in the Autumn of 2003.
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O2 UK

Tags:GSM, mobile operator, O2.

Other know names

BT Cellnet – United Kingdom
Cellnet
BT Cellnet

Originally launched in 1985 and trading as Cellnet, Telecom Securicor Cellular Radio Limited was a joint venture between BT Group (then called British Telecommunications) (60%) and Securicor (40%). In 1993 it launched GSM services in UK, and its analogue eTACS service was discontinued in 2000 as part of changes to the regulation of spectrum in the UK. In 1999 Securicor sold its remaining shares to BT and the company was renamed BT Cellnet and became a part of the BT Wireless family of companies within BT.

After demerger from BT in 2001, BT Cellnet became O2 UK, a subsidiary of mmO2 plc.

This subsidiary of Telefónica Europe is currently named Telefónica O2 UK.

Out of all the major UK network operators, Telefónica O2 UK has the largest number of subscribers.