Telstra Next G vs CDMA

As for coverage...? Don't know, 'cause the Telstra mobile coverage server has been down for about a week now!

Mike, that is hardly right, I have seen it on the two occasions I looked.

Mike & all,

Just checked the site - It worked for me when checking State by State.

Site Link

Tim - Stratford

5.40am Tues.

Must be an awful lot of people up early today wanting to check their mobile coverage! "Server busy" says Telstra.

I wonder if you guys who are getting through have Bigpond acounts?

Mike Harding

I was trying to gete through the other day when I was posting to EO in another browser Mike and on the phone at the same time. It seemed like there was a problem with access one way, not the other. I was trying to find out about possible access for data as I am beyond the ADSL limit from an exchange.

Stop trying to give excuses as to where you are wrong for a change. As I said above I got through and had maps twice, knowing I have seen the whole western side of Victoria as well as the state in onother one, I am not going to worry about getting there again for you.

Get out the wrong side of the bed John?

If you read other posts in this thread you'll note I'm not the only one who has had issues accessing the server.

Mike Harding

Nah Mike, you are the one making crapo claims about the server being offline for a week. Think you need the reality check about trying to be correct. By the way, I don't own Telstra shares.

I haven't been contacted either both SWMBO and I have CDMA phones that are in the 1st year of a new contract.
Maybe thats the reason, some of us are out of the original contract time therefore Telstra as usual would try and push their new produce.
Kev

Hi Peter,
Next G Coverage????
I have been trying to check Next G coverage from the Telstra site several times a day for several days and during the evening - site busy. I think that may be a load of cod's wallop. How can the site be busy 24 hours a day? I'm starting to think the original coverage they showed may have been grossly exaggerated and Telstra have shut down the site before too many people cottoned on. I may be cynical but I have learnt not to trust one word of any of their promotional promises.

Cheers.....Doodle

Mate I worked for the big T for nearly 30 years, don't have to tell me a thing.

I've also been trying their coverage site for several days without success.
Something fishy going on here methinks.
T-Rib

I believe the *have* to offer the same terms and contract conversions on the new network.

The Telstra 3G and NEXT G are NOT the same network or coverage....
So, unless you had a NEXTG phone, you cannot compare.
Cheers

That does sound amazing 200+km from 1 base tower, this is a not just a bit exaggerated but way out there. It will give you the same coverage as CDMA as the Next G Network is a new CDMA known as WCDMA (just google it). But what it will give you later on after the future rollouts is great bandwidth and the features for the bush and everyone are going to be amazing.

The cell towers would have to be bloody high to get 200km at SHF frequencies. It's the same problem with any of the VHF+ frequencies; they are "line of sight" only and at 200km the curvature of the earth would be an issue.

Mike Harding

Hi Mike,

I just did some checking and found that the earch curves at 12cm per kiliometer and i did mean 100km radius (200km range) so if you get a 12 meter tower it will be okay to cover the distance. Ericsson are doing the upgrades on the towers and in phases III the epectation is this range.

Cheers

Very interesting. I hadn't done the maths so was just guessing but I thought it would need to be much higher. Thanks for the info. Maybe we will see 200km then? Would be terrific - would give me e-mail access across most of the High Country I expect :)

Mike Harding

Hi,
I used to design radio communications links 20 or so years ago. 50 km was about all you could get due to earth bulge unless you have a very high site.

The calculations are fairly complex and take into account what is known as the Fresnel zone. This is where an indirect signal bounces off the ground and interferes with direct signal, causing cancellation. For Radio signals, this has an effect of magnifying the actual curvature causing the shorter distances. (Bit like the Mirage effect on hot roads)

While my experience was for point to point microwave links, the same principles apply for Mobile Communications.

The 200 km will be the theoretical maximum value based on other limiting factors, such as "path loss" (How much signal is left after it has travelled the distance), "fade margin" (allowance for interference and environmental factor affecting propagation eg. rain), "timing Code response" (Base station sends the data, the mobile can only respond within a given period of time) etc.

Having experience with Telstra, the 200 km will be some figure that marketing latches onto so everybody will think that they are clever.

Based on what I recall there will be only half a dozen or so sites nationally where reliable mobile radio comms over 50 km will be possible.

Cheers,
Mal

Mal
Won't the power output of the handset also limit the effective range of the tower?
Meaning you may be able to receive a signal from the tower because it is higher and outputting more watts but you may not be able to get your signal back to the tower because your lower and less powerful?

John,
In point to point work, we used reciprocracy to design the system, ie, same antenna (same gain), same transmit power, same receiver (same sensitivity) etc at both ends.

In a mobile environment, as you correctly pointed out, things are not equal.

However, in a well designed RF system the aim was always to provide a reciprocal experience.

ie. The total link budget (signal loss) from the output of the Base Transmitter to the input of the Mobile Receiver is the same or close to the total link budget in the reverse direction.

The Transmission loss (propagation in air) component is fixed, however (within limits), you can vary or take into account,
a) receiver sensitivity,
b) antenna gain and or use different antennas for transmit and receive (different gains),
c) antenna downtilt (basestation - main lobes of coverage pointed in particular directions),
d) transmitter power (handset and basestation).

What you have to be careful of confusing though, is that a base station will transmit more power that a mobile, for the simple reason that the base station is carrying multiple physical or logical channels (depending on technology), to not just one handset but to many handsets with active calls. So you have a cummulative effect in power transmitted.

I know some of the Telstra people who design the mobile networks and they are technically very astute and a pretty good bunch of guys as well.

I know that in past systems their designs are reciprocal, but with RF you do get some variation in propagation paths based on things like near end effects (local reflections) etc, that often make it seem like you have coverage on your mobile, but can't make a call.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,
Mal

Thanks Mal your explanation is well done.

The point I was trying to make is that you may have a tower able to transmit 100 km's but its as good as useless because our Handsets (Radios) won't do the same.

Hence the need to continue to fill the gaps with more towers to be able to maintain the "The total link budget" both ways.

Cheers

Apparently line of sight isn't as much an issue as been stated above as it is only the deepest valleys here that need an external antenna. That had surprised me, but if I go ahead I would put on the external to ensure the speed if/when I go that way for broadband.

Coverage is already in this area Bruce for streaming video if you wanted it. Be better than CDMA for signal and also useability.

I just want a phone thats a phone! I got a camera, a MP3 player, a DvD player in the car!

;)~

NextG uses exactly the same frequencies as CDMA so ANY antenna that works for CDMA will work as well for NextG.

The RFI CD1795 gives 6dB gain from 825-960 MHz. It is a broomstick-style antenna about a metre high. It will work on CDMA, GSM and NextG.

It will NOT give 3G coverage, but will allow 3G phone fallback to GSM.
.

'assure' & 'should' shouldn't be in the same sentence!

They either assure you that it will get the same coverage, or say that you should, which in effect means, that you may not.

"It is the way they are going ,, but at the moment the digital network is far superior"
and CDMA is 10 times better than Digital, except in the big smoke.

>no coverage maps (even electronically)

Yes.... I've had the same problem for a week or so...?

The postcode only bit gets the alarm bells ringing too. All that glitters is not gold it would appear.

Pretty sus isn't it.........hhhhhhmmmmmmmmm:-(

Might be time for Telstra to do a bit of Sol searching???