Want to make a mobile operator fall to their knees, cry, and curl up into the fetal position? Ask them how their network is doing after they started offering the iPhone. Thanks to Apple’s water into wine device we’ve seen the damage caused to the likes of AT&T, but what about across the pond? European and Asian networks are generally built better, but London is a special case. The population density, coupled with the amount of operators competing for customers, plus the age of the buildings, meaning they’re built out of solid rock, make coverage an issue. O2 has been having some congestion issues, so they called the experts. No, not Ericsson, not even Huawei, but good old Nokia Siemens Networks.
NSN just issued a press release saying they hooked up O2’s current cell towers with 6 sector antennas versus the previous 3 sectors, so they’ve effectively doubled capacity. Theoretically at least. I’ve covered 6 sector cell towers in the past, and according to Ericsson they said real world capacity increases 86% when transitioning from 3 to 6 sector sites. What the flying fuck is a sector?
Think of an action movie. Know that scene when there are an ungodly amount of enemies and two main characters are standing back to back and shoot the living bejesus out of everything that moves? Think of that as a 2 sector cell tower. No one uses that. So now imagine Charlie’s Angels, three girls, standing back to back, pumping hot lead into Nazis, Zombies, or whatever new bullshit Hollywood spews out this summer. That’s a 3 sector antenna. Now imagine 6 people standing in a circle. Get where I’m going with this analogy?
Moral of the story: If you’re on O2 then you’re going to be getting faster download speeds, better signal, and a more reliable network overall.