Flow LTE

[psilos]

Good to know at least someone's service worked.

Its likely that Digicel had 80% or higher of the customers in the Stadium and the network was overloaded. Always happens at Sporting events all over the world and they have to beef up capacity and even then its usually difficult.

The best scenario in that kind of "arena" is to setup an enterprise grade Wifi network with a fibre backbone. Going to require a lot of access points, auto management and basically cost a lot of money for the investment while the users get it for free. Not going to happen in the near future. We can't even afford to keep on the lights for any extended period.

[Brandysull]

FLOW's LTE was a bit...iffy Saturday night at the stadium. At one point, it downgraded to 3G for about 10 minutes before reacquiring the LTE signal. I was still able to send quite a few vids tho. My date complained that her Digicel service was pretty much non-functional tho, so there's that lol

I expected that result if I'm being honest.... Most Digicel subscribers seems to have 3G only devices and/or are not familiar with Digicel's LTE offerings... You should have done a speedtest so we could have an idea what the traffic was like there lol

[Brandysull]

Good to know at least someone's service worked.

Its likely that Digicel had 80% or higher of the customers in the Stadium and the network was overloaded. Always happens at Sporting events all over the world and they have to beef up capacity and even then its usually difficult.

The best scenario in that kind of "arena" is to setup an enterprise grade Wifi network with a fibre backbone. Going to require a lot of access points, auto management and basically cost a lot of money for the investment while the users get it for free. Not going to happen in the near future. We can't even afford to keep on the lights for any extended period.

I wouldn't put Digicel's traffic share that high... I'd say it was about 65-70% of the total network traffic. In the even that setting up a Stadium-wide WiFi network is to hard (and I doubt Digicel could ever do that as they would likley have to lease capacity from C&W Networks), they could have deployed a Cell-On-Wheels (COW). By doing so, the COW would satiate customer's data needs over the data network & would be far less costly than doing a WiFi network across the Stadium for any things less than a week full of activites with high spectator turnouts... I'm pretty sure Digicel, the larger of the two networks, has a few... FLOW has a couple parked up, ready to be specced out and deployed so.... I'm sure they do.... Bwoy, this cost cutting season for Digicel looking real serious.

[psilos]

I used to see their COWs at events, I wasn't sure so I can't say if one was there or not (TV watcher) lol. A COW gives additional capacity yes but it won't fix all the ills. Just go down to Negril for Independence and you will see that you still have issues and the COWs are bright and bold from both carriers.

[Brandysull]

I used to see their COWs at events, I wasn't sure so I can't say if one was there or not (TV watcher) lol. A COW gives additional capacity yes but it won't fix all the ills. Just go down to Negril for Independence and you will see that you still have issues and the COWs are bright and bold from both carriers.

I think the equipment our operators use for COWs don't offer a tonne of capacity....... But I've seen COWs being used at big events overseas like Global Citizen in Central Park, NYC, the Superbowl, Glastonbury Festival in the UK and they offer insane amounts of capacity. More than just an RBS6000 or BTS3900A in a COW with a couple of antennas, but Ericsson Radio Dots, ODAS and even C-RAN. I think the issue more than anything is the radio access technology most Jamaicans' devices are using... 3G. We can only but squeeze so much out of clunky old 3G, especially goven their current spectrum portfolio... if we were all on LTE, our network experience would have been MILES better. What we can do with LTE is astounding, so many different configurations and technologies we can leverage but alas, we have to make do with poor old 3G as the masses refuse to let go of it.

[khat17]

I'd ask about FDD-LTE but......anyways. Here I was thinking that you got milk from cows.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile...Cell_on_wheels

For the people less Google inclined or less mobile technology inclined. Would be nice to include one link so people can at least read up. Knowledge is power.

On a complete side note - I realize U don't need the material I have @Brandysull. What you need to do is start a thread where you can have Q&A for persons that want to learn about cell technologies and how it works. Start with the bare basics about why it's called a "cell" in the first place.

[Brandysull]

I'd ask about FDD-LTE but......anyways. Here I was thinking that you got milk from cows.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile...Cell_on_wheels

For the people less Google inclined or less mobile technology inclined. Would be nice to include one link so people can at least read up. Knowledge is power.

On a complete side note - I realize U don't need the material I have @Brandysull. What you need to do is start a thread where you can have Q&A for persons that want to learn about cell technologies and how it works. Start with the bare basics about why it's called a "cell" in the first place.

My bad... I'll start hyperlinking articles when I discuss complex topics. I'd been in Boston on business when you were in Kingston so maybe next time? PM Me when next your in town...

I'll take the Q&A suggestion... If you guys want a Q&A thread, let me know

What about FDD-LTE you wanna ask?

[khat17]

You should start that thread. Will help people to understand how the things work and help with knowing how to deal with issues and "customer service" locally.

As for the FDD - any idea when it will reach and which bands?

[Brandysull]

You should start that thread. Will help people to understand how the things work and help with knowing how to deal with issues and "customer service" locally.

As for the FDD - any idea when it will reach and which bands?

I agree, I feel if we are aware of the services we use and the actual service breakdown that occured, we are more likely to be escalated to the relevant authority and the issue dealt with in a timely manner.

As for the FDD-LTE question, The kinds of LTE bands that both FLOW & Digicel use are FDD (Frequency Division Duplex)... The licenses are issued from the SMA in Uplink and Downlink pairs. The amount of bandwidth an LTE carrier component has is dependent of the width of the uplink and downlink channels. So in the case of FLOW for instance, their LTE carrier spans 1735-1755 MHz on the uplink and 2135-2155 MHz on the downlink; the common difference between them being 20 MHz. So FDD-LTE is already here. TDD-LTE on the other hand.... I haven't any knowledge if Digicel is still pursuing TDD-LTE for the upgrade to their 4G WiMax network.

[khat17]

Should ask then. When will it be available everywhere? Because I have a ulefone power which supports FDD, but based on the frequencies it supports I can only get EDGE out here. Kinda sux.