06.11.08
Base stations
As a follow on from my post entitled “What’s the Frequency”, I was reminded by a friend that Ofcom have a service for locating base stations. He also pointed out that it’s Voda and O2 that would have got the lion’s share of the 900Mhz frequency.
In my post I complained about signal strength indoors for T-Mobile, while using the same device, Vodafone worked perfectly and wondered how much influence the frequency had in penetrating bricks and mortar.
Here are the all the base station within a couple of miles of my parent’s house in the valleys of Wales:
| Operator | Band (MHz) |
Power (dBW) |
Type | Height (metres) |
Approx distance (metres) |
| T-Mobile | 1800 | 28 | GSM | 18 | 800 |
| O2 | 900 | 16.7 | GSM | 16.7 | 800 |
| T-Mobile | 1800 | 25 | GSM | 42 | 1200 |
| Orange | 2110 | 29.3 | UMTS | 34 | 1200 |
| Orange | 1800 | 29.5 | GSM | 34 | 1200 |
| Vodafone | 900 | 26 | GSM | 15 | 1400 |
| Vodafone | 2100 | 27.46 | UMTS | 10 | 2800 |
| Vodafone | 900 | 24.4 | GSM | 10 | 2800 |
The data confirm (for this location) that there is a general split between Vodafone, O2 with their 900Mhz GSM band and Orange/T-Mobile with their 1800Mhz.
Vodafone’s cells are indeed further away whilst providing a better signal/call quality indoors, but it’s hard to draw any concrete conclusions.