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The joy of 4G - even if you cannot get it yet
Wednesday 31 October 2012 13:20:04 by Andrew Ferguson

With the Digital Switchover and the switching off of analogue TV many people will be looking forward to period of stability with their TV services. Alas this is not the case, as part of the preperations for the sale of the 800 MHz band and subsequent use to deliver 4G services, there will be parts of the UK where people find that some Freeview channels may vanish.

Those with Freeview running on the Preseli and Blaenplwyf transmitters in West Wales will have had to retune their Freeview box, and some local transmitters were going to be offline for a few hours. For those who are not sure how to retune their Freeview device wander over to digitaluk.co.uk/retuning for more information.

The 800 MHz band is the one most attractive for 4G mobile broadband, because it in theory should penetrate further into buildings than other services, though as we all add thermal insulation to properties to lower our fuel bills we may actually be making our reception of mobile services harder.

[ Topic: Mobile Broadband | 5 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by roughbeast 7 months ago
It would be nice to get full 3G coverage before worrying about 4G. There are many 3G/mobile signal not spots. Why is money not spent plugging the gaps?

Fortunately for me I won't be needing 4G to get good download speeds on the hoof, not around towns anyway. I run a FON hot spot, using a FON Simpl router, so get free access to the millions of BTFon spots in towns and residential streets, not to mention FON worldwide. I got a download speed of 18Mb on my android outside a shop in Coventry the other day, logged onto BtFon. For me 4G can wait.

Posted by michaels_perry 7 months ago
That is not the end of it either! Next year, with the 'sell off' of the 700 MHz portion of the spectrum to extend 4G, even more DTV viewers will have to retune yet again. Anyone receiving their Freeview services on a transmitter using Channels 49 and above will have to retune when those frequencies are re-allocated to 4G usage. (Those on Channels 62 and above will have had, or soon will have, a retune needed as those frequencies are the ones being used for the 4G 'trials'.
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Posted by michaels_perry 7 months ago
The roll out of DTV and using lower frequencies for 4G has been very badly thought through and expecting millions of TV viewers to have to retune so often is causing many people a lot of problems that never existed in analogue TV days. Many older people do not understand why they are asked so often to have a retune and many can't do it so have to pay for an engineer to do it for them. Even some younger people who are not as 'tech savvy' as some imagine are having problems. And all this so a few can use smart phones as mobile pocket computers!
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Posted by michaels_perry 7 months ago
We need stability in the TV and mobile communications markets for several year before any more disruptive changes are even considered.

Posted by HunterW 7 months ago
Here in the Midlands (Sutton Coldfield transmitter) we have had to retune every few weeks: twice in one week! I know of a 92-year old lady who has had to give up watching TV because of the turmoil. I fully agree with michaels_perry that wee need some stability. But what can we do to get it?