February 19, 2021
Legacy 4G Network Infrastructure Sharing On The Increase
Vodafone customers in rural communities across the UK are set to receive stronger 4G coverage following a co-operation agreement with O2 and Three in the next stage of the £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) initiative.
The latest phase will see Vodafone working alongside mobile network operators O2 and Three to build 222 new mast sites across the UK that will boost 4G coverage in rural areas where some, but not all, network operators currently offer coverage.
The roll-out will deliver approximately 124 new sites in Scotland, 33 in Wales, 11 in Northern Ireland, and 54 in England. Exact locations will be announced later in 2021. Construction of all 222 masts is scheduled to be completed by 2024.
The new investment will extend the proportion of UK landmass where all mobile networks provide 4G services from 64% to 84%.
There can be no doubt that providing greater coverage in Rural areas is a societal good.
It also helps that Elon Musk’s Starlink initiative is a forcing function for any Telco in their rural strategy thinking.
The key take away here is that Telecom Operators are partnering on delivering network infrastructure and this part of a broader trend.
One of the 1st joint Telco Network Infrastructure sharing initiatives was between Bell and Telus in Canada.
Bell took responsibility for the Eastern Network and Telus for the Western network to share the 4G CAPEX.
We already commented in 2020 that this was going to be common place for 5G in the links below :
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6735563189850902528/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6654006506821869568/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6652901296691036160/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6651824968722108416/
The cold hard reality is that if pricing irrationality continues you are going to see very slow rollout of 5G and probably major Telco insolvency.
Over the last 2 years you have seen many of the large Telco groups (multi-country) start to sell off their operations on a country by country or even region by region basis to pay down debt. The issue is that the sales price may not even pay for the acquisition costs that were done 10 to 15 to 25 years ago; let alone how much CAPEX they have sunk into their network.
mobilityView is predicting that the world is going to see wireline (high speed internet) price increases 3x rate of underling inflation starting in late Q3 of 2020; and in late Q4 you’ll see wireless price increases as well on a global aggregate basis.
Legacy 4G Network Infrastructure Sharing On The Increase
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