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What bands frequencies belong to, and AWS, what types Telus...

makkahn28
Mayor / Maire

I just need to ask this, as I believe this is somewhat academic as well as critical:

 

Since there is bands I-IV or is it V or VI, what's major difference between them, and its relevance, as well as which one's Telus/Koodo/PM uses at the moment, is it similar to any of the BIG 2 remaining?

 

Also, AWS, what is it specifically, AWS I, II, III, IV, V, VI, which one's does Telus/Koodo/PM use and the future of this? 

Is it a variation of the WCDMA UMTS, or totally separate?

 

If separate, if Telus were to fully adopt this, will our current devices still function on the network?

 

Also, just for educational, for AWS 1755-1780 and 2155-2180, kinda strange that these frequencies don't work on Telus's network, 1700/2100, head-scratching.

Just for educational and perhaps with some humor on the side

13 REPLIES 13

Martin
Legend
Legend
Hi @DK,

I've hardened myself to your being a Rogers' customer! It's your life, bud.

BTW, I'm still healing from the scrapes and bruises sustained from the last time that you threw me under the bus. How many times have you done that to date? I'm starting to lose count. 😞

Note to 778: The above is an in-joke between DK and me. There is no need to mediate. Concentrate on more important matters, such as staying dry in Raincouver. OK? 🙂

DK
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

What LTE freq is used for VoLTE as I am presently using it on my i6s with my traitor carrier! (Rogers)

 

lol for @Martin

ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

Check this thread over at HF. I'm not sure how accurate the information is but it seems to me like LTE operates on more than just band 4.

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1878804-Telus-bands

 

"Telus uses Band 2 and 5 for HSPA and Bands 2, 4, 5, and 17 for LTE with Band 7, 13, and 29 coming on over the next few years"

homer
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

I meant the LTE network... which is exactly what you stated (band 4). I think the other two carriers support another LTE band (is it 7?)

ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@deltatuxThanks for the clarification. Yes, I remember them preparing their network for the Vancouver Olympics. That was definitely one of the reasons.

 

About Samsung and the use of Exynos vs Snapdragon. You are correct. My statement ecompassing North America is outdated. Samsung released exynos versions of their phones in Canada because the CDMA networks are all end of life. The total shutdown of CDMA in Canada in slated to be Jan 1, 2017 and some areas are shutdown already.

 

In the US, wikipedia says there are still a lot of CDMA2000 networks in operation. This could be the reason why Samsung is still sticking with the Snapdragon chipset in the US. I believe the key to why Samung uses one chipset over another is CDMA. This is largely a licensing/patent issue which is super-duper complicated as a variety of companies hold patents on the same technology including Samsung and Qualcomm and they are all demanding royalties or cross-licensing deals to avoid lawsuits. Nevertheless, it's probably cheaper to pay Qualcomm a 2% royalty per handset that uses Snapdragon than license, build, and support CDMA capability into their own chipset.

 

So, what chipset a carrier gets is dependent on whether they run a CDMA network.

 

This article says that those carriers in the US that don't use CDMA, are going to use the Exynos chipset, but those that do will use Snapdragon. Not sure how accurate the article is though.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Galaxy-S7-model-numbers-leak-see-which-carriers-are-getting-Snapdrago...

Martin
Legend
Legend
Hi @homer,

Perhaps I misunderstood your post, but Telus/Koodo/PM rely on 3G 850 MHz (Band 5) and 1900 MHz (Band 2). LTE frequencies are 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz which, when paired, are Band 4. LTE-Advanced is 700 MHz (Band 17), which has yet to be widely deployed.

For those interested, 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz are for data only. 1700 MHz is the uplink from phone to tower, while 2100 MHz is the downlink from tower to phone.

FYI.

homer
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

I remember Telus is the only carrier that solely rely on LTE band 4? (which is a pity when I select BYOD)

 

Edited: I was talking about the LTE band(s) only (Of course it has other bands for 3G) 

deltatux
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@ckl wrote:

A few interesting tidbits on the subject of frequencies:

 

1. Higher frequencies mean less building penetration. Conversely, lower frequencies mean greater building penetration. 700Mhz penetrates walls easier, 2100Mhz less so. So to make up for it, more towers need to be erected more densely within a given area to equal the penetration of 700Mhz. This is why all the carriers were fighting over the 700Mhz spectrum (of which Rogers calls it the "beachfront property of wireless") because it means less towers need to be built. Building towers is not easy because people don't like them in their backyard (NIMBYism). This is also the reason why Wind and Mobilicity have such huge coverage problems. They don't have the money to build the necessary number of towers to provide the coverage that the big 3 have.

 

2. 2100Mhz carries more data per given time interval than 700Mhz. If you look at the sine wave pattern on an oscilliscope, the 2100Mhz looks like a bunch of sine waves squished horizontally. The 700Mhz pattern looks similar but less squished. For a given sine wave, each leading and trailing edge represents data as in 1 or 0. So the more sine waves you can get within a specified time interval, the more data you can carry. Unfortunately, the more sine waves per given interval, the less distance it can travel and the less likelihood of it getting through walls.

 

If you look at the sine wave of the time signal (WWVB) from the atomic clock at Fort Collins, Colorado, it is very elongated (compared to 2100Mhz) because the signal is 60Khz. This low frequency enables it to penetrate walls and travel long distances, but it carries very little data. Hence, my radio controlled watch which syncs with this time signal takes about 1-2 minutes to sync. Not sure what it is doing exactly, but the data transmitted is only 60bits! Now compare that to 2100Mhz LTE, which can do about 40Mbits per second.

 

Telus/Bell and Rogers used to have incompatible networks. As in, Telus/Bell used to run a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network and Rogers a TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) network. At some point, Telus switched to GSM (sort of advanced TDMA) to match Rogers. Not sure what the reason was, but at the time, I could tell that a lot of better handsets were released for GSM first and then CDMA (sometimes not even available for CDMA). GSM was also more widely used around the world than CDMA so that could factor in as well even though CDMA was the better technology IMHO. LTE uses WCDMA (Wideband CDMA). CDMA was heavily patented by Qualcomm and WCDMA is a derivitive of it so that possibly explains why some patent lawsuits have happened. This also explains why some international variants of phones (ie. Samsung) have Exynos chipset while the North Amercian versions carry the Qualcomm chipset. They simply cannot sell the Exynos version of the phone in North America without being sued into oblivion.

 

Anyway, I wrote all of this from memory, so some of my facts may be wrong or misleading... and it's probably more than what you wanted to know. But the issues are real and historical decisions (both technical and business wise) were made based on that.

 


@ckl, the reason for Bell/TELUS switch were a couple (based on what I heard and remember):

  1. GSM is an international standard, there's just simply more handsets available for it.
  2. Vancouver 2010 played a big part in the push to HSPA (the GSM standard for 3G) since Bell and TELUS realized that they wouldn't be cashing in on roaming agreements aside from those from the US given that the world runs on GSM-based standards.
  3. Easier upgrade path to LTE, which CDMA-based carriers in the US have also been moving towards instead of WiMAX.

As for the Samsung Exynos cannot be in North America, that's not true, Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy S II, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S6/S6 Edge, Note 5 and S7/S7 Edge (Canada-only, US variants are all Qualcomm-powered) are all powered by the Exynos chipset in North America. Now, all the Exynos-powered devices before the S6 were all powered by a Qualcomm modem. Samsung never even baked in the modem until the Exynos 7 series processor, now they use their own in-house modem for these devices.

Martin
Legend
Legend
Hi @ckl,

THANK YOU!

It was very informative.

ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@Martin You're welcome! Thanks for reading it.

Martin
Legend
Legend
Hi @ckl,

Thank you for your detailed explanation. I very much enjoyed reading it.

Cheers.

ckl
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

A few interesting tidbits on the subject of frequencies:

 

1. Higher frequencies mean less building penetration. Conversely, lower frequencies mean greater building penetration. 700Mhz penetrates walls easier, 2100Mhz less so. So to make up for it, more towers need to be erected more densely within a given area to equal the penetration of 700Mhz. This is why all the carriers were fighting over the 700Mhz spectrum (of which Rogers calls it the "beachfront property of wireless") because it means less towers need to be built. Building towers is not easy because people don't like them in their backyard (NIMBYism). This is also the reason why Wind and Mobilicity have such huge coverage problems. They don't have the money to build the necessary number of towers to provide the coverage that the big 3 have.

 

2. 2100Mhz carries more data per given time interval than 700Mhz. If you look at the sine wave pattern on an oscilliscope, the 2100Mhz looks like a bunch of sine waves squished horizontally. The 700Mhz pattern looks similar but less squished. For a given sine wave, each leading and trailing edge represents data as in 1 or 0. So the more sine waves you can get within a specified time interval, the more data you can carry. Unfortunately, the more sine waves per given interval, the less distance it can travel and the less likelihood of it getting through walls.

 

If you look at the sine wave of the time signal (WWVB) from the atomic clock at Fort Collins, Colorado, it is very elongated (compared to 2100Mhz) because the signal is 60Khz. This low frequency enables it to penetrate walls and travel long distances, but it carries very little data. Hence, my radio controlled watch which syncs with this time signal takes about 1-2 minutes to sync. Not sure what it is doing exactly, but the data transmitted is only 60bits! Now compare that to 2100Mhz LTE, which can do about 40Mbits per second.

 

Telus/Bell and Rogers used to have incompatible networks. As in, Telus/Bell used to run a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network and Rogers a TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) network. At some point, Telus switched to GSM (sort of advanced TDMA) to match Rogers. Not sure what the reason was, but at the time, I could tell that a lot of better handsets were released for GSM first and then CDMA (sometimes not even available for CDMA). GSM was also more widely used around the world than CDMA so that could factor in as well even though CDMA was the better technology IMHO. LTE uses WCDMA (Wideband CDMA). CDMA was heavily patented by Qualcomm and WCDMA is a derivitive of it so that possibly explains why some patent lawsuits have happened. This also explains why some international variants of phones (ie. Samsung) have Exynos chipset while the North Amercian versions carry the Qualcomm chipset. They simply cannot sell the Exynos version of the phone in North America without being sued into oblivion.

 

Anyway, I wrote all of this from memory, so some of my facts may be wrong or misleading... and it's probably more than what you wanted to know. But the issues are real and historical decisions (both technical and business wise) were made based on that.

 

Luddite
Oracle
Oracle

Have look here: https://community.koodomobile.com/koodo/topics/the_big_three_canadian_network_frequencies


>>> ALERT: I am not a CSA. Je ne suis pas un Agent du soutien à la clientèle.
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