Rob Joyce is aware of the Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) cell community contains exactly 18,552 macro cell websites and greater than 2,500 small cells. Because the director of cell entry engineering for the UK operator, Joyce is tasked with ensuring its community is a minimum of a technological match for the opposite two within the nation and able to satisfying all buyer calls for. He’s acutely aware of lagging VodafoneThree by a number of thousand websites. That makes VMO2 look no totally different from BT-owned EE. Whether or not it places them at a service drawback is the priority.
When regulators permitted the merger between Vodafone and Three that created VodafoneThree final 12 months, they did so within the perception it might drive rivals to reply. The mixture of the 2 networks produced an operator with a wealthy assortment of spectrum and a grand whole of about 37,000 websites, in keeping with VodafoneThree’s latest investor replace. After some decommissioning of web sites deemed superfluous, VodafoneThree will find yourself with a footprint of about 26,000. Confronted with such a robust adversary, EE and VMO2 must make investments extra – and probably even construct new websites of their very own.
However will they? At VMO2, Joyce and his crew are presently weighing the necessity for such “densification,” because the business describes it, below an inside plan referred to as “Grid 2040.” Including websites would clearly entail further expense in a cell market that has struggled to develop gross sales. “The trick is to construct as few towers as attainable however ship the service that individuals want or need,” Joyce informed a roomful of reporters and analysts gathered in Caernarfon, Wales, for a subsequent demonstration of VMO2’s Starlink-provided satellite tv for pc service.
“There are already plans to densify the macro grid, and we’re speaking to VodafoneThree concerning the towers they have that we’re not on, and likewise BT, MBNL,” he defined. “There’s a little bit of flux within the tower market, and we’ll look to make use of that to our benefit.”
Dividing the dominion
For years, VMO2 has shared towers in addition to basestation gear with Vodafone through a network-sharing association referred to as Cornerstone. It bisects the UK into japanese and western halves, with VMO2 accountable for every part that occurs east of the dividing line and Vodafone managing the west. Joyce evidently feels there’s scope for a possible growth into areas the place VMO2 doesn’t presently have tools on Vodafone towers.
Individually, BT and Three have shared 1000’s of towers, though not 4G and 5G basestations, by means of the MBNL enterprise that Joyce named. Decommissioning by VodafoneThree is predicted to go away BT as the only real operator of kit at a few of these MBNL websites and desirous of a brand new accomplice to bolster the financial case. “They’re now in a share that is unwinding, so they are going to have towers that they used to share however do not anymore,” stated Joyce.
It’s early days for Grid 2040, and nothing has been finalized. At this time, Joyce would clearly disagree with anybody saying VMO2 is at some type of service drawback. “We’re presently working at 88% inhabitants protection on 5G plus, so we nonetheless assume we are the largest,” he stated. What VMO2 calls 5G plus is the Standalone variant of the expertise that introduces a brand new core, the software program mind of the system. VodafoneThree had reached solely 60% final month, in keeping with its personal replace. “We expect we are able to do much more on the towers that we have got, and if we are able to do this, we are able to scale back the necessity to densify,” stated Joyce.
Forthcoming 6G expertise, attributable to launch in 2030, may additionally affect VMO2’s interested by densification. UK telcos, like these in different nations, are anticipated to deploy 6G in presently licensed spectrum bands, at the moment used for each 4G and 5G expertise. However in addition they covet the untapped higher 6GHz band. “It truly is simply 5G shifted to 6GHz with a couple of extra bells and whistles,” stated Joyce in assessing a regular more and more described as an “evolution” of its predecessor reasonably than a revolutionary breakthrough.
Such comparatively excessive spectrum bands are good for supporting bandwidth-thirsty companies like video. Their disadvantage is protection: Indicators don’t journey as far or bypass obstacles as successfully as they do in sub-GHz spectrum. Ericsson and Nokia, VMO2’s 5G distributors, try to compensate for that by designing much more superior huge MIMO radios, which cram items with antenna components. 5G got here with configurations of as much as 64 transmitters and receivers per unit. 6G may improve that to greater than 128. With beamforming, a associated expertise, indicators can supposedly be steered to person devices like heat-seeking missiles.
But quite a few telco executives sound doubtful {that a} 6GHz-based huge MIMO community would economically map to a 4G and 5G website grid that makes use of decrease spectrum bands. 6GHz will probably be utilized in densely populated city hotspots and to not present wide-area protection.
Giga buildout
Lengthy earlier than then, Joyce expects to have rolled out an excellent larger variety of VMO2 “giga websites,” that includes at the moment’s dual-band huge MIMO expertise. The operator is because of deploy its thousandth giga website earlier than the top of the 12 months and can construct extra of them in 2027, stated Joyce. The rollout types a part of the £700 million (US$932 million) funding in cell community upgrades introduced in the beginning of the 12 months, after VMO2 had spent the identical quantity in 2025.
Huge MIMO tools isn’t shared with VodafoneThree at giga websites, not like most of the lower-band radios that may neighbor it. At a giga website in Middlesbrough, VMO2 has been utilizing a large MIMO antenna that mixes spectrum within the 2.6GHz and three.7GHz bands whereas concurrently counting on a radio shared with VodafoneThree for all different bands. It’s, Joyce thinks, “in all probability essentially the most advanced shared tower on the planet” and carries about 75% of all cell site visitors in that a part of Middlesbrough.
Helpfully, the retirement of outdated cell applied sciences is beginning to release spectrum that would show way more priceless than 6GHz for wide-area rollout. 3G spectrum is being refarmed now that VMO2 has switched off the expertise, a transfer it accomplished in January. In the summertime of 2029, it plans to start out taking the even older 2G community out of service.
O2 Satellite tv for pc, courtesy of an settlement with Elon Musk’s Starlink enterprise, beams extra restricted indicators to clients outdoors VMO2’s present terrestrial footprint. Gentle Studying and different touring publications got a style of the expertise throughout a trek in Snowdonia. However Joyce dismisses speak of satellite tv for pc as a mainstream risk to mobile. Just like the Thirteenth-century citadel that looms over Caernarfon, constructed by Edward I to subjugate the Welsh, his actual challengers stay firmly rooted to the bottom.
