Three UK Hops on Freshwave’s In-Building 4G Network Solution
Mobile operator Three UK has, following successful pilots with Workspace and at a multinational firm’s UK headquarters, agreed to join Freshwave’s new Neutral Host In-Building mobile network specification to help improve indoor 4G coverage at enabled sites.
Just to recap. The Joint Operator Technical Specifications (JOTS) Neutral Host In-Building (NHIB) specification is simply an agreed technical standard for connecting shared in-building radio solutions based on 4G small-cell technologies. Any mobile operator that wants can sign-up to a related network deployment and offer services to customers covered by it, which saves the operator having to build the infrastructure.
Last year saw O2 (VMO2) become the first UK mobile operator to make live calls from its network using one of Freshwave’s new NHIB networks (here). But following pilots at two of flexible office provider Workspace’s properties in London, and at a multinational firm’s headquarters, the approach has now also been adopted by Three UK for their 4G indoor connectivity.
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The announcement highlights that 80% of mobile calls originate indoors, but modern building materials, such as energy-efficient glass, make it harder for the outdoor macro signal to penetrate inside, which can reduce business productivity and increase frustration. In-building small cell systems aim to solve this and without placing extra pressure on the outdoor macro.
Iain Milligan, Chief Network Officer at Three UK, said:
“We are investing more than ever in enhancing connectivity and coverage, and already have the UK’s Fastest 5G Network, according to Ookla. Indoor focus has been a major priority of ours with the acquisition of additional low frequency spectrum in 2020 and our agreement with Freshwave will further enhance indoor coverage, particularly for business customers.”
The catch is that it will take time for this sort of approach to grow and there are other locations where simpler solutions like Wi-Fi Calling may reduce the attractiveness of such a network, although Wi-Fi Calling can also be quite flaky in some places.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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This is how I see the future: Oneweb/SpaceX will provide mobile connectivity outdoor whilst we’ll be relying on WiFi indoor.
Hopefully with the 2 companies providing the wifi backbone = rather that than Three!
Wi-Fi calling is hardly anything reliable or of decent quality.
Roaming between access points can be hit and miss and handing over from Wi-Fi Call to the mobile network (and vice versa) more often than not ends in dropped calls.
Ubiquitous indoors native mobile coverage would probably give a better user experience.
(If done properly, which seems unlikely to happen given the track record of pretty much all UK network operators)
And this an opportunity for SpaceX or OneWeb. It is not going to happen any time soon but I would imagine this working in next 5 to 10 years.
How will SpaceX help with indoor phone coverage? You are aware that satellite receivers need a clear view of the sky, which is pretty rare indoors?
Outsource & get milked bigtime by the ones you outsourced to. They seem to be doing this with their regular network infrastructure & are suffering.