At the same time, he says there is a lot of consolidation going on in the Irish market.
“Three took over O2 and that meant their sites were merged and each site took over more traffic. The same antennae are carrying the traffic of both network’s customers,” said McBride.
“When you increase the power levels on those cables, if there are any flaws in the system, like if any of the connectors are a little bit rusty or corroded, you get something called passive inter modulation (PIM).”
Rusty nail effect
This results in unwanted frequencies, literally called the rusty nail effect, which can interfere with the site — reducing its availability and making it less efficient. But efficiency is often where the profit margin lies and it is increasingly important for operators to be able to make the most of the technology they have to offer.
“A big change that we see coming is increased focus on the symmetry of connections,” said Graham of eircom Group. “Uplinks will become increasingly important. At the moment, people and companies tend to focus most on download speeds and uplink speeds can be a bit of an afterthought.”
“People tend not to value it in the same way. But that is changing because the more data people put in the cloud and the more exchanging of data that they do in real time with the cloud, the more important that upload speed becomes. That creates a lot of challenge for us, because the standards today are mainly based on improving and focusing on the downlink.”
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