Hello together,
After reading a little through this thread, I thought I should share, how the O2/E-Plus merge in Germany was conducted and still in progress. Please note that I will write in English (my Italian isn’t great
).
So, before focusing on the merge I will share some info’s on both former providers.
E-Plus:
Had a good U2100 network (note that there is no U900 in Germany), the biggest in Germany. Their GSM Network was mainly on 1800 MHz, but they started to add G900 after 2006. They didn’t have any 800 MHz, so they started their LTE Network on 1800 in 2014. They had 25 Million Subscribers.
O2:
Their U2100 Network was very weak (smallest in GER). Their GSM was on 1800 MHz also. Their LTE network was mainly on 800 MHz and 2600 MHz on crowed areas. They had 20 Million Subscribers.
The Merge:
So the first step for O2 was a so called “National Roaming” between both UMTS Networks, which made sense for them, because O2s 3G network was quite bad. They started in a test region in the west of Germany, but rolled it out in all of Germany until the middle of the year.
In Summer and Autumn of the same year they started merging both networks in some rural areas, where only 2G was available mostly. These Regions were: Brandenburg, the Bavarian Forest and East Hesse (Website of a user in East Hesse:
http://netmap.qwook.com/) In these Areas Equipment of both old networks were swapped to NSN Equipment. Tower which weren’t needed anymore were torn down. O2 didn’t do any upgrades on these towers, most of them sill run on G900/G1800 to this day.
In the beginning of 2016 O2 introduced GSM roaming between both networks, as well as LTE roaming a for E-Plus Costumers in Areas, were E-Plus LTE was available (mostly cities). O2 costumers could not (!) roam on E-Pluses LTE network. The Reason was that O2 shut down the E-Plus LTE Network Nationwide in Summer 2016. All 40 Million uses were now in the O2 LTE network, which was only 10 MHz B20 in many cities, so the network got so congested, that people couldn’t get any data connection at all in some areas.
In Autumn of 2016 O2 did a very interesting step: Thy shut down the whole E-Plus 2G/3G network in south Germany. Only Exceptions were big cities like Munich, Stuttgart and Nuremburg. So costumers suddenly had not 3G or in worst cases not even 2G anymore. O2 swapped Equipment on these Towers to NSN and the sites came back as O2 towers. It took a long time and still some sites are missing.
In the same time O2 started consolidating and upgrading the networks in the named above cities. Most of the sites got new Huawei antennas and got upgraded to L800, L1800, L1800/L2600 or in some cases to L800/L1800/L2600. (L1800 was only 5 MHz in the beginning, because of too much G1800 in the air) Also all sites that were merged now have an new LAC/TAC and run with 4 Carriers of U2100. I know that all site in Munich will get LTE in the next year.
In Winter of 2016 O2 stared to recolor their network: O2s old MNC was 07, E-Pluses was 03. O2 switched their code to 03 for 3G and 2G first, than in the beginning of 2017 4G was switched to 03. Note that these steps were taking in the South of Germany first.
In Spring of 2017 O2 started to recolor their network in all of Germany. The only areas, where O2 Network still runs on 07 is in the Rhine area. The rest is now 03.
But still: Most of their network is still unmerged. They now only share the same MNC.
If you have questions: Feel free to ask them!
