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Australia Cellular Services started tracking 5G deployments seven months ago.
Look here for the most recent 5G statistics.
On a related note, Vodafone recently launched their 5G network in central and western Sydney. Their network of 73 5G / 3500MHz sites comprise 216 60MHz channels.
You can see these 5G sites and more at Australia Cellular Services.
Telus added 3,504 new sites this month across these provinces and cities:
| Province | # Sites |
|---|---|
| BC | 1,249 |
| Quebec | 1,165 |
| Alberta | 963 |
| Ontario | 98 |
| Manitoba | 29 |
| TOTAL | 3,504 |
| City | # Sites |
|---|---|
| Montreal, QC | 467 |
| Edmonton, AB | 393 |
| Surrey, BC | 263 |
| North Vancouver, BC | 185 |
| Calgary, AB | 120 |
| Abbotsford, BC | 109 |
| City | # Sites |
|---|---|
| Laval, QC | 69 |
| Quebec, QC | 55 |
| Matane, QC | 52 |
| Notre-Dame-de-l'Ile-Perrot, QC | 47 |
| Vancouver, BC | 46 |
| Ottawa, ON | 45 |
Rogers also added nearly 700 new sites, but for different reasons. Rogers' new sites relate to the disappearance of a similar number of sites one year ago. The red line in the top-left graph below shows a trough that started in Dec 2018 and ended this month. This trough represents nearly 700 Rogers sites that were missing from monthly SMS snapshots for the past 12 months. Approximately 600 of these missing sites were in Quebec and another 100 in Ontario.
Telus' site count surge resembles what happened this past February when Freedom's network capacity increased 71% in one month. Huge increases like these suggest licensees are submitting data to ISED too infrequently. We hope all licensees will submit data more frequently to accurately track the growth of their networks.
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
The monthly SMS snapshot is distributed as a 33 field CSV file. This month's file has 566,042 records, of which 44,469 have formatting errors. We have corrected the formatting; please contact us to obtain a corrected copy.
The corrected data looks good, continuing the last two month trend, by adding
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
October continues last month's trend with a good SMS snapshot, adding
Freedom has been unusually active these past two months; we hope their participation continues.
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
The bottom left graph shows the return of nearly 1,300 Freedom sites that disappeared in May. The bottom right graph shows the addition of nearly 12,000 Freedom channels, which include
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
This month's SMS snapshot is the best this year, with only Freedom missing 1/2 of its network:
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
Bell continues last month's trend by losing 11,454 more channels:
The July SMS snapshot severely distorts Bell's true network coverage and capacity:
| # Bell Channels | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Band | May-19 | Jun-19 | Jul-19 |
| 700 | 35,353 | 35,798 | 23,090 |
| 850 | 34,196 | 1,701 | 16,976 |
| 1900 | 64,200 | 642 | 3,167 |
| 2100 | 22,069 | 22,390 | 13,420 |
| 2500 | 15,131 | 10,523 | 2,947 |
| TOTAL | 170,949 | 71,054 | 59,600 |
| LOSS | 99,895 | 11,454 | |
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
Corporate Vision Magazine provides discerning readers worldwide with a wealth of news, features and comment on the corporate issues of the day.
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Bell site and channel counts dropped 8% and 58% respectively, reducing average channels per site ratio from 23 to 11. The 99,895 missing Bell channels include one-third of their 2500MHz channels and almost all of their 850MHz and 1900MHz channels.
The issues with Freedom, identified last month remain. (The issues with Xplore have been fixed.)
SaskTel site counts continue to decrease, from 1,114 in Jul 2017, to 943 in Aug 2017 and to 760 today. While at the same time, their channels per site ratio climbed from 6.1 to 10.5 to 12.5. We don't believe this is an error.
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
We also operate Australia Cellular Services and use spectrum data published by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). For comparison, we generated graphs for Telstra, Optus, Vodafone (cellular) and NBN, Vivid (broadband):
Australia Cellular Services now includes an RRL Details column (see right) which lists each channel's ACMA device registration id. (PTS channels do not have a device registration id).
Click an id to visit its entry in the ACMA Register of Radiocommunications Licences (RRL) which provides a visual depiction of the channel's antenna pattern as well as
A very small number of antennas patterns (~ 1%) exaggerate the gain in the main lobe by ~ 40dB. We correct this error, so you might see a discrepancy between what we and RRL report for EIRP.
Please contact us if you have any questions about this new feature.
Australia Cellular Services now includes Telstra's 5G network:
| Location | # 5G Sites |
|---|---|
| Adelaide | 46 |
| Brisbane | 63 |
| Canberra | 38 |
| Gold Coast | 54 |
| Hobart | 16 |
| Launceston | 7 |
| Melbourne | 52 |
| Perth | 43 |
| Sydney | 64 |
| Toowoomba | 25 |
| TOTAL | 408 |
Australia Cellular Services will be updated regularly to track the expansion of Telstra's 5G network.
And it will also be updated to include Optus' 5G network, which is expected mid-2019. (Optus plans to deploy 1,200 5G sites by March 2020.)
Australia Cellular Services has added 702 digital TV (DTV) sites. Select DTV from the filter drop down (at the top of the map) and the map will show each DTV site as a small TV icon.
Information for each DTV transmitter includes antenna height, transmit frequency, omni antenna (Y or N), transmit power, polarization (horizontal or vertical), callsign and purpose. The channel number is part of the callsign (eg. ABC41 is channel 41). Values for purpose include Commercial, Retransmission, National, etc.
The top-right graph shows a recovery in Rogers channel counts. The bottom graphs show a precipitous drop in Freedom site and channel counts.
The May 2019 SMS snapshot also saw an unexpected drop in site counts for dozens of broadband or WISP carriers including Xplore, whose site count dropped by more than half, from 1,673 to 747.
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
The right graph shows a 44% drop in Rogers channel counts:
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand Cellular Services now include Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISP), as shown at the right. This is in addition to the cellular providers these services have always provided.
WISP is popular in rural areas or where population density is too low to economically support cable, DSL or FTTx broadband service. Plans from larger Canadian WISP providers cost $100 / month and provide a multi-hundred gigabyte cap with 25 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up.
We have another subscription plan (please contact us for details) that includes all Canadian WISPs registered with ISED, including ABC Comm., Birch Hill, Maskatel, Seaside, WireIE, PRiS, SSI Micro, Groupe Acces, Suncor Energy, BSurfer, Point To Point, CanWAN, NETAGO, CCL, Execulink, Murphy Oil, BCN, Nexicom, DoubleF, EION, AireNet, Kingston Online, Internexe, I Want Wireless, CORE Broadband, NorthWind, Coop Pierre-de Saurel, Thomas Comm., Comcentric, Andrews Wireless, RECNS, Imperial Oil, High Speed Crow, Vecima, ICAWireless, Columbia Wireless, Askivision, Navigata, Maskoutain, Mightypeace, Morad Comm., Cable Amos, Slave Lake, Syban, Rural Wave, CommStream, Storm, Beacon Broadband, Chatham, Targo, ONDEnet, FlexiNET, Voom Internet, KWIC, 3CIS, CCI Net, North Nova Cable, Vincent Comm., Signal Direct, Missing Link Internet, Comm. Charlevoix, Megawire, Tough Country, Cascade Divide, VISP, IASL, Stafford Comm., WTCComm, Petron, Redbird, Telesignal, Rionet Wireless, WiBand, Cardinal Telecom, Frontier Wireless, AlbertaCom, Sniper Comm., Swift Internet, OmniTEC, GoZoom, GPNetworks, LyttonNet and IGS Hawkesbury.
Canada's 600MHz auction is now underway. Conditions outlined in Technical, Policy and Licensing Framework for Spectrum in the 600 MHz Band (pdf) will require licensees to
provide, and maintain, up-to-date technical information on a particular station or network in accordance with the definitions, criteria, frequency and timelines specified in Client Procedures Circular CPC-2-1-23, Licensing Procedure for Spectrum Licences for Terrestrial Services (pdf).
Section 5.11 Submission of Technical Information from CPC-2-1-23 states
Industry Canada requires technical information associated with radiocommunication installations covered by the spectrum licence in order to carry out certain spectrum management responsibilities.
To provide this capability, Industry Canada requires information in order to maintain an up-to-date technical database of radiocommunication installations.
Typically, licensees will be required to submit this data to Industry Canada on a monthly basis or as otherwise required, as well as prior to the operation of each new radiocommunication installation.
When an existing radiocommunication installation is modified such that the associated data elements are amended, the licensee must also provide Industry Canada with the updated technical information.
Conditions outlined in Licensing Framework for Residual Spectrum Licences in the 700 MHz and AWS-3 Bands, from 2015, also require licensees to submit technical information prior to the operation of their AWS-3 installation. Yet, as mentioned last month, this technical information arrived 27 months after Freedom began operation of their AWS-3 installation.
The top-left graph shows steep drops in Rogers and Bell site counts in Dec 2018 and Jan 2019, respectively. Bell site counts rebounded this month, but Rogers have not.
Most of the missing Rogers sites are in Quebec, where they have a sharing agreement with Videotron. (Update 2020-Jan-7: Rogers site counts rebounded in Dec 2019 which suggest these missing sites are not related to their sharing agreement with Videotron.)
On a related note, the bottom two graphs show a recovery in Videotron and Eastlink site and channel counts vs last month.
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
February sees a 16% and 71% increase in Freedom site and channel counts, including 2,648 AWS-3 channels, purchased for $56 million in Mar 2015.
It took 27 months from when Freedom deployed AWS-3 channels (Nov 2016) to when they first appeared in an SMS snapshot (Feb 2019). 1 to 2 months is the norm; 27 months is excessive.
Both graphs also show Videotron disappearing and Eastlink losing over half its channel count.
SMS snapshots should never be used as-is. We monitor SMS snapshots and supplement with proprietary and 3rd party data giving Canada Cellular Services the most accurate representation available of Canada's wireless landscape.
The Eastmark Cell Tower in Mesa, Arizona (at right) shows that a cell tower can be something nice to look at. According to this article:
Early in the community's planning, the Eastmark Development Team self-imposed a requirement in the zoning documents to ensure all Eastmark cell towers have some form of camouflage.
Yet, they felt the "fake tree" design attracted rather than detracted attention, so they looked beyond the camouflage solutions currently available in the market.
Upon completion, the Eastmark project team said the design reminded them of: Marshmallows on a stick ... A car engine cam shaft ... Spinning plates on a stick ... and Flying saucers.
You can visit its location here.
Canada Cellular Services uses data from
SMS snapshots are popular with Canada's wireless industry, but as we explain below, should never be used as-is.
We organize a snapshot into site location records and channel emission records, and track monthly variances in their counts across all cellular bands:
The left graphs show site location counts which measure network coverage; the right graphs show channel emission counts which measure network capacity.
The top-left graph shows that, up until a few months ago, SMS snapshots accurately captured the growth of Rogers' and Bell's wireless networks. Both top graphs also show these snapshots did not provide an accurate account of Telus' wireless network.
The bottom graphs measure the constant growth of Eastlink's wireless network. Compare that to Freedom, which suspiciously grew only once in Sep 2017.
These graphs show that SMS snapshots distorted the capacity and growth of Canada's wireless networks.
SMS snapshots should not be used as-is, as they often suffer from these issues:
Each SMS snapshot should provide a complete picture of Canada's wireless landscape at a point in time. But as the graphs show, each is only one piece of a jigsaw puzzle, which we have have solved many times by carefully merging snapshots, supplementing with files direct from wireless carriers, adjusting values and repositioning site locations.