Pyra LTE in Australia Discussion

[0x14f]

Hi. I wanted to upgrade my Pyra to a 4G version and I live in Sydney, Australia and use Optus, but I'm having a hard time understanding what version to take and need help.

I basically want to use Pyra in Sydney and surrounding suburbs. I like to explore both central Sydney as well as the suburbs and other nearby locations like national parks.

1) According to Optus I will have to rely only on 700, 1800 and 2600. The no-fun part is that 1800 and 2600 are EU version and 700 is US. What version of Pyra should I choose?

2) Optus says 700 is better for general use nationwide, but I have no idea what 700 B17 means is it the same as just 700?

3) Isn't 700 a low-end scenario and they'll upgrade everything to higher frequency hardware within the next few years?

4) With that said I'm contemplating abandoning the idea of buying an LTE Pyra and adjust my use cases to Wi-Fi only and rely more on offline use cases, because all this is confusing. What would you do in my place - abandon LTE?

P.S: 1800 doesn't look as reliable as 700 per Optus' description and 2600 is only for busy areas in major cities (Whatever that means! Is Manly a busy area?? What about North Sydney? Duh!). And I don't even know where to start if you live in Cairns, Darwin, Hobart or Sunshine Coast and use 2100, but travel to capital cities frequently.

 

[benoitb]

700 is reaching wide coverage distances.

It is cheaper to deploy a network in an area not too populated with 700 MHz than the higher frequencies.
It is usually the case that 2600 will be deployed in very dense areas, 1800 in cities generally and 700 in the countryside.

It all boils down to how your operator built its network. By the way, in Europe as well the 700 MHz frequency is now being used (at least in France) even if the first similar frequency that was intended for that use case was 800 MHz.

1/ What about 3G and 2G networks frequencies for your operator ? I would get the European version (which could arguably be called the World version) as it will work on 1800 and 2600 in LTE when you are in cities and fall back to UMTS 900 or GSM 900 when you are in the countryside if your operator has such 2G/3G networks deployed. Additionnaly, this version will work in Asia, Europe, Africa.

2/ B17 is a code giving the same info of frequency for LTE bands.

3/ No. It' a matter of radio coverage, there is no low-end or high-end.

4/ If your operator has a good 3G network to fall back on, I would still buy the 4G european Pyra. If it has only 4G and heavily use 700 MHz, they maybe a Wifi Pyra + small router (battery powered connection sharing device) is a better option.

Edit:
I found this info on Wikipedia:

Mobile network equipment is from Nortel, Nokia and Huawei and antennas are sourced from Andrews, RFS, Argus and Kathrein.[citation needed]

The Optus network operates on the following bandwidth frequencies across Australia:

• 3G UMTS 900/2100 MHz
• 4G LTE 700 / 1800 / 2100 / 2300 / 2600 MHz network which has been in progressive rollout since 2012.[36][37] As VoLTE is currently in the development stages, voice calling is still reliant on the 3G network.[38]

The 2G GSM 900/1800 MHz network was terminated on 1 April 2017.[39]​

Since there is no 2G network anymore and calls still fallback to 3G I'd say they must have an excellent 3G network coverage. So definitely get the European 4G Pyra, worst case you will always have 3G connectivity and best case you'll get LTE in cities.

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

Posting here only to see if @EvilDragon say something about the chance (or not) into upgrade a voucher (have been asking this for long time now... ).

 

[0x14f]

Posting here only to see if @EvilDragon say something about the chance (or not) into upgrade a voucher (have been asking this for long time now... ).

I asked ED via email about upgrading, and he said it's possible, but didn't say how. I didn't ask again because was still in doubt. Now I'm not thanks to @benoitb excellent in depth knowledge and additional research. Thanks @benoitb!

 

[AndiTheBest]

Did you already check the wiki entry?
https://pyra-handheld.com/wiki/index.php?title=Modem

In gereral: lower frequency = higher distance + lower data rate per bandwidth.
But the data rate always depends on how many people are using it at the same time.

 

[0x14f]

Did you already check the wiki entry?
https://pyra-handheld.com/wiki/index.php?title=Modem

In gereral: lower frequency = higher distance + lower data rate per bandwidth.
But the data rate always depends on how many people are using it at the same time.

1. I didn't know wiki exists until now, thanks. ED didn't direct me to it and told me to check with my provider about which frequencies they support, which I did and just got confused. Frankly I would change wiki, because it looks like some regions of AUS like Darwin and Sunshine Coast need an US version and EU version works on 800, so you have to rely on 3G not LTE for the most part unless you never leave city center, but I might be missing the point again :/.

2. Sure, it's just the progress marches on and I didn't know until now if putting more high frequency equipment in place of fever 700 MHz to increase bandwidth and coverage is a thing for telecoms. Apparently for 5g they'll still use lower 800 to cover generic areas which is an increase, but not as drastic as I thought previously. EU Pyra happens to support 800, which means Pyra will work with 5G with more coverage than it does now.

Thanks for all the replies!

EDIT: all of the above is relevant for Optus, I didn't check other providers frequencies at all.