Base station control

A method of controlling a base station in a mobile telecommunications network, said method comprising:

• determining whether at least one of a plurality of base stations within said mobile telecommunications network is not supporting user equipment but Is indicated within a neighbor list associated with one of said plurality of base stations which is supporting user equipment, and whether said at least one of the plurality of base stations is predicted based on historical user equipment location information to be unlikely to be required to support said user equipment, and if so, then
• signaling said at least one of the plurality of base stations to reduce its transmission power.

A method of controlling a base station in a mobile, telecommunications network, said method comprising:

• determining whether a base station within said mobile telecommunications network is not supporting user equipment, and if so, then
• signaling said base station to reduce its transmission power, and
• determining whether said base station within said mobile telecommunications network is designated as being required to maintain a predetermined transmission power level in order to provide minimal coverage for user equipment, and if so, then preventing reduction in transmission power of said base station below said predetermined transmission power level.

A method of controlling a base station in a mobile telecommunications network, said method comprising:

• determining whether a base station within said mobile telecommunications network is not supporting user equipment within a sector associated with that base station, and if so, then
• signaling said base station to reduce transmission power within said sector.

A network controller for controlling base stations in a mobile telecommunications network, said network controller comprising:

• determination logic operable to determine whether at least one of a plurality of base stations within said mobile telecommunications network is not supporting user equipment and is not indicated within a neighbor list associated with one of the plurality of base stations which is supporting user equipment;
• and
• transmission power control logic operable, in response to said determination logic indicating that said at least one base station is not supporting user equipment, to signal said base station to reduce its transmission power.