4G rollout messing with 3G signal?

[LoonR1]

I've currently got two phones, one for business (a Blackberry on 3G) and a new i-Phone 5S for personal use on a 4G tariff (and obviously picking this up where available). However, I've noticed that as Vodafone roll out their network, that the 4G is intermittent at best in a few cities and the i-Phone drops calls quite frequently as it reverts to 3G in these cities.

The blackberry though is completely unusable in one city (Liverpool). Incoming and outgoing calls connect but nobody can hear me. The issue is mirrored across my staff and their company supplied blackberries.

Is anyone else finding the same, or am I just unlucky?

Will be contacting vodafone soon to express some dissatisfaction, but intrigued if anyone is seeing the same issue.

[Randomthoughts]

Networks with 4G are finding their 3G networks saturated because people are going for 4G tariffs but what the network operators don't tell you is that they fall back to 3G to make voice calls - there's no voice over LTE support yet (I think in the world, but certainly not the UK) and they're also busy turning off 3G and particularly 2G kit to make space for the 4G stuff. This means that when you had somewhere to go when you wanted to make a call on a 3G cell (fall-back to 2G) because you didn't need 3G for it, you don't have that option any more.

Hence, cells being oversubscribed and calls dropping all over the place! Some 4G users in denser areas are finding they can't even make calls because the cells are too oversubscribed for the phone to drop from 4G.

[robsa]

Yep, unfortunately I am now on Vodafone and its pretty damn awful on the South coast....

[Russ T Bolt]

I've just switched to Vodafone 4G. The only problem I have had to date was a couple weeks ago near Chessington, had a 4G signal but couldn't get an Internet connection, it spent about an hour coming on and off, also dropping back to 3G.

But then it stabilised on 4G with a download speed of 54mbps, the fastest I have seen yet.
I assume they were playing with the infrastructure locally.

[MonkeyHanger]

robsa said:

Yep, unfortunately I am now on Vodafone and its pretty damn awful on the South coast....

Vodafone seem to be awful pretty much everywhere.

Personally I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole but the company I work for uses them and the phones are completely hopeless at the moment. We're lucky if we manage a 10 second chat before the call is dropped.

[Tomo1971]

Randomthoughts said:

SNIP and they're also busy turning off 3G and particularly 2G kit to make space for the 4G stuff. SNIP

Wrong.

VF and O2 are actually increasing their 2g and 3g coverage as well as adding 4g on most of the sites.

At the moment they are on a huge network refresh programme. This entails updating their old 2g and 3g kit with new kit that will be faster and offer more capacity as well as adding 4G coverage.

Even on cells that were 2g or 3g only, they are often leaving them with 2G, 3G at 2100Mhz, 3G at 900Mhz and 4G at 800Mhz.... on busier sites they also add 2G at 1800.

There will be issues as the rollout progresses though but will eventually settle down.

What will happen though is that sites that are been swapped/updated could be off air for as little as a day up to several days or longer in rare case while the works take place. This wont help coverage or capacity as nearby sites take the strain for the off air sites.

[Spyder5]

Randomthoughts said:

Networks with 4G are finding their 3G networks saturated because people are going for 4G tariffs but what the network operators don't tell you is that they fall back to 3G to make voice calls - there's no voice over LTE support yet (I think in the world, but certainly not the UK) and they're also busy turning off 3G and particularly 2G kit to make space for the 4G stuff. This means that when you had somewhere to go when you wanted to make a call on a 3G cell (fall-back to 2G) because you didn't need 3G for it, you don't have that option any more.

Hence, cells being oversubscribed and calls dropping all over the place! Some 4G users in denser areas are finding they can't even make calls because the cells are too oversubscribed for the phone to drop from 4G.

I can't comment for EE, but I know the O2 and Vodafone networks very well and I can say this isn't correct for their systems.

No existing technologies have been removed in the process of adding LTE. If anything new technologies have been added - High speed data over 900mhz (U900) has been added to a large proportion of the sites as well as LTE.

Currently O2 have 4G in the North East - O2 have upgraded all of the sites including Vodafone's to achieve this.

Vodafone have 4G in London, O2 and Vodafone have been upgrading these - including each others.

Now, the sites that have been upgraded haven't been optimised - they are running - but it is very ad-hoc at the moment.

In most cases LTE and 3G share the same antenna and this is the basis for some of the issues. 3G has a very short range, so the antennas have almost no downtilt - they just fire horizontally out and the cells don't overlap. LTE has a very long range (but poor penetration) and firing horizontally they are overlapping with other sites including 3G only sites. When sites overlap, they talk to each other and cause lots of phantom traffic. The antennas are going to need tilting down to avoid overlap which will reduce 3G coverage.

There is a lot of work going on to resolve this, but a lot of resource is still engaged in upgrading other regions so it will be slow.

In other non 4G regions, there is other upgrade programs which have left the networks in a very "immature" state and really undeveloped.

In summary, the Vodafone and O2 networks have been upset by a variety of on going upgrades, but it is temporary and not inherent to the upgrades themselves

[Hackney]

Got an iPhone 5 on day 1, and waited for my 4G upgrade.
Then they told me 4G was a new contract with a different brand name on it.

As I couldn't see the benefit of 4G I stuck with 3G. Big mistake.
Recently 3G coverage has been shockingly bad at times. I live in Central London, not the Welsh mountains.

[DervVW]

Great so 3 are going to go ste too? Ive noticed the speed that I had in August is no longer the case. Although no drama making a call just the internet

[AndyWoodall]

Being talked about on R4 earlier this lunchtime, although I didn't catch all of it.

I'm seeing very good speed and reliability on 4G, its really very impressive. I'm also seeing increased 3G speed too.

Voice is suffering though, that much is obvious.

[Butter Face]

I've turned off my 4G as with it on I couldn't get any 3G.

Trying to get connected with GPRS only signal was pretty painful

[parapaul]

Spyder5 said:

Interesting stuff.

Thanks for that - it's good to have someone who can explain the situation in terms an ordinary person can understand.

Personally I don't see the point of 4G until the networks start increasing mobile data caps. I'm quite happy with my 3G contract and using wifi wherever I happen to be.