Why such crap mobile reception in the UK?
Discussion
You can't even get consistent coverage on the major motorways, it's f
king pathetic. I think NIMBYs are a big part of the problem, I saw an item on the TV news a few years ago with some hag saying "They put a mast in our village and six months later I was diagnosed with breast cancer, now that cannot be a coincidence!". No, of course it couldn't possibly be...
Bet the dim tart is happy enough to carry a handset though and hold it next to her head for hours on end...
king pathetic. I think NIMBYs are a big part of the problem, I saw an item on the TV news a few years ago with some hag saying "They put a mast in our village and six months later I was diagnosed with breast cancer, now that cannot be a coincidence!". No, of course it couldn't possibly be...Bet the dim tart is happy enough to carry a handset though and hold it next to her head for hours on end...
I live in a very small town but large village of Verwood in Dorset, which local nickname is the Vermuda Triangle of phone coverage. O2, for past 3 weeks i had GPRS connection only which was awesome (NOT!) especially when my BT Infinity went down (thats a whole new thread in its right!). Im now out here in Kandahar, Afghanistan....4 bars on my phone, strong 3G, constant!!!
It's just beyond pathetic, and I can only think it is because of cost measures or total incompetence.
I recently drove around Northern Thailand, skirting the Burmese border and going through several 1 horse towns, as well as driving for 10's of km's with no civilisation - rarely did I lose 3G, that was only in very rugged mountains.
In Bangkok and Singapore I consistently get 4G with speeds of 50-60Mbs downloads with zero issues.
I recently drove around Northern Thailand, skirting the Burmese border and going through several 1 horse towns, as well as driving for 10's of km's with no civilisation - rarely did I lose 3G, that was only in very rugged mountains.
In Bangkok and Singapore I consistently get 4G with speeds of 50-60Mbs downloads with zero issues.
Isn't coverage abroad better because you can roam to any of their networks rather than being restricted to just your home network in this country.
So, as long as any of the country's providers has a signal you get a connection.
I think that Cameron was proposing this sort of roaming within Britain after he had to curtail his holiday because he couldn't get a signal. The networks seem to have nixed this and typically, after getting the headline, the govt hasn't followed through to enforce it.
So, as long as any of the country's providers has a signal you get a connection.
I think that Cameron was proposing this sort of roaming within Britain after he had to curtail his holiday because he couldn't get a signal. The networks seem to have nixed this and typically, after getting the headline, the govt hasn't followed through to enforce it.
Undoubtedly signal strength is less than it was but what REALLY compounds the no coverage issue is that phones do not have a strong reception capability now compared to the olde style nokia's etc. Due to the demand for more and more gadgets on smart phones and that everyone wants the smallest, fastest, most fashionable with the longest battery life phone now are made with a small ariel and avery weak reception capability to save battery life. Remember when phones had extendable ariel's? If your smart phone had the same you wouldn't have half the reception issues that currently exist. I had full reception on my old nokia's at home but struggled with new android phones on the same network. I added an external ariel to my android Samsung and hey presto I have full signal again.
nyt said:
Isn't coverage abroad better because you can roam to any of their networks rather than being restricted to just your home network in this country.
So, as long as any of the country's providers has a signal you get a connection.
This, with the caveat that mobile networks have consolidated in this country so you effectively experience a bit of this here (e.g. O2 and Vodafone are separate entities but share a lot of masts)So, as long as any of the country's providers has a signal you get a connection.
The other reason is that you don't tend to go on a foreign holiday to a farm in the arse end of nowhere, although I have occasionally.
3200gt said:
Undoubtedly signal strength is less than it was but what REALLY compounds the no coverage issue is that phones do not have a strong reception capability now compared to the olde style nokia's etc. Due to the demand for more and more gadgets on smart phones and that everyone wants the smallest, fastest, most fashionable with the longest battery life phone now are made with a small ariel and avery weak reception capability to save battery life. Remember when phones had extendable ariel's? If your smart phone had the same you wouldn't have half the reception issues that currently exist. I had full reception on my old nokia's at home but struggled with new android phones on the same network. I added an external ariel to my android Samsung and hey presto I have full signal again.
The main reason is that your old Nokia is almost certainly limited to 2G, whereas your Android phone is almost certainly using 3G, and 3G has much poorer indoor penetration than 2G because of the frequencies used. Bigger aerials might help but it doesn't mean contemporary phones have any worse radios than old ones. In fact they've significantly improved, including power usage. You're just not comparing the same things.I'm on o2 and if out and about in the car will lose signal regularly no matter where I go. Even leaving St Pancreas last week I lost signal on a phone call as soon as we left the station and it was patchy from that point onwards. My journey home to Oakham from Leicester again drops signal every few miles so one conversation actually takes 6-8 calls to get to the end.
Personally I think it takes the piss, especially when you switch the TV on and every sporting event has them advertising - if they spent less on corporate jolly's and more on service they might make the fking things work once in a while.
Personally I think it takes the piss, especially when you switch the TV on and every sporting event has them advertising - if they spent less on corporate jolly's and more on service they might make the f
king things work once in a while.oddball1973 said:
I'm on o2 and if out and about in the car will lose signal regularly no matter where I go. Even leaving St Pancreas last week I lost signal on a phone call as soon as we left the station and it was patchy from that point onwards. My journey home to Oakham from Leicester again drops signal every few miles so one conversation actually takes 6-8 calls to get to the end.
Personally I think it takes the piss, especially when you switch the TV on and every sporting event has them advertising - if they spent less on corporate jolly's and more on service they might make the fking things work once in a while.
£1.5 million infrastructural investment every day, apparently.Personally I think it takes the piss, especially when you switch the TV on and every sporting event has them advertising - if they spent less on corporate jolly's and more on service they might make the f
king things work once in a while.I wonder if people are expecting a little too much?
There is only a specific and limited amount of radio spectrum available for mobile communications, the laws of physics govern the amount of data that can be encoded onto which ever portion of that spectrum is available.
Improvements in microprocessor speeds, radio sensitivity and encoding/compression algorithms have made a massive leap in the amount of data that can be transmitted in a limited spectrum environment.
In urban areas we have the concept of frequency reuse, so as you move from one city block to another your mobile device is constantly being told to hand off (free up) from one frequency and jump to a different one supplied by a different base station (mast).
This seems so simple in theory but is hugely complex in practice.
In rural areas, there is likely only a small amount of the spectrum available, so, for example a phone in a car travelling up a motorway is sharing a very limited amount of bandwidth (capacity) with 10,100,1000 phones in these cars.
Now plug in the human factor, 100 (1000?) little Johnny and Delilahs are sat in the back seat streaming Minecraft videoes from youtube, and you still expect this system to work?
In terms of a simpler analogy, your data is someone else's noise and vice versa. Like in a loud night club, there is only so much audio spectrum available for a conversation. When everyone is shouting you need to be very close to the person you want to hear.
4G has been/is being sold on the myth that it will fix everything. More spectrum is being moved over from 3G to 4G because the operators can charge more for 4G.
Sure with 4G, you'll (maybe) get your content quicker, but only because someone somewhere else is waiting whilst you occupy all the available and limited spectrum.
There is only a specific and limited amount of radio spectrum available for mobile communications, the laws of physics govern the amount of data that can be encoded onto which ever portion of that spectrum is available.
Improvements in microprocessor speeds, radio sensitivity and encoding/compression algorithms have made a massive leap in the amount of data that can be transmitted in a limited spectrum environment.
In urban areas we have the concept of frequency reuse, so as you move from one city block to another your mobile device is constantly being told to hand off (free up) from one frequency and jump to a different one supplied by a different base station (mast).
This seems so simple in theory but is hugely complex in practice.
In rural areas, there is likely only a small amount of the spectrum available, so, for example a phone in a car travelling up a motorway is sharing a very limited amount of bandwidth (capacity) with 10,100,1000 phones in these cars.
Now plug in the human factor, 100 (1000?) little Johnny and Delilahs are sat in the back seat streaming Minecraft videoes from youtube, and you still expect this system to work?
In terms of a simpler analogy, your data is someone else's noise and vice versa. Like in a loud night club, there is only so much audio spectrum available for a conversation. When everyone is shouting you need to be very close to the person you want to hear.
4G has been/is being sold on the myth that it will fix everything. More spectrum is being moved over from 3G to 4G because the operators can charge more for 4G.
Sure with 4G, you'll (maybe) get your content quicker, but only because someone somewhere else is waiting whilst you occupy all the available and limited spectrum.
I work with an ex senior bod from Vodafone. He says they under invested for many years and are now having to 'recover' their position but it will take time. Also, our super duper new phones make the problem worse rather than better. I am with Vodafone and will move to EE. At least I can swap between 2 providers.
Robin Hood said:
Since 1995 I've been with One2One which became T-Mobile and is now EE. It was the only network that worked at home in 1995 and still is but the signal has deteriorated over the last year or so. I reckon it's a ploy to get people signed up to 4G and pay them more money.
This is due to Orange and TMobile merging and switching off transmitters that cover the same area. Except they dont necessarily overlap. In my case the Orange and Tmobile transmitters were on the same mast but with the transmission lobes aligned differently. I was originally on Tmobile and got nearly full signal at home. Then they became EE, switched off the Tmobile transmitter and now I get virtually nothing in the house.Quick call and a little bit of aggression on the phone and Tmobile sent me a free EE booster box. Now all of our mobiles get full strength at home :-)
It is a complicated situation as there are so many factors that influence coverage.
Lower frequencies e.g. 900MHz propagate better than high frequencies e.g. 1800MHz, 2100MHz. Lower frequencies are better to use when inside buildings.
The antenna design of the handset/device also impacts as does the user holding it, this was demonstrated very well by Apple with the 'death grip' phenomenon in the iphone. Higher frequencies are more affected by the 'death grip' than lower frequencies and 3G first came out on the highest frequency band at 2100MHz. EE's 4G offering is at 1800MHz.
The other aspect is the power control mechanism used, each of the technologies use power control on either the downlink, uplink or both so the signal indicator is not necessarily the best measure of signal performance. When using data services, the throughput or data speed is a better measure of performance rather than absolute signal level. You can have 1 bar lit on the signal indicator but get good data rates i.e. looks like crap coverage but good performance.
Lower frequencies e.g. 900MHz propagate better than high frequencies e.g. 1800MHz, 2100MHz. Lower frequencies are better to use when inside buildings.
The antenna design of the handset/device also impacts as does the user holding it, this was demonstrated very well by Apple with the 'death grip' phenomenon in the iphone. Higher frequencies are more affected by the 'death grip' than lower frequencies and 3G first came out on the highest frequency band at 2100MHz. EE's 4G offering is at 1800MHz.
The other aspect is the power control mechanism used, each of the technologies use power control on either the downlink, uplink or both so the signal indicator is not necessarily the best measure of signal performance. When using data services, the throughput or data speed is a better measure of performance rather than absolute signal level. You can have 1 bar lit on the signal indicator but get good data rates i.e. looks like crap coverage but good performance.
I see a lot of the vitriol is aimed at Vodafone - and I can understand why, if you're not on their 4G network.
And I might suggest that a lot of the comments about the latest phones being crap are just, well, basically crap!
Allow me to explain.
I re-signed to Vodafone about a year ago, for a 24-month contract, with a brand new Samsung Galaxy S4. I signed up to a '4G red' deal - which was 50 bucks a month, for unlimited calls and texts, with 12 gig of data. This price obviously included the brand-new Samsung. I was happy with the deal.
At first, last year, there was no 4G signal around here - down near the South Coast. But I was generally happy with my 3G signal - getting around an 18 meg download speed at home, and mostly the same whilst out and about.
But suddenly, this summer, the signal dropped off a cliff as other posters have described. I called Vodafone, who talked me through a few settings on my phone - turns out that it wasn't configured correctly to start receiving the new 4G signal. The bloke said that my new 4G configuration would be really good - and he also admitted that they were concentrating on getting their 4G network up and running perfectly - and that the 3G network was basically being completely neglected and run down in the process, hence why my 3G reception had died a death.
Anyway, once my phone was using 4G it was like a different world, and still is. I am amazed at how good my reception and connection is now. It is very unusual that I don't get a full-monty 4G signal banging into my phone, pretty much everywhere.
And at home, being as I am quite near to a Vodafone cell - I get full signal for everything, with a data connection giving me a consistent 28 meg download speed. It's amazing basically.
So that's the story with Vodafone. Either upgrade to 4G, or forget it. But if you do upgrade, trust me, it is awesome.
And I might suggest that a lot of the comments about the latest phones being crap are just, well, basically crap!
Allow me to explain.
I re-signed to Vodafone about a year ago, for a 24-month contract, with a brand new Samsung Galaxy S4. I signed up to a '4G red' deal - which was 50 bucks a month, for unlimited calls and texts, with 12 gig of data. This price obviously included the brand-new Samsung. I was happy with the deal.
At first, last year, there was no 4G signal around here - down near the South Coast. But I was generally happy with my 3G signal - getting around an 18 meg download speed at home, and mostly the same whilst out and about.
But suddenly, this summer, the signal dropped off a cliff as other posters have described. I called Vodafone, who talked me through a few settings on my phone - turns out that it wasn't configured correctly to start receiving the new 4G signal. The bloke said that my new 4G configuration would be really good - and he also admitted that they were concentrating on getting their 4G network up and running perfectly - and that the 3G network was basically being completely neglected and run down in the process, hence why my 3G reception had died a death.
Anyway, once my phone was using 4G it was like a different world, and still is. I am amazed at how good my reception and connection is now. It is very unusual that I don't get a full-monty 4G signal banging into my phone, pretty much everywhere.
And at home, being as I am quite near to a Vodafone cell - I get full signal for everything, with a data connection giving me a consistent 28 meg download speed. It's amazing basically.
So that's the story with Vodafone. Either upgrade to 4G, or forget it. But if you do upgrade, trust me, it is awesome.
I agree with the many comments on poor reception although I am on 3 and I seem to suffer less than most. Having said that, I'm frankly amazed that the system works as well as it does given the demands placed on it. If you ever get some time it is worth learning how the original GSM system works and in particular how it manages to carry so many conversations in such a hostile environment, with limited bandwidth and interference everywhere. The mathematics and engineering behind it is quite complex. I doff my hat to the folks that invented it.
I still find it astonishing that I can buy a handheld gadget for less than the price of a pizza, stand in virtually any populated location on the planet, and use this gadget to call up someone, who could be standing virtually anywhere else on the planet, even thousands of miles away, and talk to them in real time. It feels like magic. I never thought I would see any such thing in my lifetime.
I still find it astonishing that I can buy a handheld gadget for less than the price of a pizza, stand in virtually any populated location on the planet, and use this gadget to call up someone, who could be standing virtually anywhere else on the planet, even thousands of miles away, and talk to them in real time. It feels like magic. I never thought I would see any such thing in my lifetime.
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