Is the UK's phone network faulty?
Is the UK's phone network faulty?
Author
Discussion

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

71 months

Sunday 11th October 2020
quotequote all
[redacted]

996owner

1,460 posts

251 months

Sunday 11th October 2020
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Networks oversold and working close to max capacity. Then there's planning issues when they try and add new sites...

Mr E

22,529 posts

276 months

Sunday 11th October 2020
quotequote all
996owner said:
Networks oversold and working close to max capacity. Then there's planning issues when they try and add new sites...
I doubt very much it’s a network capacity issue.

500 Miles

1,798 posts

243 months

Sunday 11th October 2020
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
A large number of cell sites are nearing capacity with london having a huge number of black octagon sites (other providers may call them something else but basically cells that are having intermittent issues due to capacity). Caused primarily by huge increase in data usage without the increase in investment, big problem for the mobile operators. Probably not too surprising with people now streaming video on their phones whilst being on all you can eat tariffs.

mr_spock

3,368 posts

232 months

Monday 12th October 2020
quotequote all
Try calling from a land line, or buy Skype credit and call from that.

mcflurry

9,179 posts

270 months

Monday 12th October 2020
quotequote all
Which network are you on?

Would an MVNO will rank lower than a Business contract, if there's not enough capacity?

PrinceRupert

11,585 posts

102 months

Monday 12th October 2020
quotequote all
mcflurry said:
Which network are you on?

Would an MVNO will rank lower than a Business contract, if there's not enough capacity?
No, MVNOs typically agree equivalence provisions with host MNOs. They wouldn't generally accept being treated as second class (at least, certainly not the big consumer ones - not sure about the ethnic ones).

996owner

1,460 posts

251 months

Tuesday 13th October 2020
quotequote all
Mr E said:
996owner said:
Networks oversold and working close to max capacity. Then there's planning issues when they try and add new sites...
I doubt very much it’s a network capacity issue.
In my past working life I use to work alongside a very large transmitter service provider, they had mobile phone kit within their portfolio. Their engineers said the phone networks are maxed out, that was a good few years ago. Now more of us have mobiles and as said above we stream content and use video calls.
even our vending machines in the staff canteen use mobile data for card purchases.

When EE took over TMobile, in most areas where they had duplicate TX sites 1 was closed down, so double your customer base and close half your sites down... hmm capacity issues

Mr E

22,529 posts

276 months

Tuesday 13th October 2020
quotequote all
996owner said:
In my past working life I use to work alongside a very large transmitter service provider, they had mobile phone kit within their portfolio. Their engineers said the phone networks are maxed out, that was a good few years ago. Now more of us have mobiles and as said above we stream content and use video calls.
even our vending machines in the staff canteen use mobile data for card purchases.

When EE took over TMobile, in most areas where they had duplicate TX sites 1 was closed down, so double your customer base and close half your sites down... hmm capacity issues
Understood. But the vast majority of the traffic is background data. A modern telecoms network should prioritise real time service (i.e. interactive voice (low latency) and streaming data (higher latency) ) over other services.

Without seeing the logging, anything that’s dropping voice calls will trigger crappy KPIs and a pretty rapid investigation.

Or at least it would on the networks I worked on.

jonamv8

3,236 posts

183 months

Tuesday 13th October 2020
quotequote all
I’ve been saying this for ages.