Town next to mine is only a single speed 4G area (not yellow on map) but has 20Mhz coverage but max speeds I've seen are 30 to 40 mbps. Whereas at home (yellow on map) also 20Mhz but I've seen 60 to 75mbps.
I assumed the backhaul needs to be upgraded as well and both is required before the yellow shading gets applied.
Throughout the South I've not seen any area that's still 10MHz since the summer so I'm not sure if or how many 10MHz areas are still left. As you say though that doesn't mean it's classed as double speed as there are other requirements.
But this is a slightly different issue to the one above. What I meant was that if you are 20MHz double speed area but don't have a double speed account, I'm thinking it will still show as 20MHz on your phone but your speed will be artificially throttled.
0.03 download and upload didnt even complete on a 3g (H+) mast just now in Newcastle city centre, I imagine it's getting hammered with how densely populated it is here but it really is unusable. Not really an issue as I have wifi in the office
What I meant was that if you are 20MHz double speed area but don't have a double speed account, I'm thinking it will still show as 20MHz on your phone but your speed will be artificially throttled.
I can confirm that. My friend is on a 512mb plan with the same phone handset as myself. His speedtests stop around 30Mbps in areas where I've seen 60 or higher.
Well I had to attend a couple of meetings in London yesterday and then had to wait around until the evening for the annual team visit/ booze up at Winter wonderland.
So had a few hours spare so went around doing some network testing using my EE double speed enabled account in my IPhone 6 and my work S5 on Vodafone 4G I also borrowed a Galaxy Alpha off a friend so that I could try carrier aggregation.
Vodafone have as you would expect good 4G coverage all around using band 20 at 800mhz speeds I found in average about 10-20 meg so not over impressive. They had very little band 7 at 2600 MHz that I could find on my travels and where available it wont allow handsets to lock onto unless combining for 4G +
when I had both frequencies on Vodafone I did get speeds tests of over 180 meg so very fast but would expect that as hardly anybody on 2600.
On EE it was quite different excellent 4G coverage all over with lots of band 7 at 2600 MHz which allowed my iPhone to use with most results being 30-40 meg. It was not so fast using band 3 at 1800 MHz with speeds around 12-20 meg.
Using carrier aggregation on EE which was very widespread but speeds were slower than Vodsfone normally 100-140 meg this probably due to more users on both frequencies.
So EE are a lot further forward with 4G+ coverage which I found all the way out past Brent Cross going out of London. All I need to do now is wait for a decent cat6 handset to come to replace my S4 as using for phone and pictures the Alpha didn't perform as well as S5
Vodafone have as you would expect good 4G coverage all around using band 20 at 800mhz speeds I found in average about 10-20 meg so not over impressive. They had very little band 7 at 2600 MHz that I could find on my travels and where available it wont allow handsets to lock onto unless combining for 4G +
when I had both frequencies on Vodafone I did get speeds tests of over 180 meg so very fast but would expect that as hardly anybody on 2600.
EE definitely have more 2600 coverage in London. They have been installing it for over a year now. I didn't notice any 2600 sites on Vodafone until a few months ago.
But I think you've got the Vodafone 2600 setup wrong. Non 4G+ handsets still use 2600 on its own (I know as I have Vodafone for work on an iPhone 5S). In fact they prefer it as every Vodafone 2600 site I've seen is set to priority 6 where as Vodafone 800 sites are priority 5 (LTE priority is 0 - 7 with 0 the lowest).
Sat in the car outside my parents house earlier and noticed 4g. Ran a test and got 88mb down! Coverage map shows he only gets 4g outside. Outside my house which should get 4g I only get 3mb on 3g
Japaul- No it was definitely using band 20 at 800mhz majority of the time even in areas with strong 2600 signal like Westminster, in fact I noticed that was the same on my friends S4 on Vodafone yesterday.
I wonder if they have set all the IPhones to prefer 2600 and All other handsets 800 ? That is unless I just chose a bad day and was network issues all over but the 2600 side of things worked fine on carrier aggregation and did pick it up at Kings Cross/ St Pancras and Victoria
0.03 download and upload didnt even complete on a 3g (H+) mast just now in Newcastle city centre, I imagine it's getting hammered with how densely populated it is here but it really is unusable. Not really an issue as I have wifi in the office
Looks like EE has *finally* made some inroads into Cornwall, they're claiming 4G around Wadebridge/Padstow/Rock and Redruth now.
(I assume the former is possibly because North Cornwall is where the well-to-do Londoners are buying entire villages, but Redruth is pretty much the opposite socio-economically)
Some of it is double-speed too. Hopefully it's the start of a rapid expansion
Japaul- No it was definitely using band 20 at 800mhz majority of the time even in areas with strong 2600 signal like Westminster, in fact I noticed that was the same on my friends S4 on Vodafone yesterday.
I wonder if they have set all the IPhones to prefer 2600 and All other handsets 800 ? That is unless I just chose a bad day and was network issues all over but the 2600 side of things worked fine on carrier aggregation and did pick it up at Kings Cross/ St Pancras and Victoria
Surely LTE should connect to 2600 where available, then 1800 when 2600 fades and then 800 when 1800 fades.
In this way a large rural transmitter for example would handle all close users on 2600, medium range users on 1800 and long range/indoor users at 800.
Thereby allowing maximum usage of the available bandwidth.
is that now how it works??
Just moved into my house in Woore Cheshire/Shropshire, it's fairly rural and out in the sticks and to my surprise I've got a good 4g signal, 30mbps despite no 4g on the coverage map for miles around, thanks EE! Glad I ordered my Dan and Phil sim Now! http://s22.postimg.org/vuorjyb3l/image.jpg
Japaul- No it was definitely using band 20 at 800mhz majority of the time even in areas with strong 2600 signal like Westminster, in fact I noticed that was the same on my friends S4 on Vodafone yesterday.
I wonder if they have set all the IPhones to prefer 2600 and All other handsets 800 ? That is unless I just chose a bad day and was network issues all over but the 2600 side of things worked fine on carrier aggregation and did pick it up at Kings Cross/ St Pancras and Victoria
Okay uno, if that's what you are seeing then fair enough. I've always seen different behaviour when I've looked and it doesn't depend on handset as I've tried it in a Nexus 5 and got the same results. Even on the sites outside London I've always seen that the reselection priority is one notch higher for 2600 sites. Maybe as you say something is up at the moment and to be honest it's all fairly new to Vodafone. I never saw any 2600 sites until a few months ago where as on EE they first turned up over a year ago.
I'd love to say I'll take another look at it next week but I won't get another chance until next year. Yeah!
Surely LTE should connect to 2600 where available, then 1800 when 2600 fades and then 800 when 1800 fades.
In this way a large rural transmitter for example would handle all close users on 2600, medium range users on 1800 and long range/indoor users at 800.
Thereby allowing maximum usage of the available bandwidth.
is that now how it works??
Yes that how it should work and in general that's how it does on EE where they have both 2600 and 1800
The yellow shading sometimes takes ages to be applied, there are pleanty places I know that have the backhaul & are 20 but are still showing as green.
it could be the sites you are seeing that are slower are microwaved and the main site is seeing the backhaul being near saturated and the sites have to load balance between them creating the slower speed. However these issues are being routed out and as of this summer many backhaul issues were sorted that should stop this but you'll get the occasional one. They have started to change their policy on when to activate a site with 4G as before, less than speedy backhaul was ok to "get away with" for a short period but now it must be of a good quality before they do or the main link site has to be able to handle the other sites connected to it. Hence why some quieter new sites like the ones Devon etc have seen lately are getting impressive speeds.
Ah, see, now that makes sense.
I do wish you'd post these quality nuggets sooner then would understand how the the hell I was getting near to 140 meg sat in a lay-by in a small village (Bickington) near the A38.
Passing this mast last night I can see a MW dish pointing in the direction of the main Ashburton mast (about 1 mile away) . Big 25/30 metre tapered lattice tower with all manner of services bolted to it (including ALL mobile networks). Both double speed. Ashburton mast clearly under load though as speeds excellent but not amazing.
Bickington mast as you know though, covers very few dwellings, just the A38 and is always storming on speed.
A small 'lollipop' on street mast near me had some major work last month. Two new cabinets added (in addition to existing one) with a new tri sector antenna.
The site is only an old Orange GPRS fill in where 3G coverage is already very good.
It's annoying as the mast is probably being used by no-one at all, whilst one mile down the road is a major village served by a massive old Orange mast which gives great coverage, but only has Edge!>:(
Have EE finished their cull of legacy sites now as i'm fearing this one isn't being upgraded for a reason?
Looks like EE has *finally* made some inroads into Cornwall, they're claiming 4G around Wadebridge/Padstow/Rock and Redruth now.
(I assume the former is possibly because North Cornwall is where the well-to-do Londoners are buying entire villages, but Redruth is pretty much the opposite socio-economically)
Some of it is double-speed too. Hopefully it's the start of a rapid expansion
Bloody hell, YES!!. Thank the lord for that.
I thought you would never see any. Nice one EE
I see also a large area below Bridgwater now on, a bit near Taunton, Tiverton. and Holsworthy.
Wonder how many farmers buying cattle will need the 4G?
: )
Bloody hell, YES!!. Thank the lord for that.
I thought you would never see any. Nice one EE
I see also a large area below Bridgwater now on, a bit near Taunton, Tiverton. and Holsworthy.
Wonder how many farmers buying cattle will need the 4G?
: )
They need low latency and fast reload times for sites like eCow.com
Well the mast near me is still down and EE have no idea when it's likely to be fixed, last update they have is from the 7th Dec. Can't see it being sorted this year now which is a shame
Jack_Swingker/Benster- EE are slowly upgrading their base stations around Corby they are being fitted with the new Huawei base stations around the town and some NSN kit in more rural areas.
In the last 2 months they have done upgrades near Rockingham race track, ASDA,Around the Cube and the railway station. They have also done rural areas like Middleton,East Carlton,Stoke Albany and Cottingham they have all been fitted with 4G equipment and the urban ones are currently have backhaul upgrades. I expect 4G in and around Corby early in 2015
Comments
Throughout the South I've not seen any area that's still 10MHz since the summer so I'm not sure if or how many 10MHz areas are still left. As you say though that doesn't mean it's classed as double speed as there are other requirements.
But this is a slightly different issue to the one above. What I meant was that if you are 20MHz double speed area but don't have a double speed account, I'm thinking it will still show as 20MHz on your phone but your speed will be artificially throttled.
I can confirm that. My friend is on a 512mb plan with the same phone handset as myself. His speedtests stop around 30Mbps in areas where I've seen 60 or higher.
So had a few hours spare so went around doing some network testing using my EE double speed enabled account in my IPhone 6 and my work S5 on Vodafone 4G I also borrowed a Galaxy Alpha off a friend so that I could try carrier aggregation.
Vodafone have as you would expect good 4G coverage all around using band 20 at 800mhz speeds I found in average about 10-20 meg so not over impressive. They had very little band 7 at 2600 MHz that I could find on my travels and where available it wont allow handsets to lock onto unless combining for 4G +
when I had both frequencies on Vodafone I did get speeds tests of over 180 meg so very fast but would expect that as hardly anybody on 2600.
On EE it was quite different excellent 4G coverage all over with lots of band 7 at 2600 MHz which allowed my iPhone to use with most results being 30-40 meg. It was not so fast using band 3 at 1800 MHz with speeds around 12-20 meg.
Using carrier aggregation on EE which was very widespread but speeds were slower than Vodsfone normally 100-140 meg this probably due to more users on both frequencies.
So EE are a lot further forward with 4G+ coverage which I found all the way out past Brent Cross going out of London. All I need to do now is wait for a decent cat6 handset to come to replace my S4 as using for phone and pictures the Alpha didn't perform as well as S5
EE definitely have more 2600 coverage in London. They have been installing it for over a year now. I didn't notice any 2600 sites on Vodafone until a few months ago.
But I think you've got the Vodafone 2600 setup wrong. Non 4G+ handsets still use 2600 on its own (I know as I have Vodafone for work on an iPhone 5S). In fact they prefer it as every Vodafone 2600 site I've seen is set to priority 6 where as Vodafone 800 sites are priority 5 (LTE priority is 0 - 7 with 0 the lowest).
I wonder if they have set all the IPhones to prefer 2600 and All other handsets 800 ? That is unless I just chose a bad day and was network issues all over but the 2600 side of things worked fine on carrier aggregation and did pick it up at Kings Cross/ St Pancras and Victoria
Now got a 4g phone and not lost data signal at work
Or anywhere else for that matter
I work and live in newcastle
When i was on 3g i kept loosing signal on H+ too
Now i am on 4G no problems so far
What was the problem when i was on 3g
(I assume the former is possibly because North Cornwall is where the well-to-do Londoners are buying entire villages, but Redruth is pretty much the opposite socio-economically)
Some of it is double-speed too. Hopefully it's the start of a rapid expansion
Surely LTE should connect to 2600 where available, then 1800 when 2600 fades and then 800 when 1800 fades.
In this way a large rural transmitter for example would handle all close users on 2600, medium range users on 1800 and long range/indoor users at 800.
Thereby allowing maximum usage of the available bandwidth.
is that now how it works??
http://s22.postimg.org/vuorjyb3l/image.jpg
Okay uno, if that's what you are seeing then fair enough. I've always seen different behaviour when I've looked and it doesn't depend on handset as I've tried it in a Nexus 5 and got the same results. Even on the sites outside London I've always seen that the reselection priority is one notch higher for 2600 sites. Maybe as you say something is up at the moment and to be honest it's all fairly new to Vodafone. I never saw any 2600 sites until a few months ago where as on EE they first turned up over a year ago.
I'd love to say I'll take another look at it next week but I won't get another chance until next year. Yeah!
Yes that how it should work and in general that's how it does on EE where they have both 2600 and 1800
Ah, see, now that makes sense.
I do wish you'd post these quality nuggets sooner then would understand how the the hell I was getting near to 140 meg sat in a lay-by in a small village (Bickington) near the A38.
Passing this mast last night I can see a MW dish pointing in the direction of the main Ashburton mast (about 1 mile away) . Big 25/30 metre tapered lattice tower with all manner of services bolted to it (including ALL mobile networks). Both double speed. Ashburton mast clearly under load though as speeds excellent but not amazing.
Bickington mast as you know though, covers very few dwellings, just the A38 and is always storming on speed.
The site is only an old Orange GPRS fill in where 3G coverage is already very good.
It's annoying as the mast is probably being used by no-one at all, whilst one mile down the road is a major village served by a massive old Orange mast which gives great coverage, but only has Edge!>:(
Have EE finished their cull of legacy sites now as i'm fearing this one isn't being upgraded for a reason?
EE won't be switching any more sites off.
Well unless it's for a different reason other than the network optimisation scheme.
Bloody hell, YES!!. Thank the lord for that.
I thought you would never see any. Nice one EE
I see also a large area below Bridgwater now on, a bit near Taunton, Tiverton. and Holsworthy.
Wonder how many farmers buying cattle will need the 4G?
: )
Thanks
From what I've been told Corby won't get 4g anytime soon will be ages away, but could be wrong hope it will be soon
In the last 2 months they have done upgrades near Rockingham race track, ASDA,Around the Cube and the railway station. They have also done rural areas like Middleton,East Carlton,Stoke Albany and Cottingham they have all been fitted with 4G equipment and the urban ones are currently have backhaul upgrades. I expect 4G in and around Corby early in 2015