Just been on the phone to Orange as my iphone is losing signal and wont connect to the Tmob signal either. This happens on a second iphone and on a Nokia. Always in the same areas, never used to but does now.

Anyway, the people I spoke to confirmed there are 2 underpowered masts in the area whilst the upgrades on them are carried out (started in October finishing May) and advised the following:

Turn off 3G in these areas to allow the phone to use a weaker signal as it wont select Tmob, Orange or vice versa otherwise.

Secondly, if I use WIFI in these areas to turn that off as the WIFI and 3G signals compete with each other and with a weakened 3G signal WIFI will win thus rendering the TOTAL phone signal unusable.

Truth or complete rubbish?

Rubbish. The whole point is that WiFi and 3G are on different bandwidths. So there wont be any "competition" as they suggested. Can't see how turning off 3G would help either - if there's enough signal to get 3G reception, you can make and receive calls. If there isn't, your phone will drop to 2G and you'll still be able to make and receive calls. You could try turning off 3G anyway to see how strong the 2G signal is, and if it's 3 bars or above you might as well just keep it off until they've done the repairs to save on battery.

Apart from the wi-fi issue, which sounds like nonsense, I have noticed recently with Orange that in some areas, I just get no signal and it doesn't drop down to a 2G connection automatically. If I turn 3G off, I will get an Orange 2G connection. It doesn't surprise me though, because Orange has been utterly useless recently. All those smug adverts about being able to use T-Mobile's signal are just an insult, because the service has in fact become much, much worse.