I left O2 a few years ago as 3G coverage was the worst out of all the UK networks, now around here anyway its the best, Any local town I have been to now displays an H with full bars, even in my house in a tiny village in the back of beyond I get an H, What happened to O2, They have went from being the worst to being the best, I've also noticed Orange/T-Mo seemed to have slipped badly around here.

02 have refarmed some 900Mhz GSm capacity to UMTS 3G across the UK so they have much better coverage, capacity and at 900Mz far better building penetration than all the others with 2100Mhz UMTS.

Interesting that a difference has been noticed - how is that making a difference in comparison to previous experience of 02's 3G data coverage?

Previously I could only pick up O2 3G in Belfast city centre, only place I ever saw it say 3G, and now as I say H in all major towns I've been in lately, even in my house in the back of beyond.

If we look at the O2 3G coverage in N.Ireland in 2009 http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/binari...erage_maps.pdf Outside Belfast no coverage

And then look at the 3G Coverage map now http://www.o2.co.uk/coveragechecker 70-80% of N.Ireland is covered.

In my experience, O2's 3G coverage is just as crap as it has always been. At least around here.

It always used to be really bad but my brother had just got an O2 iPhone and it seems to be really quite good, full bars in the house where I get 1 - 2 on Orange, Three is the same. Also it gets better coverage in town.

You are seeing some areas now which have the 900Mhz coverage, if you have a phone that supports it. This is improving their 3G which has been years behind the rest in terms of coverage.

Where I get 3G, the speeds are better than they used to be. I often get faster 3G than my home broadband now (we're a long way from the exchange).

Excellent round here on 3 in the Cotswolds, even driving towards Oxford in the open country.

Still the lowest 3G coverage of all the networks. Just saying.

Not from my experience, from which that would currently be Vodafone.

Anyway not sure which company is upgrading NI, I presume its Ericsson as they are upgrading everything north of Birmingham on the mainland and Nokia Siemens Networks are upgrading everything south. Should be quite interesting as the new gear can be LTE enabled pretty quickly when the need arises.

Brilliant coverage here H al the way. Best coverage of all the networks in my area, which is why I use their network.
Not into slagging off the others really. I may move one day and the circumstances may require a change of provider............

Yup, same here.

O2's "standard" 3G2100 coverage is downright embarrassing compared to all the other networks here (weak and overloaded for quite some distance). As for O2's 3G900 though... well... to be fair when it decides to kick in it's rather good, noticeably better than normal... WHEN it decides to kick in, as I say.

Most of the time though it's the usual nonsense, struggling to reach even one bar - I don't know, I guess the 3G900 mast be under-powered or something.

When it comes to communications, everything's dead in Norfolk.

My nearest mast in 4-5 miles away in the next town.

It certainly feels like that at times. Three's 3G is solid though, solid enough to select WCDMA only on my handset anyway, so it's all good.


4-5 miles? Huh, as far as O2 masts go my nearest 3G2100 mast is just over a mile away but heavily congested. My nearest 3G900 mast is at most the same distance away.

I live in the middle of nowhere and there are no 3G masts for O2 lol, Only Three has 3G here but thanks to MBNL, Orange & T-Mobile now also do

They use limited spectrum for it seeing they have to provide the same 2G service currently. So the 3G900 masts might be having congestion/capacity issues and kicking you back to the 2100 mast instead.

I'm a bit dim - you all say H is 3G.
Why does my phone say mostly H but sometimes 3G ?

3G is standard UMTS up to 384kbps connection, there are still some legacy 02 sites that need to be upgraded or don't have the backhaul to support faster speeds.

H (3.5G) is HSDPA/HSUPA/HSPA with various multi-megabit connection depending on network and handset.

H+ (3.75G) is HSPA+ again if your handset and network supports it, even faster connection.

Also some handsets like the later iPhone's only display 3G for all 3G and above connection types.

Thank you.

I used to get 2bars 3g in the greater belfast area in work a few months ago. Then one day I woke up and i had a full H. I went into work and asked the other lad on o2 if his went up too, he said year, all the way up to full 3G for him (iphone) Apparently they updated all the lines a few months ago.

While o2 are far from the best for 3G I have noticed a marked improvement to their signal in my local area.

So much so that I have been able to move back to giffgaff
(Which will be very good for my wallet)

About a year ago I was forced to leave them after getting very frustrated with the poor signal and slow speed around here on the o2 network but now at least 90% of the time I can get HSDPA with a fairly decent speed so back to giffgaff I go

O2 has always been good in my city, 3G has been available for years but as of late it seems to have improved in areas outwith the city centre. I have always had O2 3G at my home address but it has been a bit ropey on B Roads not too far from where I live. Recently it has been solid though so I guess more sites have been enabled to improve coverage.

O2 still have the lowest number of customer complaints by a huge margin which must say something about the service they provide.

I will agree that things are getting better and i'd imagine that The number of complaints is quite a bit affected by the fact O2 have many more business customers (large contracts) than the others.. notably Three and who it's demographic of customers are.

let me know when its good, as its shite for me in london