It's not quite a full share though is it? just using the same towers and 1 network looking after certain areas and the other looking after the others.

It is a full share but looking after the network will be split into regions.

The two networks with the worst 3G coverage are merging some of their operations to produce one 3G network with terrible coverage?

It's not really a step up is it?

Where I live Vodafone 3G is non existant (Works Phone) and O2's 3G coverage at best is intermittent.

Wait until these two roll out 4G, but only in areas that are easily adapted, leaving shed loads of users without any 3G or 4G but still with good old GSM 900.

My Orange 3G signal is also utterly appalling (1 bar, on a good day).

how about t mobile?

Still 2 bars...

Bars are only a guesstimate and there is no standardisation of them so they are not a reliable way of comparing signal strength.

In Seaham County Durham, O2 and Vodafone are appalling for 3G coverage which a couple of friends have found out to their cost. T-mobile and Orange are best.

When I went down to London a few weeks ago for the weekend I noticed that T-Mobile had excellent coverage for 3G and it never dropped once.

Yeah I know. I will go into the settings later on and quote the specifics when I have time .
Last edited by Mr. Cool : 02-09-2012 at 13:07

O2 signals are constant crap wherever you are.

The Register does not count as it's a joke of a site

Was in High Wycombe yesterday on the outskirts of the town and all i could get was rock solid 2G, had to travel toward the main town just to get a 3G signal.

High wycombe is quite a large place and it just goes to show how poor o2 is that i coudn't get a 3G signal a couple of minutes outside the town.

O2's 2G network is very good, as is the customer service. 3G however is a mess.

* Only 85% population coverage (O2's own figures)

* Mostly HSDPA, not HSPA+

* When 3G is not available you don't even EDGE in a lot of cases, just GPRS which with the average web page these days, could take 3 Minutes+ to load.

* Many hops in O2's network before finally sending your request out on the internet, and many of those hops very latent - evident in a traceroute, not the same on other networks

* Doesn't even perform that well in coverage areas, intermittent

* Very scaled down grainy images on websites that make your £500 smartphone with retina display look like a cheap knock-off from China, a.k.a screen quality for web browsing that matches the 'airphone 5'

I think that just about sums it up ! I know somebody will come along as say it happens to work where they live / work, but that's my experience of testing and comparing O2 against other major networks in various places.

I can pretty much agree completely with this.

In some of the villages around me there are not-spots where no other network is available except O2 2G. I know of a few major companies who operate here whose company phones are on O2 (or Vodafone whose 2G coverage is also brilliant) for that reason, but they aren't fussed about data. (I await postings from a certain person about how Sky use O2 and think they're the best thing since sliced bread).

However for 99% of my county it appears that T-Mobile/3/Orange 3G is available so it's a no-brainer if you have a half decent phone and want a 3G signal most of the time.

If I strategically place my phone on the handles of a window in one room of my house, I can get a couple of bars of O2 3G. Not sure where it's coming from (there's an A road not a million miles away so might be a mast there) but it's dire. In my house no network does particularly well, but I can usually get a bit of 3G fairly easily. I can echo the statements from other people who say that O2 3G doesn't exist until you get into the town centre, and even then it's not that great.

i agree in wrexham o2 3g is poor, lots of black spots in the town centre, soon as you venture out of town - im talking less than 1/4 mile - no 3g

O2 are crap. I switched to 3 a month or so ago and as well as having much better signal you actually get a proper HSDPA network. O2 are a joke, frankly.

Its easy to bypass O2's Image compression:

APN: mobile.o2.co.uk
Username: bypass
Password: password

http://blog.gadgethelpline.com/uk-ne...ontract-users/

Just get a Giffgaff sim which runs on O2 and save yourself a bit of cash. I am putting my payback towards my next i phone

Just like the giffgaff forums...............a pointless answer. You don't get Kudos or payback on here you know??

I think the title of the thread could replace O2 with any of the other networks. Dependent on user experience, location, phone.
No doubt the 'mines better than yours' argument will roll on for years. I guess 4G will help, whenever it turns up, but I'm guessing there will be the same debate going, on in one form or another, even then.
Not sure why someone would be suffering in their own area. Surely research would have led them to the best coverage for that, at the very least?

I was on Giffgaff, got great signal everywhere including 3G...but terrible data speeds even when I had full HSPA signal.

Switched to Three and I get fast data even with minimal signal.

You miss the point
I would not praise giffgaff on here or on the Giffgaff site if I wasn't getting a good hassle free service. The payback on the Giffgaff site is nice but if I was getting a rubbish deal off them I would move as it's only a 1month rolling sim only deal

So hassle free.

O2 3G launched around here at Easter, We used to get full bars H+ all around the house, now its 1 bar on the windowsill what ever happened.

Goodness knows, the users that now have their 3G back after the national data, outgoing text and account balance outage today on Giffgaff are reporting incredibly slow data speeds like 140KB/s, when they post this on the GG forum you get a bunch of useless lemmings on the forum saying there's a lot of people online at the moment and please can they 'try a bit later'.

Some of these people have huge post counts and they are just posting any made up crap to earn free airtime, that's not a way to provide any kind of useful network support really.