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Old 01-01-2014, 16:06
beecart
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So as the clock struck midnight on New Years Eve how did your network perform ?

Let us know your locations and network and if you could call/text etc.

Happy new year to you all
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Old 01-01-2014, 16:21
xreyuk123
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Everything for me on 3 was instant near Liverpool
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Old 01-01-2014, 16:25
matty1000kk
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Service: EE 4G

Messages were sending although some slow to send at times. Calls fine and 4G internet no different from normal so not bad I would say overall.
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Old 01-01-2014, 16:35
qasdfdsaq
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So as the clock struck midnight on New Years Eve how did your network perform ?

Let us know your locations and network and if you could call/text etc.

Happy new year to you all
See previous post this morning -
In my first observation of a "stress test" of EE's network this year I have to say sadly, it fell apart.

With highest people density of the year in Edinburgh and something like 40,000 people under the cover of each tower (shared between networks), as expected upload was most heavily hit, 3G speed plummeted over 99% from 2.5Mbps up to 0.12Mbps up or less (if the test completed at all). Both incoming and outgoing calls and outgoing SMS started failing shortly after midnight, neither I or the people I was with could send SMS from anyy EE phone until about 00:40am.

On 4G the speed wasn't as badly hit, with download barely dropping 20% and upload gradually falling just under 50% from 27Mbps earlier on in the evening to 19Mbps just before midnight and hovering around 15-16Mbps shortly thereafter.

The 4G service however started seeing failures and became unavailable to many people shortly after 00:20, with both incoming and outgoing SMS and CSFB unavailable even if you were able to get a 4G signal, and didn't become stable again until about 01:30.

O2, ironically, didn't have any problems with calls or texts during that time, so I had to use my O2 phone to reply to all the happy new year texts I got on my EE handset (which was only able to receive incoming SMS, and even that only on 3G). 3G speeds also managed to stay a lot higher on O2 as well, despite similar numbers of masts in the city centre area.

Still. Gives a good idea of the immense capacity LTE brings, even under the crippling loads that bring EE's 3G and core networks to its knees, particularly on the upload. Where even "Advanced 3G" DC-HSDPA/HSPA+ could barely manage 0.12Mbps upload, LTE was still racing ahead at 125x the speed.
tl;dr: Edinburgh city centre, EE couldn't call or send texts, 4G speeds down a little before suffering registration failures, 3G speeds crippled to the point of unusability. O2 fine on both counts.

GiffGaff, surprisingly, seemed to have no issues at all either.
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Old 01-01-2014, 17:25
ash45
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my three phone was 100% perfect no delays in calls/txt and internet stayed at full speed even did a speedtest at midnight 20.26/2.90

on my ovivo phone (vodafone) all went to pot text's just kept failing did not try calls and data is never that good to compare much to

i will say there is a vodafone fault in my area where the 3g side has been pants and always sticking on G/E so that could have something to do with it, But considering that before and after midnight the calls/text's were working fine im more thinking it was just the usual crappy vodafone network not keeping up lol

mum o2 seamed fine also

Ash
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Old 01-01-2014, 18:51
MGS4SnakeRulez
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I'm on Orange and all was fine for me. Essex.
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Old 01-01-2014, 19:21
beecart
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I was in Leeds. O2 was fine for calls and texts !
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Old 01-01-2014, 19:26
Mark in Essex
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Can't remember - too drunk.
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Old 01-01-2014, 20:31
Skylover4life
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Vodadone 4G's performance as spot on, I sent a text to everyone on my phone (50ish texts) and didn't have a single failure and sent normal speed. Quickly started to get replies.
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Old 01-01-2014, 20:54
The Lord Lucan
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EE - Aberdeen.
Didn't do any speed tests at midnight as I was merry and dancing but calls came through and texts bang on midnight. My friend was Skype'ing his girlfriend in the USA (using EE3G) no issues at midnight.

Sounds like Edinburgh's network didn't do too badly considering there are 4 popular networks (3,EE, Ora/T-Mob) using the same backhaul and MBNL networks are by far the most used in Edinburgh. The midnight celebrations on one street/garden area attracted 80,000* people alone. 2 to 3 masts baring the load there.

* http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25560686
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Old 01-01-2014, 21:09
Three
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All texts went through in Bristol for me. Also had 19Mbps down on Three 3G.
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Old 01-01-2014, 21:14
MGS4SnakeRulez
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I think most networks can cope these days with juat the odd hiccup here and there.
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Old 01-01-2014, 21:14
jeffiner1892
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O2 just outside Newry in NI wasn't too bad. Texted someone at 00:01, sent straight away.
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Old 01-01-2014, 21:18
Jwhiterz
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All good on Three in the Brecon beacons normally all the networks die but for some reason Three stayed up strong!
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Old 01-01-2014, 22:28
qasdfdsaq
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Sounds like Edinburgh's network didn't do too badly considering there are 4 popular networks (3,EE, Ora/T-Mob) using the same backhaul and MBNL networks are by far the most used in Edinburgh. The midnight celebrations on one street/garden area attracted 80,000* people alone. 2 to 3 masts baring the load there.
I'd be interested in where you got that snippet of info from - everyone I know is either on O2 or EE but it's more like a 50-50 split. Nobody I know as far as I'm aware is on Vodafone or 3 apart from myself.

I guess we'll have to differ on what we consider "not too badly". I would call no calls or outgoing texts, and unusable internet, and 4G showing "Limited service" for over an hour "pretty bad".

And I doubt backhaul was the issue. Most backhauls are symmetric, fibre almost always is, and most fixed wireless backhauls I've set up or investigated were symmetric as well. Given the massively asymmetric air interfaces on 3G/4G the upload on backhaul, it's usually impossible to saturate the uplink on a fixed backhaul.

From what I saw spectrum management and interference was the biggest problem on 3G. My phone had to use maximum transmit power to reach the mast I was sitting under (1000x higher than normal transmit power in those circumstances) because there was so much interference. That didn't account for the lack of calls or messaging on 3G or 4G though, that was evidently another, separate problem.

Now that I think about it, given that forcefully switching to 4G running off the same mast still gave 35Mbps down, 16Mbps up, I doubt the capacity issue was anything to do with backhaul.

Granted, I wasn't on EE or 3 a year ago so I don't know what's considered a "normal" level of collapse on NYE on those networks around here, but the few years I've been on O2, they've consistently failed to fail around that time.
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Old 01-01-2014, 22:34
wrexham103.4
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fine in wrexham on EE
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Old 01-01-2014, 22:38
Kierankay
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6 of the people I was with who are on O2 their calls were going through and texts were sending instantly in Glasgow.
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Old 01-01-2014, 22:50
psionic
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O2 4G was fine in London too.
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Old 01-01-2014, 23:01
qasdfdsaq
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i will say there is a vodafone fault in my area where the 3g side has been pants and always sticking on G/E so that could have something to do with it, But considering that before and after midnight the calls/text's were working fine im more thinking it was just the usual crappy vodafone network not keeping up lol
Heh, if it's anything like my area that "fault" becomes the status-quo after 3 years.

Incidentally I do recall the wifi on most of the local and regional buses and the bus information systems run off Vodafone, though I doubt those will have been getting much use at that time of night.
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Old 02-01-2014, 01:17
Lummo
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EE was fine down here in Southampton, all calls and texts worked first time
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Old 02-01-2014, 01:35
Zee_Bukhari
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In London O2 and 3 were both pants. O2 remained cripples for me till around after 1am.
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Old 02-01-2014, 02:56
The Lord Lucan
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Well of course there would be interference issues also.. That many handsets all screaming for network attention. creates a lot of noise.

I'm not meaning the backhaul crumbled or became saturated.. It is far more complicated than that, but the site equipment is up to the job and the core network was fine. Also 4G gets priority after voice calls, but 3G would have been everyone's primary tech. 4G wouldn't have suffered as much, less interference in comparison as 2g 1800 & 4G 1800 would have been relatively quiet to 2100 3G.

My knowledge is based on those working at independents ie CPW/P4U and at the networks themselves.. MBNL have a big chunk of the Edinburgh market both historic and new connections.

Most of my friends are on Vodafone. Doesn't mean it has more customers or a better network as a handful of friends hardly makes up a cities worth of market penetration.
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Old 02-01-2014, 04:06
qasdfdsaq
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Unless somehow, there's some unknown causative factor preventing me from meeting MBNL customers, I guess what you're saying is they've become a victim of their own success, the reason EE was overloaded and O2 weren't was because, O2 doesn't have as many customers? Guess that means for the end user, it always pays to be with the smaller network!

Anyhow, the site and core equipment can't have been both fine, as clearly something must have failed to cause so many call, messaging, and data failures. If everything was "fine", simply put, services wouldn't have stopped working. Unless you're just referring to only the IP core, but there's far more than that involved in a working mobile network, as evidenced by the fact internet data worked on 4G but mobility, registration, messaging, and fallback were all faulted.

Funnily enough I just recalled one of the people I was out with last night calling her dad about 10pm just so she could get through "Before the networks go down". I didn't believe her and was like "What? The networks don't go down at midnight, they're not that crap these days!". Until mine did. Then she said "Told you so, happens every year". Eh.
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Old 02-01-2014, 04:48
ash45
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Heh, if it's anything like my area that "fault" becomes the status-quo after 3 years.

Incidentally I do recall the wifi on most of the local and regional buses and the bus information systems run off Vodafone, though I doubt those will have been getting much use at that time of night.
lol yes it has been at fault for over a month now, with it only been my back up phone i dont mind so much as long as i can at least recive calls its fine, My cuz on the other hand on a £40+ a month contract is not right happy about not been able to use her phone for internet, she don't have broadband as she just uses her phone for everything, So not like she can use wifi and trying to load even the facebook app on GPRS is shocking as most of the post dont show up for a few mins

the exact quote

We're trying to fix a network issue which might be affecting call coverage. There are some challenging circumstances - so it's taking us longer than usual to get to the bottom of things. We'll update this page as soon as we know more.
so will give them a few year to fix lol

Ash
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Old 02-01-2014, 10:36
flagpole
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See previous post this morning -


tl;dr: Edinburgh city centre, EE couldn't call or send texts, 4G speeds down a little before suffering registration failures, 3G speeds crippled to the point of unusability. O2 fine on both counts.

GiffGaff, surprisingly, seemed to have no issues at all either.
would i be right in thinking that whilst everyone else was trying to send messages you were repeatedly running speed tests?
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