It's weird. It's like they all favour some areas and not others.
Here VO2 masts are mainly existing TV or radio towers whereas Orange and TM peppered the countryside with masts and then VO2 came along and rented them.

Planned means nothing we've been planned twice and taken off with no upgrades planned, as long as a piece of strong

Ah, the days of analogue. When Cellnet first launched in 1985 they had a single base station on the BT tower that covered almost all of greater London! Try doing that now...

In those days Vodafone & Cellnet used to compete on who had the better coverage. It's a shame no network does nowadays. Users seem to accept 'Not Spots' with every network as just a fact of life.

Would give impressive handover failure stats though!

Roll on to today, as O2, and they now cover London with the BT Tower, Crystal Palace and Alexandra Palace. Triple the number of sites!

I don't go to London much.
Have O2 started to roll out this new fangled "2G" or GSM or whatever it's called these days yet?
Imagine it from 3 sites as well.
Wow!

They're still working on it.

Meanwhile, I assume everyone knows that Three was named that because it launched with three sites, in London, Birmingham and Manchester.

What was their coverage actually like back then? I remember they did get a bad reputation for it not handing over to the (then) o2 2g fallback properly.. so people would force 2g only before they detected it.

Anyone got any maps or memories of what the experience was like? I remember one of their price plans being £99 and was called "caboodle" but not much else!

It wasn't just the lack of coverage, but the unreliability even when you were on their 3G network. Calls would drop anyway. Most notably, there was absolutely no internet access - the fast speeds offered by 3G were used exclusively to let you download paid-for content from their walled garden. They also wanted you to pay 50p/min for video calls. Compare this to the later 3G efforts by the other networks, where internet access was explicitly made available.

The phones were crap too (I had some NEC thing). Great big bricks with poorly implemented features (I remember one of their phones having Bluetooth, but you couldn't use it for data transfer) and crap battery life. Especially if you were on pay as you go, because 3 didn't offer the really good phones. I had a Nokia smartphone as well and kept using it even though it was 2G only

3's PAYG at the time was a lot like the bundles they offer today - you didn't get much credit, you got minutes/texts/video calls instead, with a 30 day expiry for the whole lot

I am in Cornwall. I had "threepay" in 2004 or 2005. I remember my village not having coverage, but the town a few miles away did have 3G. It was interesting to go around the supermarket, and try some of these services out that I couldn't try at home.

I tried them again in 2007 when they were beginning to reinvent themselves as the "network built for the internet". Coverage even in rural areas wasn't bad - it was better than Vodafone or O2 has today

https://web.archive.org/web/20040609...nthlyindex.omp

there you go

and the price PDF :

https://web.archive.org/web/20040915...ce+guide.v.pdf

My G900/U2100 mast appeared on the planned 4G about 6 months ago, but was rapidly taken off and has not yet reappeared.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000903...kit/index.html

Theres another one

I remember Orange Value Promise where they literally duplicated any other networks plan.

That would be unheard of now !

I can see the old orange everyday 50 plan in that link.
Every student I knew around the late 90's early 00's was on that plan so they could talk and text cheaply when away from home.
I'm sure EE still gets a good deal of brand loyalty so to speak from people who joined that deal and have stayed with them ever since.
Of course every students everyday 50 plan wasn't complete without that essential accessory the Nokia 5110 or often for girls the little 8210

Sim Only.

20gb for £20 at the moment!

https://simstore.vodafone.co.uk/

Have you tried getting through to them to get it.....been waiting 49 mins on ohone

Not after getting it, just helping people out.

Available online.

Ive just brought a sim only for £19.80 which includes 4gb of data which was just before chistmas, and im still on the unlimited data test drive, would they let me change my plan to the 20gb for £20 a month.

No they wouldn't. They would change you to that plan but at £40 a month.

No, you can't change to another SIM only plan. I asked today. You can (or will) upgrade only to a handset tariff.

Well you can migrate to another SIM only plan without changing your eligibility but it would be to the actual plan cost, i.e. £40 a month, as opposed to £20.

I have a friend in Norfolk, O2 and Voda are 2G only and poor coverage, and Three and EE have 3G everywhere (even indoors) and 4G is slowly arriving.

It just shows how variable the UK is.

That was about the start of MBNL. I switched from Orange to T-Mobile in late 2006, and by 2007 the MBNL rollout had started and both T-mobile and Three's 3G networks jumped forward in capacity and speed very fast.

I remember in the office it was Three and T-mobile users who had 3G, and the Orange, Vodafone and O2 users were on GPRS (or EDGE) and things were quite slow.

Yes; exactly. My friend in Fleet, Hants, near town centre used to get good Orange, but EE turned off the mast in his road. We experimented with various repeaters (legal) discounted from ebay, and now he is on EE WiFi calling which works well.

A couple of weekends ago I found my work phone (iPhone 6) on Vodafone had strong signal on 4G in his front room. This means either VO2/CTIL have installed a new mast, or there has been a big refresh on a nearby 2G only mast and the new antennas have made a dramatic difference. Good 3G HD voice calls and 4G data indoors. He may switch from EE when contract is up.