The same thing happened to my local mast. It turned out there was a delay with BT fibre getting to the site. Once that issue had been dealt with the upgrade appeared on Vodafone's map and roadworks.org. The delay was only a couple of weeks before 4G went live.

And there are lots of rural masts coming soon on Vodafone's map. Roadworks.org show a lot of work in my region for BT fibre being run to rural villages for 'new fibre connection for customer'. All of these are close to VO2 masts.

I'm sure with a few key masts and some Inventive computer modeling they will meet that 98% but as for real coverage I'm not so sure now, they seem to be completely ignoring masts which would give them more % coverage, also in areas of upgrades speeds are beginning to fall of a cliff as they have only added the Base 800mhz layer, no 2600mhz or 2100mhz 4g to help with future capacity.
O2 are a little bit stuck for spectrum but Vodafone have bags of it and shouldn't struggle if they implemented it in an efficient way.
The phrase 'all the gear but no idea' sum Vodafone up at the moment.

Yep, they use it in Europe and I think most, if not all, of the 4G mobiles I have support it

Thanks.

And you forgot to mention the lack of 1800MHz 4G from Vodafone, which O2 seem to be rolling out quite plentifully in some areas.

In my opinion Vodafone should be rolling out L08/L18 at all sites (except for remote/rural ones, which won't need capacity now) and in towns and cities, L26 as well. All sites should also have U09/U21, because it'll then be easier to reform 3G to L09/L21 in the future - thus giving possibly L08/L09/L18/L21 on most sites, with L26 in towns and cities. (And a small amount of UG09/U21, until 2G and 3G get switched off.)

3G900 on PLAY in Poland is very good 10-20mb down 10mhz block.

Edit... Missed the 4G bit.

Same down here in Devon. We keep saying it looks like they are doing something but all they are doing is the big towns. It's getting on now. O2 have loads of non working 3G900 rollled out but VOD are still 2G for most of rural Devon. To be honest, that is a joke when you compare to EE /3.

Now we hear that 800 LTE is starting to get swamped in towns down here.

Joke.

All operator have commited to providing 90% land mass coverage by the end of 2017.
This included o2 that have to provide 98% indoor and coverage on 2/3/4G, so they (ALL) have another yesr and a half to go.

http://www.o2.co.uk/business/product...ity/4g-network

The link below spells out all 4 networks commitment and o2's 4G indoor coverage to 98% of the uk by the end of 2017.

http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2015/mno-variations/

O2 appear to be doing it with 3G900 which shows great coverage but of course is a waste of time.

O2 did seem to go 'all out' with our local mast. It went from legacy 2G900 only, to upgraded 2G900, 3G900 and 2100, and 4G800 and 1800. Now if they did that everywhere they'd have a really good network, especially with VoLTE in the mix, alongside WiFi Calling.

They're pretty good between Loughborough and Leicester with the only important village missing being Quorn, and these villages are quite rural. They've also improved a lot on the motorways, so I'm thinking if EE's 800 turns out to be bad I can easily just go on O2.

3G 900MHz can be very performant; I've had 12mbps before in Devon.
Also there is a nice mix of legacy Vodafone/O2 900MHz or 2100MHz 3G (not both) in Devon. Some quite fast, a lot not.
Yelverton-VF 900MHz. Legacy panelled site. 1mbps
Plympton TV relay-VF 2100MHz. 8mbps. Legacy panelled
Plympton TV relay-O2 2100MHz 3G. 7mbps. Legacy panelled.
Tavistock TV relay-O2 3G 900MHz. 3mbps. Legacy panelled.
Kilworthy road CTIL-VF 3G 900 at 12mbps. 4G 800MHz was doing about 60mbps.
Ivybridge Town mast (not TV)-O2 2100MHz 0.5mbps average. Legacy ish panelled.

I used to have an O2 SIM and several times in Newton abbot you would get full 3G (900) but just no data. Everything would time out. That used to happen a lot. Haven't tried in the last 12 months. It must be a backhaul issue. Same from the Buchfastleigh mast on the A38. Just nothing even looking right at it with 5 bars. They are boasting coverage where in reality, they have none or very little.

Vodafone have been working on a Pylon in Ivybridge. I will try and have a look today to see if anything new is on yet

They must have now 4G there as when you click on 2G map planned coverage it shows improved signal 2G so it will have 3G900 and 4G800 added. It just does not show on 3G,4G planned coverage like it did not show when they were upgrading Bunbury(small village),but was showing planned 2G. The miss to add a lot on the planned map

To repeat something that I have just posted in a thread I started, I drove from Retford to Sherwood Pines on Saturday with my Mum and sister. I left my phone at home as Mum had hers with her, and I asked what signal she had when we arrived. It was 2G- expected in a woods! After we had an hours walk, we returned to the car. We tried to watch a Periscope as the phone had now found a 3G signal but it wouldn't load. Mum decided she would drive back, which allowed me touse her phone on the way home from Sherwood Pines back to Retford on Saturday to see what the signal was like (she was happy for me to do this as she knows I'm interested in this) and, to be fair to O2, I did get a fair amount of 4G and a bit of working 3G as well.

In Sherwood Pines itself the data didn't work, both on 2G and then on 3G once it switiched up to it- I got 0.45 Mbps down and the same up on a speed test, even on full signal. BBC News wouldn't load at all. Looking at the coverage map, the mast would have been a 2G and 3G 900 Mhz mast- no 3G 2100, so given Sherwood Pines and Centre Parks was served by it, the poor performance is easily explained.

However, once we got on the main road, a 4G signal was found with 55 Mpbs down and 12 Mpbs up. EE don't even have 4G in the OIlerton area, so a clear win for O2 here. It dropped to 3G a little later and then to 2G and no service near Clumber Park, but picked up 4G again afterwards. There was then a bit more 2G as we got into Retford and it look a while for it to switch to 3G, but it did eventually and it seemed to be usable (I didn't do any more speed tests).

I found it disappointing that I couldn't get data to work on 2G at all, and that virtually unusable 2G mast was also poor. However, that fast 4G shows that they can perform well and I have to say, I was able to use the phone to access the internet for most of the journey, and the areas of poor or no coverage were more or less the same as on my Three phone.

It did leave me feeling more positive about O2, although looking over to Tuxford (where my Grandparents live) on the coverage map, there's 2G only yet EE have 4G. They might be performing well when a mast is upgraded, but EE still leave them lagging behind for data,

Well it's like today, loads of places in rural Cheshire 4g. Never used to be the case, clearly improvements are happening and it's becoming more noticeable.

O2 coverage map updated today to show full 4G in my area (surprise surprise, as maintenance was happening today) but it's not switched on yet as O2 SIM has very weak 4G still.

Vodafone 4G coming soon to......wait for it.........The Isles of Siclly !!!

Vodafone 4G coming to.....wait for it......the nearest large town to me with a population ten times that the Isles of Scilly!!!!!

Vodafone coverage map updated too but coverage definitely hasn't improved yet.

How long does it take after they update the coverage map is updated for them to actually activate 4G?

In my view and experience lately, it seems Vodafone & O2 are loosing there way with network upgrades, Vodafone in particular don't seem to be managing things well at all, with no sense of planning or forward thinking from them, as a result in a few months in many areas we could actually see things worse then they were 12 months ago,
What do I mean by this?
Not upgrading the best option masts in a given area, not adding enough capacity on masts by using 2100mhz or 2600mhz leaving many of them often with sub 5mbps just a few months after upgrade,
neither focusing on coverage density or expanding its Base level coverage so failing on both fronts, maybe it's just here in the West but there has been a few 2g masts upgraded but not many, most of the increased coverage has come from 2100mhz 3g masts getting upgraded and the resulting fringe coverage from the addition of 4g 800mhz & 3g 900mhz.
They are falling way behind now, even 3 might start to beat them again if they add a few more 4g 800mhz to there approved list.

Agreed, I'm completely disappointed in Vodafone, every time I'm out and want to use data it seems to be on E, while my EE phone is on 3 bars + of 4G, and this isn't just in rural areas, it's happened in city centres and outside large teaching hospitals.

It might have been cheap, but I can't really be bothered to mess about with it, I'd cancel it but they remove the discount to cancel, so it's cheaper to just let the sim carry on for the 12 months, maybe I'll stick the sim into my iPad Mini...

What are peoples opinions of roaming with Vodafone? the 4Gig allowance in the EU looks good along with world traveller for data when I'm in the US. Are speeds ok, unlike maybe Three's FAH?

In contrast to UK Vodafone, I've only ever heard and myself experienced good things about Vodafone roaming, for instance I was in lagos Portugal and had great 4g speeds and coverage in town and the surrounding area, some roads were 3g but it worked very well.
Faro Airport speeds were excellent, averaging around 129mbps in a busy Airport.