Vodafone is currently refarming 2G 900 to 3G 900, and 3G 2100 to 4G 2100.

I think going forward, it could switch 3G 900 to 4G 900 quite easily, remotely and without having to site visit (someone correct me if I'm wrong) so I'm sure that will happen as Vodafone wants 3G gone from all its operations by 2020.

I am sure there are good reasons for going to 3G first.

Ericsson RUS mostly, so RAT independant. There are operational maximum bandwidth limits.

living in Reading Berkshire and Voda are uprgading every single mast here. Next week one more due but it does not show on voda planned upgrade map. Very good job everywhere i go now there is 4G indoors not like EE4G. Just got sim only from EE last week to check how coverage has emproved but big nothing

Lucky reading, sadly here I'd say around 2 out if every 10 masts has been touched, with no real plan behind which ones too, it's leaving the network very fragile as upgraded a D non upgraded masts don't play well together resulting in 100% call drops every time in some places, it's actually better to switch the phone to 3g/4g or just 2g only for call quality

At least they're doing something. I used to work in Reading, for a major supplier to (and customer of) Vodafone, and coverage was very poor in the office. Even if you had a decent 3G signal you'd get periods of network busy / calls dropping.

I don't think they actually considered performance when my company chose Vodafone. It worked fine for the bigwigs in London, so no one has to care about the plebs in the provinces

Surely they need an element of 2G for things like smart meters? Or maybe they are 3G compatible too?

Smart meters and other legacy equipment will be why 2G stays longer. But my point was about why Vodafone is going 2G to 3G, rather than 2G to 4G.

I think the answer is that it will be done in two steps. Eventually 2G900 that went to 3G900 will go to 4G900. And that final change will just be a flick of a switch in the NOC.

Vodafone's crumbling 3G network in Thetford, Norfolk: http://www.speedtest.net/result/5697926815.png

Apparently the newer generation of smart meters are 4G ready, or so said the bloke from British Gas who installed mine a few months ago.

Yes the new ones will be. 4.5G even. But 2G is for the older ones.

I am not sure there were many 3G ones and surely they'll all gave 2G fallback anyway.

Did we ever get any 3G only kit here? There were some things in the US (tablets I think) but not here AFAIK.

For all interested in the smart meter / IoT on 4G topic I suggest reading up on LoRa, LTE-M and NB-IoT.

Won't be about speed but I believe the focus is on deep indoor coverage and very very long battery life and maybe latency I think.

Seen much worse from legacy sites like speed tests simply not starting

I was at a rather long, and mostly boring, Huawei conference in 2015 - which was talking about 4.5G and the key feature was low latency and low power.

I was quite surprised to read elsewhere that the brand new Siemens trains on Thameslink that have real-time information onboard are apparently* operating on 2G. Suffice to say, there are big problems being found between Bedford and Brighton, presumably down to the data connectivity being, frankly, awful.

* I can't be 100% sure, nor do I know which network they're using. God help us if they did a deal with O2!

80% of the time I get network communication issues from this site.

Vodafone just loves to put you on 3G, even in Central London! I can't recall if O2 is similar but EE certainly isn't.

Vodafone today in sleepy Polperro Cornwall 4G with 58mbps down and 20mbps up was so nice to have proper connection after last time I had no service. Is an mip mast if anyone is interested

That must be a recent thing. I was down there in June and did not even have a signal. My work phone is vodaphone, and all over Cornwall I find it poor

Any news on VoLTE. My friend told me the other day he made a call over 4G in London. And then he tried again but call went down to 3G

Maybe more to do with the indoor coverage of 2g vs 3g? I have one m2m device that is 3g only. I can't imagine there would be many without 2g as well.

It's been a while since I looked at VF's pricing. I was quite surprised to see a data SIM-only 30 day plan for 50GB at £30.

Now that EE are about to further mess with their SIM-only data plans, and ditched the 50GB/30 day one a while ago, it could be an interesting find.

CTIL are due to upgrade my local mast in the next few months, so it will be good to have an alternative / fall-back for my EE data connection.

Is the upgrade on the Voda coverage checker?

Vodafone 170Mbps D/L in London today:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/2300590369

Yup, Vodafone and EE have some amazing 4g speeds in London. Three and O2 are not doing so well in London.

No, I'm jumping the gun at the moment - fibre installation to the mast is on roadworks.org. Well, it was the last time I looked - it's been on and been removed once before, so time will tell...

I've even gotten speeds above 200Mbps : http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1805833240

The problem is the huge inconsistency of Vodafone across London and the fact that they do not seem to have a single 2100Mhz or 2600Mhz mast in North London where O2 are managing the network. That means that in North London (starting from Fitzrovia and Marylebone) I often get dismal speeds of 1-2Mbps.

Central and South London Vodafone usually offer solid LTE-A.