Maybe a mast has been switched off in favour of another, and the resulting pattern give you and your parents weaker field strength.

Reminds me of all the complaints when EE turned off masts... sounds like the same happening with other networks now. (Not surprising when some masts are nearly 30 years old).

This could also be because an area is half converted.. This basically gives 2 networks, the legacy and the new. If you are nearer to an old mast where you used to get full signal but there is a weaker newer signal available, your phone will lock to this. This transition problem should become less apparant as more sites are upgraded.

I've sent you a PM BTW

So putting to one side capacity once Beacon / CTIL rollout is complete coverage will be identical for both VF & O2?

If this is the case then where does the opinion come from that VF will be more of a competitor to EE than O2 as in terms of coverage yet they will be identical?

Vodafone has more spectrum than O2.

Really interesting data, thanks for sharing!

Which is good for capacity but will not affect coverage footprint.

Looking at the tests _m did, Vodafone comes out with 69.5% and O2 63.8% 4G. Now the reasons aren't clear for this, different power levels have been stated as a possible reason. Maybe another reason is when on O2, the handset became stuck on the legacy 2G network, so wasn't fluidly switching to 4G all the time where available.

I decided to stream Absolute 80s on my phone between Mickleover and Heanor Saturday morning.

No idea which percentage was 3G coverage and which comprised of 4G but it didn't cut out once which I expected it to.

Still impressed with o2's speeds in Heanor.

What is the point of coverage if performance is unusable? Coverage has to be only that with usable speed, otherwise it's not 'covered'.

Well o2 will have coverage and it will be usable, just not as quick as Vodafone.

Bit in the next auctions you would hope o2 set about solving this problem and buying up some more capacity.

My question was related to overall footprint which is why I made the point of saying putting aside capacity initially. The 2G, 3G, 4G debate of what turn off first second and third has been covered many times so the point of the question was not to get into a "speed" debate as O2 already has less spectrum, but that of coverage foot print.

The way I understand it as the point of Beacon completion both networks will have the same footprint, sure VF can use their spectrum to beef up capacity, but there will be no coverage advantage between them unless VF decides to spend more money and build sites out Beacon sites O2 do not?

Well the whole part if the agreement is the shared sites. So if one builds then the other gets access as well.

It's just that funny phase now where things appear more up and down. It happened to EE however hopefully by this point next year people will be talking about the few spots they don't have 3g/4g coverage.

I'm sure if you are one of the last places to be upgraded it must be annoying and people are migrating to EE in the thousands after giving up waiting but everywhere with a signal atm will be, 4G'd up by the end of next year with a least some signal. But the upgrades won't stop then as it will continue indefinitely as demand continues to grow

Are they building new sites to cover gaps they have or will this come after they have converted all the existing sites?

Apparantly EE have lost 5 million customers since the merger.. So I've heard anyway!

They have PP to build one that I know of in my area, when / if it gets built is another matter.

CTIL have applied for planning permission for a new mast near me to fill a gap in Vodafone and O2 coverage, and Roadworks.org show work in January for another new mast to fill another gap.

Thousands of new masts are in various stages of planning albeit most in London and other built up areas hundreds more sites are being worked up to fill the not spots in rural areas too

Is there any confirmation that O2/VF are switching off masts? Really would like some confirmation in my area.

They are but it only seems to be where both operators are on the same mast (so one set of antennas is upgraded and one is decommissioned) or they are separate masts VERY closet to one another - e.g. In neighbouring fields / adjacent buildings..

Not heard of any masts getting switched off anywhere I've been so far, a good test for this will be when a planned in mast gets upgraded near me in a village called loggerheads. O2 share a massive mast with EE & three along with some other communication equipment, high on the hilltop, EE & three already have it fibred with 1800 4g & 800mhz 4g for three, while Vodafone have a short lonely mast 3/4 down the hillside buried in the trees, covered in moss, 2g only looks like it hasn't been touched in 20+ years, surely that one will bite the dust.
Trying to have a call when travelling across rural areas at the moment is a difficult as often you seem to go between legacy mast to cornerstone to legacy and so on which is a killer for call continuity,

That's good to know they are planning new masts to fill any gaps. Its a sign they are serious as the cheap way would just be to upgrade what they have now ans worry about anything else later.

I think you have answered above why I seem to find more calls being dropped these days. It must be when the phone moves from old to new sites.

Does anyone know the date CTLI plan to have the same 4g coverage as existing 2g coverage? Let's be honest when they reach that point they will have a good network.

Does anyone remember how the new antennas that EE was installing were supposed to be 30% more sensitive? Does the same apply to cornerstones new antennas ?

Not far from my friends house is a new base station its o2 only any 2g/ 3g 900mhz this is not a temp site but a new permanent one spoke to a o2 engineer there and it's running as o2 only as a vodafone site 1 mile down the road is staying vodafone only so no sharing on those two sites