I'm in Stoke and will believe this when I see it - I didn't get a text (a lot of my texts are either not being delivered or I'm not receiving them, it's causing me a problem at the moment, and it's not just to/from one person, it's from various) from O2 about this.

3G is a waste of time. If I don't have wifi, I'm pretty much without Internet access at all.

Was in Manchester on Wednesday and 4G and 3G kept dropping. Was without it all Wednesday from about 4pm.

VOD have VoLTE running in Germany apparently. No idea if it's working well or not but presumably they will have some good data from that. EE don't exactly have a shining record on product launches with Wifi calling being delayed a good many months and then apparently still has issues with some phones / areas.

4g is definitely in Stoke area now from o2. There are 3 masts I can definitely say are live and one more next week going live in Newcastle. Where is the case 3g is working at a fairly average speed of 7meg.

Denco1- He does not normally mention much about the price plans or apps as he works in network ops and knows i am interested in the more technical things like him, he did mention around a month agoa that VOWIFI on Vodafone was in final testing before closed beta trial and that it works in a slightly different way to how EEs work something to do with core networks and that it will be easier for them to get VOWIFI TO VOLTE working

We had an unscheduled software update in Wakefield Thursday early hours didn't so u until the day after as being complete, it lasted one hour!

Yes I guess price plans is outside of his remit however I understood NFC payments on Vodafone were linked to a new billing system and that was part of the reason for the delay.

It sounds like they are going to go for a joint launch of VoWiFi and VoLTE then, this summer should be interesting from a technical standpoint for every network bar O2 who have only just realised HD voice is kind of useful to have.

On a golf course and O2 has stuck to 2G but forcing 4G has given me a usable connection (-112dBm). I wonder how many places O2 customers visit that have us able 4G but they get stuck on GPRS.

Vodafone is also stuck on GPRS with no 4G: forcing it does nothing.

Does their coverage map suggest O2 have 4G there (or 3G for that matter)? Could help explain whether it's intentional.

This seems to be a problem all networks suffer with in some degree or other except three, it's one of the main reasons I've stayed with them for so long, despite threes many problems with building penitration and congestion, on regular journeys you can almost predict the exact point where you have signal and bar data streaming where it will switch to 4g and back again, when using others networks, 2g always seems to steal the show, and out stay it's welcome. When I've been using Vodafone and EE, they'll both happily switch between 4g,3g & 3g900 even on extremely weak signals, but once it finally drop to 2g it takes a very consistent strong 3g signal to switch it back, EE I found to be the worst for this maybe because I can see via my three phone how strong the 3g signal it's ignoring actually is.

Of course as 4g becomes more popular and congested, does that mean that you could have networks with loads of 3g going spare?

Can sims be set up to automatically look to 3g if 4g speed falls below ...mbps? Im thinking more long term here when this becomes the next problem.

I've never once had 4G in Stoke (I'm in south Stoke) and 3G is pretty much useless. Might call into O2 in Hanley tomorrow to query.

It is more northern end and Newcastle under Lyme area at the moment, but the plans suggest its on its way. I tend to get good 3g in the built up bits,but Trentham Gardens is shocking for getting any form of coverage.

Trentham gardens is shocking on all networks when I've been there, all the masts are up on the roadside on the A5035 in Trentham and don't travel well down the road,O2 was gprs only as was ee indoors last time I was there 4g outside but weak, three outdoors just about and useable if you were up at the garden centre, there used to be a street mast just outside the premier Inn but it went a few years ago. Don't know what network that was,

You would think that with it being next to a major A road and not too far from the M6 on the other side of the hill, the coverage would be fairly decent.

The same is the case in Cheshire. You get just outside Crewe and on o2 you will be on 2g for miles. Of course this could change in the future as looks like plans are for better coverage.

In Manchester just now I found some band 7. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ye7zzevi23...%2036.png?dl=0

Speed test only at 20mbps but gonna look around for some higher speeds.

Good to see they have in fact started rolling it out then. I wonder what is the cause of the low speed, slow backhaul, traffic management or simply the amount of users on the mast.
Could you post or PM the approx location? My PAYG sim will still connect to 4G it just has no credit so I might go out looking for how widespread 2600MHz later next month.

I got it in Spinningfields. Weak signal there. Never saw it again though as I walked through St Ann's Square and through the Arndale.

Not sure if I mentioned this before but if you look at Barnstaple in North Devon on the 3G layer of the coverage map and then switch to 'planned' it actually looks like they are planning to turn a lot of 3G off up there.

Hi guys could anyone answer this for me, does Vodafone have plan to upgrade sites which havent been intergrated into CTIL? We have good 4G coverage in Wakefield both indoors and out but it's starting to slow down quite a lot during the day, maxing out at around 11mb up and 20 down, I know this is more than fast enough for steaming etc... The reason I ask is there is 5 sites around me which are either O2 or Vodafone still ( 2 O2 and 3 Voda).

There is no sign of 2.6ghz yet but when Leeds is upgraded Wakefield usually follows pretty sharpish. I haven't seen any plans for 2.6ghz this year only the London Manchester Birmingham thing that was announced last year.

Any thoughts?

Its a good point, are they intending to roll out 2600 nationwide, or just reserve it for the big cities?

It's just Vodafone's broken coverage map, ignore it.

I can't imagine so, why would they need to?
Not even EE are intending to rollout 2600MHz nationwide.

EE are different they can cope with 2x1800mhz at 20mhz for most places as it has more capacity than 2x800mhz at 10mhz. For Vodafone to compete they would need to use 2600 in more places or install many more 800 to keep up. 2600 will do the job with less masts than 800. If that makes sense.

Perfect sense, but I doubt they will need to rollout 2600MHz nationwide, just in big cities.
They have already said they aren't hugely concerned about speeds, just that you can stream videos and use your phone normally, which I'm sure 2x10MHz of 800MHz should be sufficient for in most places.

Perhaps my natural "noobishness" (do I sound even remotely in touch by saying that) is coming through but why wouldn't they activate it if the cost wasn't restrictive? It would take the load off of the 800mhz even if it wasn't LTE-A style. You get 20mhz of bandwidth if you're near the mast and if you're far away you only get 10mhz but it's quicker than 10mhz all on its own.