I imagine the back haul improvements are down to the Cable & Wireless acquisition

Just been in the main city centre in Stoke. Wow o2 gave serious network congestion. Most of the time you just lose all data and if you get a connection its 0.3mb at best!

When you get an O2 site that's been upgraded (and I assume Vodafone too) then force it to 2G only, and you'll be quite amazed how good GPRS, and especially EDGE, is.

Of course, if you have a 3G or 4G phone then you'll never need to fall back to 2G. And where you only have 2G, it won't have been upgraded....

Just tried jons idea switched phone to Edge in South East London near a 4G site and managed 170kbps stable was even able to stream music 128k so it does show that baclhaul is soo important

I reckon EDGE on an upgraded site can out perform 3G on an old O2/Voda site (and perhaps the very few Orange sites still to be upgraded). It's crazy that these sites didn't get backhaul updates years ago.

I wonder if the coverage map isn't just a load of rubbish. Lots of places down here like Buckfastleigh and Liskeard are showing as planned for 3G but not 4G. What's that all about? Surely they would do both? Or is it the issues with 800 and VoLTE which means they will be upgraded but not turned on until that's all working?

O2 in Guildford on 3G is unusable.

Where I live (somewhere in Cornwall) seems to be in the same boat - 3G improvements are planned but no 4G (yet)

Totnes mast has gone from planned for 3G to unplanned and back again for over 2 years so I wouldn't get your hopes up. Worse is that GPRS shows signal but just doesn't work for data. Like the mast has zero backhaul. I wonder if they just randomly light masts up to make the map look better and turn them off after a month or so.

re GPRS site upgrades as i said the other day four/five masts have been recently upgraded along the M40 meaning finally 3G is available almost continuously between the M42 junction and London with some 4G in the mix too around Bicester and Oxford so things are beginning to happen

That's how Vodafone is for 3G here now. There's plenty of 3G signal (900MHz so it travels well), but the backhaul is totally inadequate, to the point where getting 1Mbit is an achievement. I doubt that it is congestion given how rural it is

3G improvements? From Vodafone? Lucky - nothing like that here, apparently 4 = 15 according to them.

As for 4G - forget it. EE only here and, until Three pull their finger out, that's the way it's clearly going to stay.

Same here in where I am in Kent, no coverage at all at the moment, but full coverage of just 3G planned.

I was down in Guildford for a meeting yesterday. We opened an office there in March with about 300 people in, most have got o2 mobiles and Blackberries which have WiFi disabled on. Might have placed a bit more pressure on their 3g network down there. But my Blackberry still got emails in but I don't know if as a corporate customer we get any more priority over the network.

A BlackBerry (the old ones at least) seemed to cope okay on GPRS and EDGE thanks to heavy compression and minimal data being sent. But even then a colleague on O2 at work found it slow, and hardly instant for email (as it should be).

I had one on T-Mobile with Web 'n' Walk and my emails were instant. In fact, web browsing was quite a pleasant experience (again, heavily compressed pages and somewhat limited in functionality).

Thanks a lot!

Webpages loaded eventually. Speed tests maxed out at 1Mb, so very slow.

No idea what 4G is like as my current phone (OnePlus One) doesn't support O2 4G.

O2's website is still saying their "modernisation program" is going on in Guildford. What does this mean?

I think it means basically 3g improvements and 4g enabled when they get round to it.

You have to say given they have been doing this a year now, the progress made isnt that bad. If this second year carried on at the same pace then the UK coverage and 3g would really start to increase.

Apparently Voda now live 4G in Redruth any one confirm ?? Also Fraserburgh and 3G showing for a large area south of Bideford as live now has been showing on and off for ages so i wont hold my breath!

Vodafone and O2 haven't 4G upgraded the Guildford BT exchange site nor the Yvonne Arnaud so far as I can tell, so in town centre signal is a little weak and speeds are quite slow (2-3mbps 4G at peak times, 10mbps otherwise), but it's quite interesting to see how far the 800 travels though.

Upgraded sites I know about: Hog's back, Guildford College, Spectrum Athletics track, Shalford, Royal Surrey Hospital, all 800MHz, which can provide ~80mbps at low demand times and near to the masts.

Vodafone SIM Only back to the high pricing on their website but with re-done names and the EuroTraveler Plus Calls thing on. Shame really because I was considering buying one at the cheaper price.

We're by Guildford Station next to the river. Coverage is ok and emails come through fine over 3g. We're looking to upgrade to smartphones with 4g at some point. Personally I'm against it though, the Blackberries are generally reliable and they work well on even EDGE or GPRS which we encounter a lot of on o2 and Vodafone, although better than my Orange SIM on my work laptop on the West Coast Main Line.

Emails come in fine yes and websites do eventually load but that's only if you're relatively close to the mast.

If you're away from it data basically ceases to work.

I've found if your served by a Vodafone mast which has 900mhz 3g as well as 2100mhz 3g, you will only get the faster 2100mhz 3g if your very very close to the mast or outside, any distance or obstacles in between and it's 900mhz all the way, not sure on how much 900mhz bandwidth Vodafone have but it can grind to a halt easily and will only give you around a few mbps in normal usage times, for instance at work I can see the big Vodafone/O2 mast in Stafford Park in telford and can get daytime speeds easily well over 20mbps, go out of site downstairs and same full signal but it's 900mhz and your back to 1-2mbps max. To me it seems Vodafone have the threshold set a bit high between the 2 leaving 2100mhz unused largely but overloading 900mhz.

I don't think I've ever seen decent performance from 900MHz 3G on either O2 or Vodafone to be honest.

Vodafone 4G is working nicely in Alton, Hants though. Still no EE 4G.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/1377446572

O2's 3G network really is appalling.

Vodafone 3G is getting 10Mb down whereas on the same mast O2 manages 1.