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Vodafone and O2 4G experience thread


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Old 10-10-2015, 22:02
Denco1
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Hello guys,

Here's the deal.

My national operator (Vodafone) has started to test VoLTE of this month.
I am one of the chosen testers, I've been in contact with a worker, and it's activated on my sim card right now. However, I can't find a way to activate it on the phone.

Is it possible right now to use VoLTE? Is the software/baseband ready for this? If yes, how can I activate it?

I'm running latest OxygenOS (2.1) with stock kernel.
Saw this before on the OnePlus forums. Any insiders able to give information about the length of the trial, and compatible devices(iPhones/Galaxy S6/Edge?)
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Old 10-10-2015, 22:12
highfrequency
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Thought i'd try out an o2 sim in my phone and see how things have changed since I moved to EE two years ago. Answer is, virtually nothing!

The phone was on GPRS most of the time on my 15 mile drive with weak 3G900 the rest of it. I checked the speed on four of these 3G900 masts and all sub 1mbps!

Found a cornerstone 4G mast (only the 2nd one in a 15 mile radius Vodafone live on two more but not o2) and that was doing 4mb down and 7mb up!

o2 status says "network modernisation has reached your area".
Definitely some work to be done here!
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Old 10-10-2015, 22:24
jonmorris
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Well, 4Mbps is quite a big speed increase if you work it out as a percentage of the average GPRS speeds!

I suspect even O2 is trialling VoLTE. EE won't be far away but they're having some issues.
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Old 10-10-2015, 22:46
highfrequency
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Well, 4Mbps is quite a big speed increase if you work it out as a percentage of the average GPRS speeds!

I suspect even O2 is trialling VoLTE. EE won't be far away but they're having some issues.
Also quite often it dropped GPRS and there was about a 10 second gap of no service before 3G appeared, and vice versa! It all seemed very disjointed.

In the same area on EE I get around 5-10mb on HSPA+ and between 15-70mb on LTE. I was glad to put my EE sim back in!

I think I'll try again in a month or so and see if this 'modernisation' actually materialises.
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Old 10-10-2015, 23:25
jonmorris
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I've had a good experience on O2 in one location where I forced 2G and saw both GPRS and EDGE performing really well on an upgraded site.

What a shame that unless you only had a 2G phone, once a site has fast 3G and 4G you'd rarely if ever use 2G.
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Old 10-10-2015, 23:50
Gigabit
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What is "good" GPRS performance?
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Old 11-10-2015, 00:21
jchamier
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What is "good" GPRS performance?
56kbps

Most GPRS sites on Vodafone seem to manage around 20kbps, and it was similar on Orange. The old T-mobile network managed around 45 to 50kbps.

EDGE should manage 250kbps, which friends get in other countries, but in the UK generally I've not seen anything faster on EDGE than 60kbps.
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Old 11-10-2015, 01:30
clewsy
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Quite a bit of work been taking place over the past week around Nantwich, Crewe & parts of Stoke on Trent, so some more masts should be live very soon.
The mast at Nantwich train station had had all its panels upgraded this week so should give the town centre some good 4g coverage when live.
I'm shocked how good it is in this area. Driving around today and seeing how many places I have 4g, it was impressive. I think cornerstone is working well where they are upgrading.
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Old 11-10-2015, 08:57
jonmorris
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56kbps

Most GPRS sites on Vodafone seem to manage around 20kbps, and it was similar on Orange. The old T-mobile network managed around 45 to 50kbps.

EDGE should manage 250kbps, which friends get in other countries, but in the UK generally I've not seen anything faster on EDGE than 60kbps.
Try EDGE on a O2 site that's been upgraded (force 2G only) and be amazed. Sure, latency is high but it's actually extremely usable.
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Old 11-10-2015, 09:25
Pedro_C
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I get 200kb EDGE on most of the upgraded 4G sites. Can even watch 144p video without too much hiccups.
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Old 11-10-2015, 09:36
M1kos
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Just tried this on voda edge on my local mast (200m away) not 4G'd either got 220kbps down and 100kbps up not bad me thinks and managed to stream Internet radio at 128k oh and on dchspa got 23meg down and allmost 4meg up ☺
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Old 11-10-2015, 11:19
Gigabit
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Vodafone EDGE on upgraded masts is also very usable. GPRS is still useless - even at 56Kbps that's not useful for anything.
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Old 11-10-2015, 16:47
jonmorris
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You could probably use something like Opera Max or whatever it's called, but I wonder if you'd ever get GPRS on an upgraded site that will also have EDGE.

What conditions would mean your phone drops down to GPRS?

I've often wondered that as on O2 I more often get GPRS than EDGE.
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Old 11-10-2015, 17:41
jaffboy151
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My phone usually ignores the mast and switches to a further away 900mhz 3g one but ironically Vodafone share the same rural mast outside of Crudgington Shropshire as three & EE, they have 3g on the mast where as Vodafone have only Edge, EE & three will not give you any data to speak of, radio steams or Spotify will not work at all and often drop calls.. where as the Edge from Vodafone will happily stream the radio and tracks from Spotify. Nothing to shout about really but shows how bad mbnl are in many places round here.
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Old 11-10-2015, 17:45
jaffboy151
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Also quite often it dropped GPRS and there was about a 10 second gap of no service before 3G appeared, and vice versa! It all seemed very disjointed.
This happens to me and is my only real criticism of Vodafone so far. The 3g to 2g seems to work more like the old orange 2g backup worked on three, it seems to hold onto 3g till the death, drop the call,while searching for 2g then connect, don't have any issues going the other way back to 3g, it's seamless.
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Old 11-10-2015, 17:58
Gigabit
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My Vodafone SIM refuses to switch to EDGE or GPRS in my area now unless I force it to GSM only, which is a right pain because 4G and 3G are so weak that data doesn't flow over them.

This wasn't an issue a couple of months ago so I can assume assume that when O2 was allowed access to this mast, something in the priorities changed?
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Old 12-10-2015, 11:36
paulker
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I have noticed a few street work sites that are having further work done and two more cabs going to be installed. These are upgraded 4g sites. Do they need extra cabs for 2600?
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Old 12-10-2015, 12:30
Darkmarsupial
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I'm getting Vodafone 4G in Shrewsbury for the first time.
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Old 12-10-2015, 13:07
jaffboy151
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I'm getting Vodafone 4G in Shrewsbury for the first time.
This is good news, where abouts is it? A few masts are in the process of getting an upgrade at the moment, work was listed in the battlefield area of town near the Honda garage and the park & ride.
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Old 12-10-2015, 13:33
Cloudane
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(I'll get the correct thread eventually. Apologies!)
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Old 12-10-2015, 13:59
M1kos
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Possibly the one in town on the bt exchange??
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Old 12-10-2015, 14:09
Darkmarsupial
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This is good news, where abouts is it? A few masts are in the process of getting an upgrade at the moment, work was listed in the battlefield area of town near the Honda garage and the park & ride.
I'm at Shirehall and getting one bar indoors. Two bars outside.
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Old 12-10-2015, 16:33
jaffboy151
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Is the BT exchange off featherbed lane roughly behind where barclays bank is? Don't get to go to Shrewsbury too often so not massively familiar with some areas (great place for a day out though, love The Armory pub by the river) there was some streetworks on featherbed lane planned and you would easily get 2 bar of 4g around shirehall from there I guess, I wonder if it will make the local paper as they've been banging on about the lack of 4g in the county for a while now ignoring that EE are in many places already along with three.
What were/are 3g speeds like on Vodafone & O2 in Shrewsbury? I've not been since changing networks, previously they were Dreadful on three with no signal inside most areas.
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Old 12-10-2015, 16:48
Darkmarsupial
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3G was never that great unless you were right in town centre. BT exhange is on Town Walls in town centre.
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Old 12-10-2015, 17:27
drabble
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When I got a the 50GB PAYG SIM I needed to credit £20 rather than £10 to get 4G.
Yes from my testing time on Vodafone you need to have some credit on things 1st before you get access to 4g, either one of the big value bundles or load up dome payg credit and take the £5 500mb for 30 days option.
If you do the latter remember to speedtest via the net perform app to avoid using all your credit in a few tests..
Thanks for the information guys, I don't think the £5 for 500mb option is available any more so will try and change tariff to Freebie Data, opt in to International and top up with £10. Thanks for the tip on the VF speed test app also!

Looking at moving to VF 4G SIM only from a O2 3G tariff because VF's coverage here seems different to O2 even though the area seems to be upgraded via Cornerstone/Beacon but I am guessing not all sites and not all at the same power levels as VF 2G and 3G signal seem stronger than the O2 equivalent at my location.
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