Most EE stores are owned by the network itself, there are a fair few franchise stores which were setup as EE didn't want to take on the full brunt of the costs. Interestingly their stock is also guarranteed and supplied by EE, where a franchise partner fronts the cost of the store setup and staff costs. Its not a franchise like Burger King or KFC either, they don't rent the name. Even in EE franchise stores, the network has a vested interest in that retail outlet, they have to conform to the same standards as any other EE direct sales channel.

Fonehouse is a franchise, selling EE plans exclusively, I suppose the retail version of ChitterChatter (don't know if they have bricks and mortar). That is more in line with Burger King.

The main advantage of franchising is the staffing, if it is an EE owned store, that is subject to the usual 90 days notice for redundancies given the size of it. Franchisng it doesn't matter, there would be very few stores that would have a lot of staff, so they could lay people off with little notice (most are on zero hours contracts anyway).

http://www.alifabs.com/UserFiles/Fil...0008_R-(1).png
These ones?
They are alifabs vulcans and will contain more rf equipment.

41meg on the speed test app for o2 last night, impressed with that as its easily very usable.

You don't need all that anyway.

One of my local masts has been upgraded and I can now get a reasonable EDGE, 3G900 and LTE indoors where I only had weak GPRS last week.

Speeds not too impressive. 3G managed 2mb down and 2 up which is probably fair, however LTE just 4mb down and 17 up.

I hope that improves but the site is in a prominent place surrounded by miles of GPRS and is now probably being swamped by hundreds of phones that can now actually use their data connection.

Also one for the fellow mast nerds, the site had an antenna upgrade about a year ago but since this latest addition of LTE they've added three square panels at 120' intervals around the mast. Anyone know if these are for LTE or backhaul?

Sounds like a RRU (remote radio unit)

If they look like these: http://pedroc.co.uk/rru.htm then they're RRUs

Ah yes that's it. Thanks for that.

Can anyone identify what's happening st this cornerstone mast from this photo? http://imgur.com/IR7StSO

what has happened to Central London

4G has gone to pot

Its gone from 20mbit to 2-3mbit if you're lucky

Someone at Vodafone needs to pull their finger out

really? I had 50meg down on London Bridge on Thursday at 3 PM on 2600

those are dummy cabinets the real ones rbs6102's have flat tops

Does that mean they're installing LTE there? It's been the modern street pole design that mast for a while I think but I don't know if there's been 4g on it.

Edit: I should add there are two green almost open reach-like cabinets with o2 signs on.

I suspect so as that is a Jupiter poles that are used for 2,3 and 4g.

I was in Kings Cross today at 16:30 and I was getting 60-70mb down on 2600mhz.

The Rbs6102's which will replace the dummy cabs should be for 4G where is the site?

Ah that makes sense then. It's a street monopole on St George's Road in Bolton (Google Maps) Not sure quite why it's there to be honest with the terrain and all that.

correction those dummy cabs are for two BTS3900AL cabs (Huawei) for 4G

what app (speedtest on mobile data?) do I use to check 4G on O2 and EE (different phones) please? I'm with Tesco so can I just check O2?

Yes you can just test O2. Not sure if Tesco cap speeds or not.
Use this. Just select your mobile OS http://www.speedtest.net/mobile/

well around W1/W2/SW1 areas its not performing well at all

What kind of speeds??

Was on the move this weekend stopping in Durham which gave me a great chance to test out how Vodafone was across some different parts of the country..
Overall I was very impressed! Lots of 4g around the North East, Durham centre and to the north seemed mostly covered with 4g though inside buildings I had to ditch 2g and switch to 3g/4g only as it loved to cling to it even though there was a nice - 95db indoor 4g signal with 30mbps to use.
Travelling there from Cheshire on the m6,m62 & A1m, the m6 was OK though newly always 3g with speeds around 3mbps, M62 was excellent 4G virtually the whole length from Manchester to the A1M, but Vodafone let themselves down badly on the A1M to Durham, while some was good 4g, some of the 3g coverage was like going back in time, 0.5mbps stuff, with some masts actually still using the original version 1 3g, never seen that on my phone before now,
Worst area was south of Scotch corner where it was 2g only for some time whilst EE was 3g/4g so some work to do here.
That said being in a city 800mhz 4g for the 1st time was excellent! Showed how good it can be not seeing your reception vanish when you go inside a pub or thick walled shop, being able to load Web pages and download large pictures without waving your phone about trying to catch that bit of usable signal,
Speeds were good too, normally between 30-50mbps on 4g with pings in the mid 30s
We just need more of it in a wider area now..

How can you tell what band you are using? What handset do you have?

iPhone 6s Plus it tells you want band you are connected too, I was also getting 30mb down in Dagenham.

On the iPhone 6S, does it indicate the band in the display i.e. no hacks / # codes?