Why would 4G have a lower priority then 3G? You would be on 3G all the time!

Ah yes. I was having a senior moment!

Well guys finally made the plunge today and switched from iPhone to the LG G4, all I can say is wow!!! IPhones are so slow!!!! I'm very impressed it feels as if my 4G has been super charged even though nothing has changed but the phone!

There're only about 4 masts online for 4G in Durham so far - the rest are being done at the moment so this should improve things.

I've recently switched from Three to Vodafone, basically because Three has no signal at my workplace. It seems that the building I work in has Vodafone microcells installed and I get full 3G everywhere within the building, which is a huge improvement from 1 bar of 3G next to the window which wouldn't work at all times (cell breathing).

I have been looking around with the net monitor from my iPhone 6S Plus and it looks like Vodafone has installed only 4G 800, in only a few of their masts in Brighton. How can I find out if they have plans on installing more in the near future? Should I expect any 2600 at least in the city centre? (therefore, CA?)

I can't complain about the speeds, which seem to be very good, in some cases better than Three. But the signal is not strong enough in outdoor places where I would expect it to be great. As I live in a basement flat, I am taking advantage of WiFi calling and I am not expecting them to cover my flat.

Love my G4 since switching from a note 4, I only originally tried it out as I thought it might have given me access to three's 800mhz 4g when I was with them, but after using it I soon realised what stylish but sh*t phones Samsung has been making for the past few generations. Feels much smaller and lighter in your hand and pocket then other similarly sized phones too due to its curved shape

Vodafone and 02 were doing there usual thing of camping out on 2g though for no reason even when there was this reasonably strong 4g & 3g signal present, all three of our phones were doing it, the other one was on EE which often had no signal or 2g/3g indoors, soon as I stuck my G4 in 3g/4g only mode in was enjoying great speeds and response.
The black spots I was on about were further south outside of Durham.

EE now has some 2600MHz and CA in Brighton as it's a high use area. I have not seen any Vodafone 2600MHz or CA yet. The 800 speeds were just about OK, so I can't see them 2600'ing it for a while

Further to what I said yesterday, the signal quality on the G4 is very good indeed it's much more stable that the iPhone I found the iPhone switching all over the place is low signal areas and if you lost signal it would take forever to reconnect. Thumbs up here from me. I'm converted

Vodafone was horrible back in 2012/2013 in Brighton. Seriously, bad! During the day there was no data at all: the data icon would disappear from the screen. And the calls would not start in most cases. It seems that things have improved a lot, but still Brighton can get quite busy in weekends and (extended) summer season from April until early October.

I haven't seen any 2600 from Vodafone, but they should consider it before we start having problems. Places like Churchill Square, the train station and North Street (including the Laines) should be covered with CA first as they have high demands.

You say O2 and Voda are camping on 2G for no reason - unfortunately there is a reason.

The new Beacon masts are effectively a separate network with their own BSC/RNC's. If you camp on a legacy 2G mast, the BSC for this will route you through neighbouring legacy 2G masts until you reach a location where the new Beacon network is suitably stronger where it will switch over. Once on the new network the same will happen where you track the new sites where available until you hit a legacy only area where you will switch back.

Best comparison I can think of is the Three/Orange roaming.

I know O2 are working to try to stop this happening as much by moving some legacy 3G masts to the beacon RNC within upgraded areas before they are upgraded so they will handover with the new sites. This doesn't seem to be the case with the 2G only sites.

Hi i noticed this is only a temp fixed if you switch the phone on and off again it reverts to GSM HDPSA AND LTE auto. Anyone know how to set this permanent or is it just me that isn't doing it right? Cheers

There is no way to save those settings permanently.

How often do you turn on and off your phone anyway?

Your only putting the phone into a field test mode so it won't last when you turn it off and then back on again, no phone can be set permanent to 3g/4g, all compatible ones can do it but official access to service modes is set by the network your on, hence when you put a three sim in a phone the 2g only option vanishes, and a few years back why even though phones were 4g they had no option to use it in the network menus until the network sent out an update.


That's exactly how I'd describe Vodafone's use of the 2g network, exactly like when u used to have orange 2g backup on Three, it's both a blessing and a curse at times, with the worst elements being holding on to a unusable 3g signal with no data and poor call quality when a good 2g signal is there for the taking, I'd say in my experience of such situations when during a call it's about 50/50 whether the call switches to 2g or gets dropped 1st, on the flip side I can be in a variable 3g area knowing things are good enough to stream radio or Spotify but I remain glued to 2g for miles, I found virtually the same issues years back with three, hopefully should be sorted largely in a year or so..
In the mean time I'm eagerly awaiting 4g switch ons in Telford, Eccleshall/Stafford & hopefully Newcastle under Lyme centre,
Not a sniff of 4g this weekend in Newcastle centre, some work to do here..

Now I've had 4g from o2 in Newcastle town centre a few weeks ago, but noticed its now gone back to h+

We've got three o2/Vod 4G masts in my town now and my o2 phone will sometimes stick to 3G all day and refuse to move to 4G, even if I stand next to the mast.

Speeds on 4G also vary wildly here. 20mb at night drops down to 2mb at peak times. Hardly superfast! I can get 10mb on H+ and 50mb on 4G on my EE phone!

You should probably be more specific , the genuine Newcastle has had 4G for a long time.

Must be the pretend Newcastle as he said town centre not city centre! 😝

Where is your town? How many legacy masts are there? See me previous post on switching between old and new. This will improve as will tour speeds S more masts are converted.

Well, many people in the real Newcastle still refer to it as the town or toon .

Hehe I'm surprised you have power that far north?

Vodafone's removing a few 2100MHz only sites in Hull. Kinda a shame as keeping them would have been great for capacity, though have been decommissioned for ages.

Are they using O2 sites in the area instead?

Had a brief 4g signal around the shawburch area of Telford this morning so I'm guessing the mast near the motorway close the Wellington retail park has gone live at last, works taking place on an 02 mast on the Halesfield industrial estate today so should be another one live soon.

Vodafone have just upgraded my local 2G only mast to 4G, but it's not transmitting 3G.

Is it normal for an upgraded Vodafone mast to only be 2G + 4G, or will they add 3G soon?

The coverage map is only showing 2G and 4G.

It is normal, seen it fairly frequently.