If their wireline track record is anything to go by, they'll stop rolling out 4G for a few years, then start doing it again once other countries are doing 6G.

Then they'll say that their 4G is world-leading, futureproof and fit for purpose and that 6G is far too expensive to rollout. After that, they'll look at 4.5G

In the interim they'll take all of EE's profits and spend them on sports rights.

See now, reading this link from 2014 (so, of course, things might well have changed in the past year), it seems to me that o2 are likely to have far worse call quality due to using half rate:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10...rets_revealed/

...so is it now apparently the case that both Vodafone and O2 are likely to have poor quality? Or that O2 saw these scathing comments and cranked the quality, while Vodafone saw that people on O2 weren't noticing & dropped things down a peg?

Then, well, depending on how the comments on quality go, probably Vodafone or o2..! However it really does depend on where she will be when she typically uses the phone - if she's always ever in larger towns etc then it might be that all the networks provide good coverage where she goes, thus the decision then switches to other comparisons like price.

If she's a light user & can use a basic 3g phone, you could also consider Three. Their 321 tariff is very good value, but you must have a 3g phone to use their network. And of course, if she lives in the back of beyond the coverage might not be as good as Voda/o2..

No idea. Whenever we speak on the phone it sounds like crap.
Maybe it's her phone. I don't know. It's an iPhone 5s.
I have to lock myself away from the kids in my office and stick a finger in my other ear.
Was the same on her old 4s too though. (I'm on EE WiFi calling at this point by the way).
maybe it's her local VF mast or something and others aren't as bad. I don't have too many VF people call me really.

Then I speak to a customer in the village WC to WC and WHOHA!!!, like I might as well be in his house talking to him....

My parents are on 3 PAYG because it's by far the cheapest for their usage and also they can just about scrape signal outdoors. (When indoors they can use the landline)

My website is now hosted coutesy of thebennyboy, so enjoy browsing pictures at somewhat increased speed!

Nevermind, wrong bloody thread again!

DS should give us the access to delete our posts!

Vodafone are now upgrading existing masts on BT sites any lease issues must have been resolved also existing Arqiva sites are seeing lots of planning apps for 4G

Looks like Vodafone have upgraded their mast near me that they share with EE for 4G, no idea when I just noticed when I was sorting something on my dad's work phone at the weekend.

I did ask if he noticed when he started seeing 4G, but he had no clue...

Probably just the lack of 3G? Vodafone 2G around here was always good for voice calls, it was O2 that was very poor (which I think may have now been fixed?).

Vodafone now does HD voice if both ends have 3G signal - which has improved dramatically in the last 12 months.

The problem that will hit o2/VF next year more so will be the areas where they don't have 3/4g. So far I think their customers have got used to it being patchy, however now it's popping up all over the place it's becoming more and more expected in areas.

EE and Three need to address the old 2g sitea they still have. They were making claims that these all should have been done, however no sign of that and well with the BT takeover I suspect investment has been cut to a minimum.

My mobile is on O2 as they have the best voice coverage here, but the voice quality was bad up until a few months ago, seems fine now. A friend of mine on VF locally doesn't have any problems, but another in Bristol on VF is sometimes very hard to understand. If I called him from my O2 mobile before we could hardly understand each other. He's just moved to EE as he got fed up with it.

I suspected as much, I think a few months ago O2 stopped using half-rate codecs in a lot of the UK for their 2G network.


Yes, calling from a half rate connection to another half rate is pretty awful and unintelligible. Vodafone in most of Bristol has been rolling out 4G very fast, including upgrading 3G, which does handle HD voice if both people are on Vodafone.

Vodafone is using cross network HD calls also I do believe.

Good, who with? I don't think EE and Three have got this working yet, but it was talked about last year.

I assumed cross network HD calls will happen when VoLTE is available on more networks.

Just thought, we have customer in the Appledore area of Kent with a work mobile on VF and we always have problems understanding her on the mobile and often end up calling her personal landline. Looking at the coverage map for there it only shows 2G, so I guess she's on an old mast that's not been upgraded yet.

My brother and sister in law are on 3 and I get HD calls with them

Almost every mast in my area has now had the cornerstone treatment, I don't know whether that will change anything

I think I've had HD voice calls with 3 and Vodafone too

Is anybody else having problems with Wifi calling on Vodafone using an Samsung S6 ? I am not sure if this is a fault or if its how Vodafone intended it to work which is very different to how EE have it configured.

On Vodafone I can only make calls over Wifi if I have no mobile signal at all, At first I thought it was just me imagining it but was in London on Friday for meetings. I had my wifi on while the phone could still pick up any mobile signal wifi calling would not appear but as soon as I went deeper underground lost signal then suddenly I had wifi calling. This happened last week on Wednesday in a shopping centre as well just started working when I had no signal at the back of the stores.

Having it set up like this is very strange especially when some people like me at my parents can just about get one bar of 2G so calls fail and break up yet Wifi calling wont kick until its lost all mobile signal.

I think it is (sort of) the way they intend it to work. Vodafone's official line is that wifi calling should only kick in when you have a poor or non existent mobile signal. To be honest, long before it launched this was also what EE's senior people said about how it should work. They argued that as they had no control over the wifi signal they couldn't guarantee any level of service and so it should be thought of as a backup not a replacement. In my view, until we have VoLTE everywhere, this is the correct approach as having it always connect to wifi calling just means a dropped call when you move out of range of that wifi signal.

The standards for wifi calling are a bit like VoLTE - open to a lot of interpretation. At LTE Voice, the EE presenter said wifi calling suffered from no standard delivery methodology and next to no common interpretation of standards which is why it's so difficult to implement.

I'm sure someone else has already confirmed that's how Voda have set it up. It's pretty poor planning as they expect you to put up with an unusable signal before it eventually connects to wifi.


Luckily some clever engineers managed to persuade management to get it rolled out in the current form, I can have 5 bars signal upstairs and still connect to WifiCalling, it also has the benefit to the network of moving calls off the masts and alleviating possible congestion.

Driving around the North Midlands and surrounding areas I've noticed a lot of Huawei 3900AL cabinets in place around Vodafone & O2 sites but which still have the old mast in place, some of the cabinets look like they've been there for quite some time. Some delay on the mast production side or just how Cornerstone do things?
The closest example to me has had its cabinet in place since June or July now,

That in fairness seems to depend from what I have seen. Some sites go for the whole upgrade over a few days, yet others like you say have the cabinets installed but just on the old pole, until that is swapped over. One the other day that o2 did was offering 4g off the existing shared pole (it was a shared mast before cornerstone) yet the pole swap has not yet happened. I thought this was very strange.

Same happened around here a few times - they fitted all the ground gear (or most of it) but then left it half finished for months. In at least one case, it was because they were waiting for permission from the council to extend a C&W fibre run from a neighbouring estate to this particular road.

I guess logistically it makes sense to get whatever you can done within the current planning constraints, so that you don't have excess engineering resources sitting around waiting for work.

Not to mention allowing you to drop what would otherwise have been a rock solid mobile call just by walking a short distance in the wrong direction. No need to bother with that red button.

Some early monopoles I think the Jupiter 811 can be retro fitted with new Antennas for 4G They may still be upgraded to the double stack type s3 column in the future as having dedicated Antennas must provide a stronger signal without having to use combiners and more band options