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Vodafone and O2 4G experience thread |
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#1926 |
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Join Date: Nov 2015
Posts: 102
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Vodafone seriously need to sort out their coverage in Oundle. O2 have presence so would think this would be high on the hit list to upgrade.
The O2 site is up by the police station and as the town falls away so does the signal. |
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#1927 |
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Join Date: Nov 2015
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If you think about it as a whole picture. I bet o2 & VF cam massively increase their footprint with Cornerstone.
I bet there are masts all over the place in araa where one has no coverage, but the other has one in a nearby area. Connect together and you have a decent network. VF covered the major road networks well and O2 did a better job of population coverage so as you say add the two together - job done! |
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#1928 |
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Midlands
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This could be an interesting year. They appear to be able to complete 1 mast per week, per team. So if they keep this pace up in the urban areas and start to switch on some of the larger covering more rural areas, the gains could be fairly massive.
It does appear they are going for the "get it right" approach as its going to be a network that actually works for the user. It would have been easy probably to focus on turning on a few larger 2g masts and pretend you have large coverage, however pointless when customers are complaining it doesn't work. |
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#1929 |
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Join Date: Dec 2015
Posts: 932
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The A605 at Barnwell where you can never hang on to a call on VF but I wonder how EE works with the sites on the water tower right up on hill along this road?
The O2 site is up by the police station and as the town falls away so does the signal. I've had a look at the water tower at Barnwell and from Google Maps I cannot see any antennas (though there is a microwave dish) - EE's coverage map also tends to agree that there isn't a mast there. Vodafone is very weak in Barnwell, even for 2G. EE is a little bit weak along that section but there is 2G and 3G. |
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#1930 |
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Join Date: Nov 2015
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I've had a look at the water tower at Barnwell and from Google Maps I cannot see any antennas (though there is a microwave dish) - EE's coverage map also tends to agree that there isn't a mast there.
. going the opposite way at Benefield giving coverage down to Barnwell at the A605.The A14 from the A1 to the M6 bar Huntingdon & Kettering pretty much has no 3G on VF for its entire length either |
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#1931 |
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Join Date: Dec 2015
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I meant the OTHER water tower
going the opposite way at Benefield giving coverage down to Barnwell at the A605.The A14 from the A1 to the M6 bar Huntingdon & Kettering pretty much has no 3G on VF for its entire length either Also, within the same area, is Deenethorpe Airfield (close to the A43), west of Upper Benefield. That has Voda 2G900 and MBNL 2G/3G. Though it'd be too far away to give MBNL coverage to Barnwell, maybe that is what is providing the "limited" 2G900 Voda coverage in Barnwell? Either that, or it's the 2G900 Warmington mast, or possibly even a mast further south of Thrapston, i.e. Raunds? Though that'd be a long range, even for 2G900... Whatever it is, it needs improving - let's hope that CTIL get round to upgrading all of the masts around there, because they need it. I quite often use the A14 to go east - not so much west - but that does indeed sound correct, as when I did a couple of network scans on the A14, Vodafone was absent (outside of Huntingdon). Having said that, Vodafone may have recently upgraded its network, because looking at the coverage map reveals 4G and 3G coverage as far west as Spaldwick, with outdoor coverage going as far as Catworth. However, west of that area, things go downhill significantly - and apart from Kettering, there's no 3G to be seen from the Catworth/Spaldwick area all the way to the Catthorpe Interchange. (M1/M6/A14 junction) O2 are slightly better, according to their coverage map there is at least some sort of 3G from Kettering across to the M1 - and it looks to be 3G900 according to their map. Though O2 have still got that big hole around the Thrapston area to sort out. What surprises me is that O2 felt it necessary to install both 2G900 and 2G1800 in Thrapston - yet didn't put any 3G in? I'd have thought that if you've got 2G900 and 2G1800, you should at least provide some sort of 3G. I'll have to grab a cheap Vodafone and O2 SIM card (or maybe I might use the Giffgaff SIM I have got) and see how their coverage compares to MBNL - though in quite a lot of areas that are local to me, and haven't had the 4G upgrades, the 3G is still lacking. (I'm not monitoring 2G performance/coverage, because EDGE is barely usable as a data connection and GPRS might as well be nothing.) |
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#1932 |
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I'll have to grab a cheap Vodafone and O2 SIM card (or maybe I might use the Giffgaff SIM I have got) and see how their coverage compares to MBNL - though in quite a lot of areas that are local to me, and haven't had the 4G upgrades, the 3G is still lacking. (I'm not monitoring 2G performance/coverage, because EDGE is barely usable as a data connection and GPRS might as well be nothing.)
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#1933 |
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Join Date: Dec 2015
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If you want to test O2, don't use GiffGaff as you'll see 2G where O2 users get 3G. Get an O2 PAYG from a pound store.
Looks like it'll be off to the pound store to get an O2 PAYG SIM and a Voda PAYG SIM, and see how they compare to my regular use Virgin (uses EE) SIM. (I am aware that Virgin don't have access to EE's 4G, but they do have EE 2G and EE 3G.) |
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#1934 |
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Join Date: Jun 2015
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I thought that Giffgaff used the same network as O2? Is it because of the priority system in place, whereby Giffgaff users are likely to be shunted off the 3G masts (to make way for O2 users) and have to use 2G? I do know that GG users are on the very bottom of the O2 Priority ladder, which later became evident when I couldn't even stream a 48kbps AAC stream over EDGE (yet EDGE is rated at 220kbps max and EE's EDGE works OK for very low bitrate streams).
Looks like it'll be off to the pound store to get an O2 PAYG SIM and a Voda PAYG SIM, and see how they compare to my regular use Virgin (uses EE) SIM. (I am aware that Virgin don't have access to EE's 4G, but they do have EE 2G and EE 3G.) |
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#1935 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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If you want to test O2, don't use GiffGaff as you'll see 2G where O2 users get 3G. Get an O2 PAYG from a pound store.
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#1936 |
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Join Date: Nov 2015
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In 1988 I had to choose between Cellnet & Vodafone and VF was the choice I made, today if I wanted a voice network again I believe my choice would be the same.
However if my choice is as lot of people now data was the priority then it would be EE. As I am old I want voice more than data BUT still want data and VF struggles to provide that, two years ago around contract renewal I almost changed to EE but thought lets hang on in there with Beacon / Project Spring and all this investment. Fast forward two years and a planning dispute for the last twelve months has delayed the 4G rollout in my area because of a dispute over adding some dishes to an existing site, VF have built a data centre to handle all the new 4G traffic on the C&W fibre backbone where you struggle to even get 2G coverage! The majority of the time locally where I live it is GPRS or EDGE I can drive five miles down the road into an area populated by a half a dozen houses and petrol station if I want to use 4G! Where 3G is existing on VF it is 2100 and does not work other than for voice. In the very large cities things have changed definitely and that is great but in between it is useless, where I live I can be on the M1, M5,M6, M40, M42, M45, M50, M69 within 30 minutes or so with no 3G let alone 4G. The train is even worse! It is this amount of infill is where I question how long will it take, as reaching x amount of population coverage is fine until someone wants to move around and that is why I picked VF all that time ago as I needed to travel. |
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#1937 |
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Join Date: Dec 2015
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I found with GG that I would see the 3G, even in very congested 3G areas, but the moment I tried to use data, the 3G signal would lose 20dBm every second until the phone then went onto GPRS. Disconnecting data and it'd mysteriously go back up to 5 bars of DC-HSDPA. This only seemed to occur on legacy O2 900/2100 sites, the more modern ones I keep the 3G signal just have almost no throughput.
It's not like I ask for 100 Mbps +, I just want a reliable 48k AAC stream to work. GPRS will result in a complete failure (it spends more time buffering than it does streaming), and EDGE on Giffgaff is the same as GPRS. EE's EDGE does sometimes work OK for a 48k stream, but you can't guarantee that where you are going, the mast will be EDGE. In most cases it's still GPRS. So 2G is switched off as a result. When I tested my local O2 mast (via GG), I got about 0.5Mbps, and the time before that, I got 1Mbps. Compare that to the 15 Mbps + of MBNL in the same area... |
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#1938 |
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Any links to that? I did some comparison tests last year between o2, Tesco and Giffgaff and while I saw big variations in download speeds I never saw any variation in actual coverage.
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#1939 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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What were your findings of this? I'm assuming GG were naff, Tesco fairly close if not he same to the o2?
From memory, it was around 1-2Mbps on Giffgaff, 4Mbps on Tesco and 8Mbps on o2. |
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#1940 |
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Join Date: Dec 2015
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What were your findings of this? I'm assuming GG were naff, Tesco fairly close if not he same to the o2?
This is followed closely by O2 PAYG Tesco are slightly lower down but still have a reasonably high priority The rest of the MVNO's (that you have to manually enter the APN settings for, i.e. Giffgaff) have a very low priority on the network. This is just my understanding, if someone can confirm this or test this it'd be appreciated. |
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#1941 |
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Join Date: Dec 2015
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Pretty much, but there was a difference between Tesco and o2.
From memory, it was around 1-2Mbps on Giffgaff, 4Mbps on Tesco and 8Mbps on o2. Thanks for the confirmation. |
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#1942 |
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Which pretty much confirms what I have just written, i.e. O2 have the highest priority, followed by Tesco, followed by the other MVNOs.
Thanks for the confirmation. |
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#1943 |
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Join Date: Dec 2015
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One of the other MVNOs was actually pretty similar to Tesco, I think it was Lyca.
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#1944 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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I've just had a look and Lyca now uses the O2 network for their data. I'm sure it used to be the EE network, but hey ho. Maybe Lyca is a little bit higher up the priority? Also was this on 3G or 4G for Lyca and GG?
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#1945 |
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Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Rutland
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It will be interesting to see what happens at Ryhall / Essendine with CTIL as IIRC the VF is behind the petrol station on top of the hill, then in Essendine on the right in the industrial bit O2 have their site. VF then placed another site to serve the railway track heading towards Pickworth in Essendine.
It would make sense to get rid of the two VF sites and CTIL the O2 site in terms of cost saving so keep us informed on progress. Again I wonder what will happen along the A43 by Wakerley / Fineshade as there is a VF site that will provide some coverage here if the CTIL it but the O2 site further down the A43 will not if they upgrade that one. These will be examples of where they could provide excellent coverage OR save money You'd then have VF/O2 sites in Stamford>Ryhall>Essendine>Carlby>Bourne Both Voda & O2 are pretty poor around Witham/Toft/Manthorpe. When I used to be with O2 the signal dropped to ~1-2 bars of 2G so a filler site would be beneficial. Indeed O2/VF are pretty poor along the Glen valley, the A151 at Grimsthorpe/Edenham is a notorious blackspot that's never been rectified. EE steals the show here with a masts at all the mentioned locations plus Toft then on to Bourne. As for the A43, O2 mast share with EE at Bulwick. It would be better to retain this taller site and get rid of the Voda monopole which is 1/2 mile away to the north. |
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#1946 |
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Join Date: Mar 2000
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Any links to that? I did some comparison tests last year between o2, Tesco and Giffgaff and while I saw big variations in download speeds I never saw any variation in actual coverage.
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#1947 |
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Totnes, Devon
Posts: 6,683
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Obviously!
Did anyone mention that O2 don't do WC and Vodafone do but with no SMS... Just in case no one had mentioned that here.... Might be relevant, that's all.... I'll get shot!
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#1948 |
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Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 139
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Obviously!
Did anyone mention that O2 don't do WC and Vodafone do but with no SMS... Just in case no one had mentioned that here.... Might be relevant, that's all.... I'll get shot! ![]() Hence why I'm seriously considering moving from EE to Vodafone.
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#1949 |
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Totnes, Devon
Posts: 6,683
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Ah see, you need to get a proper phone......
Arrrgghhhhh... what have I started!!!!!
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#1950 |
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Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Surrey, UK
Posts: 660
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O2 have their TU go app! Not that I know anyone on O2 who actually uses it which might be saying something
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going the opposite way at Benefield giving coverage down to Barnwell at the A605.