their website is so so slow.

I experienced the non upgraded vodafone areas at the weekend with a trip to Cumbria. It was god awful. EE was a lot better. Lucky I had my EE mifi. Sadly no 4g

It's not just Cumbria! Most of South Oxfordshire (within 15 miles of Vodafone HQ!!!) is firmly 2G only - with patchy 3G in towns!

I've never had problems with signal around there, either on Vodafone or EE. Had a Nokia 808 on EE and an iPhone 4S on Vodafone. It was entertaining to compare signal strength as I roamed around, there were places where EE were stronger, places where Vodafone were stronger.

Never had any problems on either network.

Vodafone and O2 are pretty much starting over for 4G, with the added benefit that 3G and 2G users will gain too.

For too long, both networks became very complacent and didn't invest enough to build a robust network for data users.

Come late 2015/early 2016, the whole of the UK should be quite massively transformed in terms of both coverage and data speeds.. but even then, all networks will have to be looking forward to ensure they don't just press pause and wait another ten years before investing again.

We'll have faster 4G speeds and arguably even more usage as more and more of our content consumption will be streamed. And that usage will involve streaming HD content, and then Ultra-HD content, so placing further strains on networks.

Where I live (in the northeast) you can't even get a decent 3G signal (Nevermind 4G) on vodafone despite having excellent coverage on the area checker! ... I usually just keep my phone on 2G otherwise it'll constantly disconnect during calls or they'll not come through @ all!

Should be brilliant geographical coverage should also be massively improved compared to what it is now. Data demand is on the increase and can't see it stopping for a while. It has taken a while longer than I would thought but tablets and smartphones were finally found and now the race has truly kicked off. I imagine in 10 years we will be discussing rollout of 5G but imagine before then the backhaul with need to be upgraded in London, Manchester, Edinburgh etc to keep up with demand and starting to see the use of small cell technology more. So networks can't sit on there laurels like they did for ten years with 3G market is going to become very competitive I imagine as well. Wouldn't be surprised if we go to 3 carriers either in next few years Specially if Ireland and Germany deals get approved. Looks like France is going to Three as well.

I disagree, in fact in my experience O2's built the best data network for users by actually concentrating on where users are.

I think it's EE & 3 that have become complacent, by shoving a few masts out in rural areas to give the impression of wider (geographical) coverage while decomissioning half their masts leaving gaping holes and capacity shortages in urban areas where most people actually want to use their phones.

You do tend to hear a lot from the vocal minority of people who spend most of their time outside of urban coverage hotspots or travel a lot, yet most people are not like that. You don't hear from that silent majority though, yet impartial surveys show they are happiest with the service they receive.

Similarly to how you frequently hear of the vocal minority of heavy users and tech-savvy customers on this forum, frequently eating up dozens or hundreds of gigabytes per month of data (both fixed line and mobile) yet the vast majority of people are not like that. People here complain 20GB is a small 4G allowance, most people use less than 5GB even on their home broadband lines. You just don't hear from the latter because they aren't on this forum.

So no, I don't think they've underinvested. They may have underinvested in catering for people with your particular usage habits, but not the general public at large.

Totally contrary to my experiences! 3 invested a LOT of money in upgrades last year and it shows - especially in their 3G download speeds on their DC-HSPDA masts.

In my experience EE have about the best overall 3G coverage.

You must have missed the bit where EE and 3 have 1 bar of signal (at best) where I used to live and average speeds less than 1Mbps on DC-HSDPA (if I could get connected at all) most days. On bad days I'd get 200Kbps.

3 haven't built any new sites near me in 5 years and a few Orange ones have been switched off. Half the masts there still weren't DC-HSDPA a few months ago and that was in a big city centre.

O2 and Vodafone have pretty appalling data speeds in and around London, and that's where a lot of users are. Ridiculous ping times, shockingly slow speeds and many times where nothing happens at all.

And that's where Orange used to be too.

The Orange press office told us (when our offices were on 'Silicon roundabout') that to be sure of having a reliable connection, we should disable 3G from Shoreditch to Holborn. It wasn't just a data problem, but also a problem with allowing calls to come through. 3G - calls to voicemail. 2G - calls would come through.

That wasn't acceptable to me, but it's how it was. If I had to stick to 2G, I might as well not bother. In some parts of London, Orange was far worse than O2 or Vodafone as an overall service.

At this time, Three was already offering faster data (HSPA) and so was T-Mobile, yet the MBNL partnership was only in its infancy. Each of them were probably better choices for users, including business users, but ironically both were the networks that businesses were not really interested in (for many other reasons).

I firmly believe O2, Vodafone and to a lesser extent, Orange, were complacent and extremely arrogant, as they all advertised having such good networks, even though 2G was probably propping all of them up.

It's changing now, but there's a long way to go.

I accept that O2 and Vodafone may have less capacity issues outside of the big towns and cities, but London is a rather large and significant area. It's shameful to have had such a bad service for so many years, even if the 4G roll out is hopefully going to consign such poor service to the history books.

As you've said yourself, the problem with the newly upgraded sites and the old ones is another problem for O2. All fixable of course.

You may have had a better experience on 3 but does everybody? I'm sure I read around here a few months ago someone complaining about all networks including 3 and T-Mobile having unusable data in busy parts of London - in fact that might even have been yourself. Indeed your own early 4G tests showed 3 3G to be down as low as 0.5Mbps in some places and barely able to stay above 2Mbps in others...

... Although so far that's all been about speeds, and not coverage. Signal strength and indoor coverage is another matter too, again something I've found to be worst on 3 and second worst on EE, in most places where I've lived.

Just six months ago the Guardian's survey of mobile blackspots received far more complaints per customer for 3 and EE than they did for Vodafone and O2 - nearly twice as many in the case of 3. So I still find it hard to believe your bad experience with them is particularly representative of the public at large, or that Cornerstone as as "appalling" across big cities as you suggest...

Yeah but he's arguing that by providing denser coverage to the cities, actually O2 have the best data network.

Dubious. Great if you happen to live there, and never move about. They also don't have 2600mhz for 4g, so their city coverage will be surpassed by others in the end. They have a small amount of 1800 they could use, I guess.

There's the thing. Most people *do* live in a city and not move about. The kind of people who you don't hear about much, don't visit forums, and you don't see in the news. The local shop clerk who's worked at the corner shop for 40 years. Your average bus or cab driver, who needs decades of experience on local roads to even pass his license, the family butchers who've run the store for the past hundred years or more...

I don't know how 4G will turn out on O2 in the long run without the added capacity of 2600, but then 3 has none of that either, and less 800 as well. At the moment though, where there's widespread 3G900 and twice as many masts as MBNL, there's no contest, but then again, that doesn't apply everywhere. Again, spectrum does not equal coverage, or even service.

Who will turn out better in the long really depends on how many decommissioned masts 3 & EE choose to turn back on or replace, because that's where most of the coverage holes are coming from.

I didn't argue anywhere that O2 had the best data network, all I'm arguing is they haven't completely neglected their customers as some people are suggesting. They still have the highest customer satisfaction rates and least complaints of all networks, so clearly they have concentrated their resources where it matters to their customers.

3 do have a lot of black spots. Some will go when Orange-only masts get integrated into MBNL. Can't see EE removing those. But this also coincides with their over-zealous removal of access to the Orange 2G sites.

EE are receiving an upsurge of complaints due to their network rationalisation. Coverage is changing, which is not acceptable to those who had a good Orange 3G signal, and are now connecting to more distant MBNL sites. EE have probably been too optimistic where this has happened.

O2 and Voda's customers aren't moaning as much, as their coverage isn't changing in this way. They are only seeing (slow) improvements.

Yes, that's the thing. O2/VF may rationalise their network in a similar way in future, they may not. They haven't done so so far though.

But EE & 3 - I can understand EE's complaints going up because of Orange 3G access being reduced, but 3 customers never had these anyway. Yet on the Guardian survey, 3 had even more coverage complaints than EE. And while some of it will improve with addition of the Orange sites, not all of them are to be added - several thousand are still to be turned off completely.

Overall it comes down to density more than spectrum, and the overall goal for all networks is "Over 18,500" for O2/VF and "Around 19,000" for EE/3, which isn't a huge difference. Though in theory that number could also equate to an entire large city having blanket coverage vs. no coverage at all.

This is different! What is going to get most complaints is surely lack of ANY coverage.

My own gripe about Vodafone has never been about lack of 2G coverage - simply their hopeless (up to now) 3G! Where I work, for example, there is a 5-bar 2G signal but no 3G at all!

True, but not all cities are equal, and a lot of those who work in cities commute. O2 in Aberdeen for example is not really any better than the other 3 nets. Outside Aberdeen, they only cover 5 of the 10 most populated towns with 3G (same with Voda, but they cover a slightly different 5!). EE and 3 manage to cover them all. But it's a small city and lacks a true urban sprawl, so its the exception I guess.


It will be interesting to see. I presume 2600 will see some use in London soon, no point buying it if you don't intend to use it.


Have any 3 sites been decommissioned? I thought the decommissioned ones in GB were Orange sites, deemed by EE to be surplus to requirements (although they probably weren't).


As usual, it's down to where you live, where you go and what you expect from your network.

I guess 5 years down the line, the nets will operate a 4G net for data and a 2G net for calls. Three will head to VoLTE only perhaps.

Yes, but 3 did used to offer 2G fallback, with data to Orange (previously O2). This has been phased out in urban areas, which caused an awful lot of complaints. Basically in-building coverage vanished overnight.

I have had some bad experiences on Three, including at home in the last month or two - which was clearly down to the 4G upgrade work. Now it's live, everything is back to normal. In fact, the speeds are better (or more consistent) than before on 3G. This means no discernible decrease in speeds during the daytime.

I'd had some occasions where I was getting speeds of between 0.5 and 2Mbps, which was about 1/10 or even 1/20th of my normal speeds. However, that was still faster than I have had on O2 or Vodafone, or Orange. And this was only temporary.

I've not had speeds like that in other places for goodness knows how long, including my long weekend in Cornwall.

The problems with Orange weren't a few days, we're talking about 1-2 years! Orange knew it had problems, but did sod all to fix them (whatever it might have said to the contrary, the proof was there for all to see). Perhaps knowing that with the creation of Everything Everywhere (first time around) it would seek to solve things by merging the networks, which it did announce while I was still working there.

Early on, the 2G only roaming did improve my ability to make or receive calls, but it was a bodge until it was done properly. It did nothing to fix my data problems then either.

London always has poorer results - for all networks. I saw that from my big data test, but of course I've done hundreds if not thousands of tests over the years for my work or personal sadness (!) that I haven't published. Or are you suggesting that I've been unlucky and other people in Hatfield, Welwyn Garden City, Stevenage, High Barnet, Finsbury Park, King's Cross, Old Street, Finsbury Circus, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, Green Park and - the list goes on - are all likely to be getting far better speeds, lower latency?

I haven't been testing call quality (both actual quality and call drops) and that was the other big problem for Orange and Vodafone at least. That's a whole different ball game, so I won't continue about that here.

I don't expect to get 25Mbps on 3G, but I do expect reasonable ping times and speeds of at least 2-3Mbps (which I'd regard as still usable for most purposes). Even if you were on 2G, you'd expect at least EDGE to work well enough to let you update your Facebook status on an app, or download new emails. I don't think ANY network can offer a reliable data service on 2G in the highly populated areas in the south east.

Both O2 and Vodafone can still give those 1000+ms pings and speeds of 0.0n Mbps, which I find unacceptable - in that neither of them should have allowed their networks to become that saturated.

But, while I might be seen to be bashing them both, I am the first to say that with the upgrade work and the rolling out of 4G these problems can and are being addressed.

I can imagine this being a big shock to some users. Given the 2G roaming doesn't include data, that's another problem.

With O2 there used to be data, although very restricted (given Three's walled garden) but I don't know when it ended on Orange?

And how did things change for the user? Did Three change the roaming agreement so everyone went from being able to use O2 to using Orange, or was it IMSI based? I'd been told (but never verified) that older users were activated to use O2, and newer users for Orange. If true, the coverage would actually depend on your account.

I joined 3 in 2011 - and could still use data on Orange. Was phased out later in that year. I left shortly afterwards, after getting lost in a rural area and not being able to download a map tile. Silly me...

I don't know how the switch happened. I remember forum members saying at the time that older sims would roam on both O2 and Orange. Don't know if this was actually true.

Yes, many have. I don't know if they were decommissioned as part of the original MBNL or the later EE merger, but there definitely have. There's at least ten I know of in Edinburgh alone. These were original 3 sites that never had Orange on them.

As far as I remember, and this was a long time ago so my recollection may not be the best, it was that certain (old) SIMs which had O2 service continued to do so for a while while new SIMs were issued as Orange only. I don't recall if the old O2 SIMs were deactivated and replaced or just moved over in the end. There was definitely a time where I had two 3 phones, one of which could access O2 and the other Orange.

Indeed, data definitely did still work for many years after the switch to Orange, frequently exceeding 200Kbps and delivering actual usable mobile browsing, even on 2G. What annoyed me the most though is they never informed me as a customer at any point about either 2G data or 2G voice being switched off, both of which happened during my minimum term contract. I only found out when I phoned to complain after my nearest mast went down and I ended up having no signal at work for two weeks, instead of the expected 2G fallback.

I got my 3 sim in the post today, after a bit of fiddling to get it into my phone, i have now put the vodafone sim in my old phone and the 3 in my main phone.

My only problem was that the sim was a nano sim and 3 supplied a adaptor, now trying to hold the sim in the adaptor and the adaptor in the sim holder while I slotted it in my phone took some doing. why not just supply a micro sim?


Anyway, all done, so I will see what happens over the next month.

Their sim only contracts are cheaper as well.

With vodafone I pay £13 a month, for 300 mins voice, unlimited text and 750MB of data.

For just under a tenner with 3 i can get 1Gb of data, 600 mins of voice and 5,000 text.

I don't use any more than 10 text a month, so the reduced amount of text is no worry.

i could go for the £6.90 plan, with is 500MB data, 200 mins voice and 5,000 text. I would cope fine on that and still save over a fiver per month.

the only minor problem i have with 3 is no tethering, not that I have used it much, so not a huge problem.