It's nothing to do with that! It's because they decided to review their mobile contract and went with the network that provided the best deal. BT will be using EE as their carrier for their own mobile network coverage where they don't have 4G coverage. It follows that they will use the same for their own organisation.

MVNO's review parent networks and make changes and BT is not unique doing so. Asda also changed provider recently and BT themselves are on their 3rd mobile network provider. They started with Cellnet which was divested and became O2, then they partnered with Vodafone and now they have moved to EE. I expect the reasoning is more to do with business issues and pricing than to do with coverage.

I was with Vodafone for quite a few years and always use to swear by them and O2, but a while back where I use to get 5meg+ download speeds in Harlow town center where I live you were lucky to get more than .1meg download (yes a tenth of a meg) even though the phone showed the H+ symbol. This went on for around 6 months and me constantly badgering Vodafone on the phone, forums and also tech support with no change and their only answer was 4G is on the way!

I trialed out a Three SIM and was not sure at first as I had no reception at home, but was so impressed with the reception and especially data speed everywhere else I thought "F it - even though I've been with them for several years and even get a 20% discount through work I'm moving" and have never looked back.

O2 and Vodafone seem to have more 4G coverage in the towns where I live, but I'd much rather have decent 3G everywhere I go than just in the towns and that's fast enough for me.

you could have transferred your number in the time you have spent on this thread.

Large scale surveys that measure Glasgow and Edinburgh, and then extrapolate that as indicative of service across a whole country? Shameful....

Root Metrics and others survey cities and regions and publish country wide analysis. Worth checking to see how coverge and performance has changed since the 4G rollouts were started.

Here's info from RootMetrics, grabbed last night. It's a basic overview of the UK and the red dots are quite telling.

https://jmcomms.files.wordpress.com/...e-june2014.jpg

It's certainly not a good idea to extrapolate based on a few cities with very good coverage and/or data speeds - as it would paint a lot more of the UK better than the raw data suggests. It's certainly obvious why you might want to concentrate on places like Liverpool and Glasgow though!!

Obviously for more detailed breakdowns, you'll need to consult the app or website - but this is a pretty good way of getting an idea of how things stand without cherry picking.

EE is waaaaay out ahead for 4G, as you'd expect. And Three is clearly last in terms of 4G, but look at the difference when it comes to 3G! Vodafone and O2 are appalling in many parts of the UK, and if some members insist on recommending RootMetrics as a way to choose, then just look at how it proves what so many people have said about slow 3G speeds AND the amount of time people are stuck with just 2G.

Naturally, if you're only really using a mobile phone for making calls (perish the thought!) then you'll be just fine being on a network that is mostly light green (2G). If you're looking for more, these maps give a good idea of who to choose depending on where you are - or where you might be.

When Vodafone and O2 expand 4G, which will 'fix' 3G at the same time, expect these images to change massively - but that's then, not now.

Just got this from Vodafone:

EE's tiny amount of 800Mhz looks poor but of course it will only be used when necessary. Pretty much every cell that has 800 will also have 1800 so the vast majority of handsets will use that (and they have oodles of it). LTE will only switch someone down to 800 when the handset is out of range of 1800 (behind a hill / indoors).
Ironically EE's main advantage will come not from having 800/2600, but from the fact that the 1800 will always be there 80%-90% of the time.

I'm happy to disregard all of these surveys anyway. The only experience of networks that I'm interested in is my own. My experience of both the MBNL networks since the Orange/T-Mobile has been absolutely first class wherever I am in South Wales. There's no real competition for what I want, which is primarily data. O2 and Vodafone simply can't complete, and there is little sign of it improving for them around here.

One of my mates works for one of Welsh Water's contractors, and the company is about to switch from Vodafone to EE because of Voda's god-awful 3G network. He does a lot of work outside big towns and cities such as Cardiff, Newport and Bridgend, and he simply can't do anything electronically as his work phone/laptop turns into a giant doorstop when he goes outside the urban centres.

For O2 and Vodafone to just concentrate on urban areas is, frankly, lazy and not good enough. I understand things should change under the new network upgrades programme, but this is a good 5-6 years late now. I have every intention of persuading him and his girlfriend to move their personal phones away from Vodafone to one of the MBNL networks when their contracts are up. I hate seeing people get ripped off for a service that isn't being provided adequately throughout the country. I appreciate that Three and EE aren't perfect, but they are a million miles ahead of O2 and Vodafone right now in my view, and in my experience.

Wavejock can throw all the RM tests at me all he likes, but he was quick enough to point out that EE had some deal with them and how the tests didn't matter, yet now that O2 and Vodafone are climbing up the tables (long overdue), they now matter.

The guy has zero credibility left, and has made no effort to redeem himself. His posts are hypocritical and should be treated with the biggest amount of skepticism that you can muster by anybody who comes here looking for help, advice, and an unbiased viewpoint.

Overall, the MBNL nets are ahead.

However, I think the points raised by O2/VF's proponents that O2/VF seem to be covering their 4G urban areas more densely and thoroughly are valid, and should not be discounted. If you live in a big city, and never leave it, then you do have the pick of the 4 networks to choose from.

If you're looking to use data on the move and travel a lot, expecially for business, O2 and Voda are currently not the best choice. Also applies if you don't live in the big urban centres.

The RootMetrics data (as seen on the image I posted) still shows Vodafone and O2 being way behind when it comes to data. Fine for voice, sure, but people want data these days. Not necessarily loads of data, but certainly enough for the basics.

And even sending or receiving an email is painful when you have huge ping times and timeouts, due to congestion or just an incredibly slow backhaul. GPRS and EDGE might, in theory, be fine for a lot of people - but GPRS and EDGE rarely operates at anywhere near its full potential, often not working at all.

As I've said, part of the problem is probably that in the main cities there was good 2G coverage and there seemed to be no rush to upgrade. Even when adding 3G, there wasn't enough capacity for the move towards HSPA and DC-HSPA. Those who have been in the game for some time will know that Vodafone and O2 only upgraded a small number of sites even within London (mainly the city of London, including Canary Wharf and the like) to higher speeds as we saw the move from 384Kbps to 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 etc.

Three, on the other hand, was always talking about the need for data and proposing to upgrade many more sites - just as it went ahead and did, hence DC-HSDPA for the majority of the UK population (and before that, HSPA+ for speeds of up to 21Mbps - which goes back a good few years now).

In the early days, one reason T-Mobile had good capacity (for 2G) was because of the huge demands on the network because of the free calls. I guess this meant that One2One had to install many more sites than it otherwise might have needed, which I suppose was a bonus when it came to upgrading to 3G. Yes, 1800MHz also required more cells - but it would have been a combination of both issues.

Like Three, it seems that T-Mobile really did work hard on rolling out 3G when others weren't in the same rush, and when MBNL came along - it really showed how far ahead it was over the competition that had become rather lazy and complacent. Or perhaps that's being too simplistic, and it was a case of Vodafone having interests in other areas.

Obviously Orange quickly benefitted from the joint venture and getting access to the MBNL network, and is now way out in front because of gaining this AND being ahead on 4G.

Wow thanks for that Jon, it is stark when you put them side by side.

Shows how much catching up Voda and O2 have to do.

Well not really....... I live in a big city and only really travel abroad and in Glasgow there are only really three networks that cover the city and it's surrounding areas with 4G. Same applies in Edinburgh. Not sure why people are stating that there are such huge differences in the map images posted. My understanding is that red dots are bad and the colour on the key above is the best performance, reliability or coverage so I would advise looking at the images and interpreting them for oneself.

He didn't say 4G, at home you often have wifi anyway. The place where you need data most on a mobile is when you're out and about for the day or in different locations.

Just look at the shocking amount of red dots on O2's data coverage on Root Metrics in Jon's side by side. The difference in national data coverage is massive.

Exactly, it doesn't matter what the air interface is, GPRS on EE (formerly T-Mobile) giving 56k speeds is better than GPRS on Voda or O2 giving no IP address, which is sadly very common. In my town centre this lunchtime (near Sainsburys front door) the EE signal was 4G 3 bars, and the Voda signal was EDGE on 5 bars and yet the Voda couldn't get an IP address to even check email status - I had to use the EE phone as a hotspot. This is not a congested area. I power cycled the phone to see if any 3G came up, but nope. This is a town of 50k people about 30 miles from LHR. Usually outdoors get Voda 3G, so perhaps they're doing upgrades for 4G and broken everything. In the office we've had to install SureSignal boxes all over the place just to get data to work and update calendar etc.


Yes, Orange and T-mobile realised they needed essentially double the masts of 900mhz, so back in the prosperous 1990s they were able to build all these mast sites. That helped them both when 3G/UMTS came in at 2100mhz as they had physically more sites already live.


Voda knew what to do, but they just didn't do it in most places - either Chris Gent and co decided to invest overseas (Verizon Wireless shareholding etc) or they knew the income was mostly from corporate connections that only cared about voice and the 2G network was working well.

MBNL was a revelation when I moved from Orange to T-mobile in mid 2008, speeds just got better and better, as I replaced handsets to climb the various versions of HSPA/HSPA+ etc

Which is, of course, what you do with any information that can paddle your sinking canoe. Although you'll happily ignore anything that proves it wrong.

Anyway, I travel a fair bit around South Wales, and I'm going to London on Wednesday until Sunday. On the train, I want to be able to play on my phone - stream some music/radio, browse the web, reply to emails.

I don't want to spend two hours on a train seeing how well I can twiddle my thumbs. That is exactly what I would be doing if I was on either O2 or Vodafone. While their coverage might be good in a particular town or city, it's BETWEEN places htat makes or breaks it for me, and this is where MBNL absolutely wipes the floor with the other two at the moment. I won't give a company a decent amount of money each month to fob me off with a substandard service. I fully accept that people willingly pay money to VO2, but I'd bet money on people staying with them either because of apathy, or because they assume all networks are like that.

Hopefully the upgrades will be good and we will have a four-way level playng field between the networks because, right now, we have a two-tier scenario where EE and Three are far superior to Vodafone and O2.

You're right, and it's because they are a vast company with global interests and far richer fish to fry than a few whingeing individual customers.

What really got my goat, to be honest, was not the piss-poor 3G coverage (and it does make sense to wait until 4G is introduced, then upgrade both at the same time) but the fact that - something that is common in other companies, by the way - that it is nigh-on impossible actually to get to talk to someone and - more to the point - it seems to be the policy to keep the punter at arm's length.

So when you want info, you go through a whole filtering process which, in my case took me nowhere: I wanted to ask about '3G covergage' ( the search term I entered) and was simply directed to a page urging me to buy a Sure Signal box, which, as far as I know boosts your home mobile coverage through your wi-fi, but has to f*ck all to do with 3G reception when out and about.

When Three is good, it is excellent, with excellent download speeds. There was an issue in North Cornwall, where I live, driving to London twice a week, hence the need to listen to football on Five Live over the net (and, I'm told, other areas recently) when for some reason Three phones were trying to join the Orange/EE network and consequently couldn't do a damn thing. Three themselves told me that when I rang asking what was going on. (I got an R symbol instead of the usual H+ and occasional 3G, though almost always H+)

As for 3G and 4G, when Three 3G is around, I can even watch TV quite happily on my smartphone (sitting in a pub, say, though loads have free Cloud wifi if they have Sky), so I'm really not that fussed about 4G. I'd prefer to wait till they iron out the glitches.

4G LTE is a well proven and tested technology deployed in many countries now and used by millions. The 'glitches' if they exist are not based on anything to do with the technology.

I live in the South West and travel around the South a lot. I am inclined to agree with the OP. It's like night and day, comparing EE or 3 to Vodafone and O2.

Vodafone has finally put 3G in my village (years after EE/3 did), but the performance is so bad you might as well continue to use GPRS.

As a rural dweller I laugh at people who constantly use RootMetrics as a guide. It might be okay for dense urban areas where there is plenty of data, but useless when it comes to anywhere else. I'm inclined to believe my own experiences over that of RM.

Root Metrics itself shows how poor the rural coverage is on Vodafone and O2, as there's an overall map that Jon did a side-by-side of earlier. Just look at all the red blocks on the O2 map.

Root Metrics certainly backs up yours (and my own) experience.

As I have stated many times previously the same issues don't affect rural and urban customers. For rural ones it's generally coverage that is the issue but for urban areas it's congestion especially when mobiles get used as fixed line alternatives leading to throttling and poor performance.

Different issues for different geographic locations but that has always been the case with mobile technology from it's inception.

And a footnote re the maps posted: My understanding is that red dots are bad and the colour on the key above is the best performance, reliability or coverage so I would advise examining the images and interpreting them for oneself.

The red dots are bad and the O2 and Vodafone maps are full of them, you know yourself that both networks are terrible for data once outside of main towns. There seems to be no significant difference between Three, o2 and Vodafone in cities, except the data allowance and price, where Three come out as much better value whilst beating or coming in broadly the same in most of the reports, most reliable network in the capital for example.

Meanwhile according to the maps there are vast areas of the country where there is 2G for communication and no 3G. So that is still a very relevant issue for lots of rural dwellers and travellers not to mention those who enjoy exploring a bit further than the closest motorway service area!