[David_bl1]

I'm visiting friends in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands next week. There is no EE coverage, but looking at Ofcom Sitefinder there are several Vodafone GSM 900 MHz masts in the area.

Would the Vodafone GSM 900 MHz masts be good enough for doing email and basic browsing the web? I'll need to do some work while I'm there.

The Vodafone coverage checker say "Internet & email on 2G" but I don't know if that means GPRS or EDGE.

In London the Vodafone 2G network is painfully slow, but I'm assuming these remote base stations won't have many people using 2G data so it might be usable?

Appreciate any input or experiences people can offer.

[jchamier]

In my experiences in the north east of Scotland, the Vodafone 2G works but its GPRS and slow. You will get about 28.8kbps on a *good* day. Expect slower. Speed tests will time out, but small emails and WhatsApp / iMessage will work. Web is painful. O2 is the same.

Colleagues who live in the area rely on Vodafone as the only "working" mobile phone service for voice calls, but have PAYG 3 or EE MiFi units for occasional 3G data in some places. (growing noticeably in the last 3 years).

[d123]

Email yes, Internet browsing, unlikely.

I've often found their GPRS has almost no throughput for browsing, pages take minutes to load and even then many images don't actually load on the webpage. That's happpened in about 8 out of 10 times I've tried in the extreme north of England (the Borders area) and Scotland on O2 and Vodafone.

[Mark C]

Quote:

Originally Posted by David_bl1

I'm visiting friends in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands next week. There is no EE coverage, but looking at Ofcom Sitefinder there are several Vodafone GSM 900 MHz masts in the area.

Would the Vodafone GSM 900 MHz masts be good enough for doing email and basic browsing the web? I'll need to do some work while I'm there.

Do your friends have a land line internet connection/WiFi ?

[Gigabit]

I was quite surprised that Spotify works okay on low quality on EDGE on Vodafone!

[japitts]

As a matter of interest, where in the Highlands are you going? I do quite regular trips up there - I've got friends over in Poolewe and lodges just outside Inverness, and can never decide whether christmas in remote-country would be "nice" or a bit too-remote!

On the subject of data speeds, expect plain-text emails (perhaps even small attachments) to be fine but web browsing will be a case of sticking to the basics and nothing more. Think dial-up speeds and you won't go far wrong.

[M1kos]

I could just about stream my radio station on Edge in Devon at 64kbps just depends how many peeps are trying to use each mast