Agreed but I worry about this priority thing where you can't actually use 800 unless there's no 2100.
They need a decent 1800 uk wide coverage in order to alter priorities but even at 70% 1800 I'm not sure they could do that partly because of their AYCE plans
If not that then they need to get 2100 < > 800 active/idle thresholds and hand-overs sorted because at the moment 800 is almost like a completely separate network.
Maybe they are planning that once they have 1800 rolled out where they want it.

That will change, they are still mid rollout as they have a much smaller budget to play with, hence the lower service cost.

O2 is the magic switch then really I hope they ramp up the money that they spend on naintaining the network once they merge.

Indeed but things change once you get down here and get rural.
It's entirely possible that Three could enable a mast that EE haven't and then a bunch of dwellings and the local pub have Three 4G but EE doesn't.

I'm thinking specifically for the moment of the recent Orange mast upgrade down here at Bickleigh brake near Halwell half way between Totnes and Kingsbridge.
Went up there again tonight but the 800 ports still aren't connected.
If Three connect these then the New Inn at Moreleigh (Google New Inn Moreleigh and Jonathan Dimbleby) will have Three 4G but no EE coverage at all.
The best steak in the world ever... period!
I know this as EE 2G (with the new antennas) is borderline in there from that mast.

Due to the topography here there are tons of places where the same would be the case.
I think (hope) we will get our fair share of the 3800 odd 800 masts.
I think we will as there are a few Orange masts I feared would be turned off have in fact been upgraded (including that one).
Actually none of them have been turned off and in 2 cases the Orange mast that's been 4Geed had a TM4G mast less than half a mile from it.
It is really hilly and difficult to cover down here.
Like bloody middle Earth!!!

Yeah I realised this after I posted. Didn't think things through enough first!

Typical Bloke there.
Same as me.
Never think it through.
Always open mouth before brain in gear.
Yep, that's why we die before the females......
Hahahaha

My 3 800 4G experience echoed everyone else's experience on this thread until yesterday evening.

My friends house is a complete blackhole for mobile signals, he gets by on 1 to 2 bars of Talk Mobile (Voda) 2G.

I walk in and I look at my phone expecting "No Service" and get 2 bars of 4G, it more or less stayed locked to it, did a test call and it was 800.

.....the more curious one was Harrow-on-the-Hill station (loads of 3G and 4G 1800 signal about) but there's a dip before the station which is a blackspot, got 1 bar, checked field test and it was 800, stayed locked until I was sitting at full whack, then went back to 3G as the train left, got a respectable 25mbps as I was on it.

If it could hold on "just" that little bit longer I'd be happy.

I agree that the 800MHz priority seems to be wrong. My phone will sit on my desk and be happily connected to a (very weak but very usable) 800MHz signal, when suddenly that signal will "disappear" and the phone will go to searching. It will then take a good few minutes for it to reconnect to 800MHz again.

My suspicion is that it is temporarily finding 2100MHz 3G but it's not strong enough to actually connect to it.

Hopefully future O/S will allow individual selection and locking onto a frequency you want.
It doesn't seem that the automatic system is performing how people need it to, so it would be nice to have a manual over-ride.

that's something that's controlled by each operator isn't it via carrier update settings?

Yes, probably! So it would need a hack or O/S having priority over carrier settings.

How great would it be to be able to control your own network priority's!
More importantly the thresholds in which they switch between each other..

It might seem great from a user point of view, but it would be awful from the point of view of the network operator and it would ultimately damage people's experiences with the network.

The networks manage their capacity by switching devices between frequencies (e.g. 1800MHz to 2600MHz) and technologies (e.g. 3G to 4G) to meet demand. If users could override that, then network capacity would suffer.

Band steering rarely works too well with wifi. I just gave up and locked my laptop onto 5GHz

I'm surprised that the bods over on the XDA forums haven't done loads more with the inner workings of at least the most popular phones. They should have the complete O/S mapped out and ready to abuse by now.

Somethings definitely up with the 1800 cell in town. It connects to it then attempts to use data then gets kicked back to 3g. Forcing it makes it connect but it will drop to no service after about 5 secs. Any ideas? Forced 800 and that worked fine.

I was stood pretty much right below the cell tower.

Three were carrying out work on my local mast (Goole) last week and 4G has been appearing on and off since, with more work showing as planned on Wednesday.

I have the results of this test. If the device connects to Orange 2G in a 4G800 area, it will stay on the 2G. if the phone is put on aeroplane mode and back, it then connects and stays on 4G800.

It appears to have moved back to 2G, though 800 is very weak in this area.

Which part of Goole? I'm up there in Old Goole with family for part of Xmas. I'm assuming that the prime mast to be upgraded would be the big one in the industrial bit behind B&Q, but who knows...

4g was picked up in the town centre, so I just assumed it would be cell neat the railway station.

Yeah probably is that one then. Here's hoping for the others too (though probably unlikely)

Regarding the matter of 3 4G alongside EE, I didn't imagine 3 would install 4G on a mast that EE haven't touched, but it seems they do?

Round here, EE have 4G'd most masts, but there's a huge one that's just 3G. But 3 have 4G800 and 4G1800 on it. Didn't think they'd bother, I literally thought they stole some backhaul from EE for their 4G. There you go.

Saw that there was apparently 4G maintenance recently to a mast near my work place, Colwyn Bay was one of the towns scheduled to be 4G enabled by the end of 2015. Oddly though, neither of the two masts serving the town seem to have been enabled (yet) though.

What kind of data format is this using? Anyone know?

It's a json string.

Sorry, i meant what date format.