Who said that?

I was under the impression it was lower than 1800 but still above 3G.

That's what I'm finding jabba but I've been told several times in this thread that 800 is lowest priority. Even Three have implied the same on their blog.

Yes but that would just be higher than 3G2100 since there is nothing else between 1800 and 2100.
Currently it seems (notwithstanding those saying sometimes is goes from 3G to 4G800) the priority is 4G1800 => 3G2100 => 4G800.
By comparison EE's (we think) will be 4G2600 => 4G1800 => 4G800 => 3G2100 => 2G1800

I can't remember the priority numbers.
Japaul knows them.

3 has gone to the dogs around here. Teignmouth today, decent 4G1800 signal, no data at all. Nothing. Switched phone to 2/3G and better 3G signal but no data at all. Restarted phone, still nothing. Got home and just about managed to pull in an email so it's not the phone. Finding this more and more these days. Back to EE I think. Shame as 321 is a good structure for me as a light user. But it does need to actually work.

My phone has randomly switched to it once or twice. I think the big mast near me on Winter Hill is broadcasting it and whenever I drive that way there are lots of pockets of no 3g but instead of switching back it seems to keep it. Once you're on it seems to like it for me at least.

It still must be lowest priority though otherwise most people would be on it most of the time where there's no 4G1800.
And that would swamp it since you only have 35Mbps per sector (up to 200 devices).

Well I waited for the 4G800 on my 6S and to be honest i'm disappointed, more to the point we still have poor 3G in parts of Telford, so I have resigned to EE.

Shame really, as I like Three as a brand, i just dont think their network is as good as EE, as with the new tarriff im on i get more for less with EE, so its a no brainer to coin the pharse

Interesting actually if you compare maps EE seem to be better on 3G but you would have thought they would be the same roughy.
Ignoring 800, EE 4G1800 is way better and is likely to improve as more small fill-in masts go live in 2016.
Of course when their 800 comes on then things change dramatically.
Firstly Three appear to only have the main transmitter doing 800 in Telford. You can clearly make out only one on the map.
EE are highly likely to enable 800 wherever Three have it.
EE's 800 will be at the right priority so on the edge of 4G1800 you will move to 4G800.

I think this is really going to help. With Three going down to 4G800 I've seen it lose 3G then hover on no network for about 15 seconds then get the 800 signal. Whatever EE do it's going to be straight down to 800 without the user noticing, because although there'll be no high peak speeds the average speed on 800 on EE will be usable. You'll never see 3G again in an 800 area on EE.

For me the 4G rollout has been pretty slow. Where I am now (Elgin) has 4G on most other networks but not with Three.

At home (Glasgow) most of the time the coverage indoors is much poorer than the coverage maps say, speed isn't nearly as good as it is on 3G and VoLTE/800 is apparently present but I've never been able to use it. As an aside multi-cell failures seem to be fairly common, there have been a few over the last 6 months rendering usage in the centre impossible.

All in all it seems that Three aren't that bothered about it and are happy going along with 3G and making it work well rather than looking to 4G. Again that's my experience.

Good post!

Yes it not the fact I can't get 3G in Telford, I can pretty much everywhere, there are just network congestion issues which have been present on Three for some years in the North of Telford, and even while the coverage checker acknowledges this since around May last year, still nothing has been done about it and my patience has expired.

I have two videos on 3's 4G super-voice on YouTube with 880 and 367 views. They are the only videos, that I can find, covering it in detail on YouTube. The only other video is a speedtest. As my channel is fairly small (1M+ views total), most of the views to the videos will be organic rather than subscriber led, so what I analyse from this is that there isn't a great deal of public awareness/interest.

Hey Peter,

Just to say I love the stuff you do on your youtube channel and website.

Why thank you! It's thanks to you chaps I got into this stuff and learnt so much!

I'll go check them out. You're probably one of the only people in the UK able to use it!

I'd have done some videos myself, only I don't have a compatible handset.

The best bit is he actually looks at the camera 100% of the time which is the most tricky part of presenting. Whenever they interview someone on Sky news and they're on Skype, they are always looking at the screen or the keyboard and not the camera.
I just sit there shouting really loudly at the TV "Look at the bloody camera muppet!!!"
Then I miss what it was all about.

My local mast is having "network improvements" on 6 Jan. Hopefully it's 4G.

EDIT: Just checked the other mast that covers the northern part of the valley and that is also having maintenance on the same day. I REALLY think it's 4G now, my guess is they don't want to swamp 800 on the tower serving me.

EDIT2: Seems they are doing maintenance on the mast serving my college too on the same day.

It'll make the coverage map look good as both masts cover a significantly large area.

If it is 4G i can only guess they are trying to enable a series of masts to avoid any getting swamped.

Just bear in mind that they do maintenance which doesn't include adding 4G a lot, it might just be software upgrades or other work.

My area seems to have maintenance every week. It's a shame it's not 1800MHz 4G

I want to remain hopeful.

I am reserving judgment until that happens though. EE are also doing maintenance on the northern mast on the same day, that cant be a coincidence. That mast doesnt even carry EE 4g yet.

My mast here had multiple Three doing maintenance occurrences. Nothing ever changed.
Then on the 17th of Nov I think they had another.
The day after that EE 4G1800 went live.
EE's status checker didn't say anything.
I think Three just put them up there to make it look like they're doing something.

My Three prediction for 2016 is that they'll have same level of 4G coverage this time next year!

Yeah lol, in the last 2 months, the Three coverage checker has listed maintenence for my area 7 separate times. Each time, nothing happened, nothing changed including coverage on the map. On the other hand, EE upgraded sites and expanded 4G even further out without mentioning it.

Same lol.

All the areas that have been 4G'd near me were never scheduled to be given 4G, it just appeared one day randomly. Nothing on their coverage checker, even their social media team had no idea it went live. Got only knows why they randomly decided to 4G it. There are still two legacy orange sites live which cover the valley and both are due to be MBNL'd in the next three months.

Hopefully Three will pull their finger out of their arse and start rolling out a bit more aggressively, they have their work cut out trying to catch up to EE. That said, all of the networks have a long way to go to catch up to EE. VO2 have already started upgrading loads of sites near me, they have 4 masts covering the valley compared to 2 for Three. Should they upgrade all four then they'd almost certainly have blanket 4G coverage down the valley.