So how does "network improvements" differ from planned maintenance? Happy New Year everyone!

All I get on my iPhone 5s is this:-

Check you've typed it in correctly my iPhone does that if I mistype.

It's definitely still working, are you typing the *3001#12345#* in exactly that order on the dialler? And then pressing the green call button?

Well "network improvements" gets you all excited that you may see 4G1800 or 800 or whatever and then you're crushed when nothing happens.
Planned maintenance just removes the excitement.

Ha ha, thanks! Yes, I've had my hopes raised many times last year only to find that the only thing they have done is enabled something that nobody can use (800). Wonder how close they came to meeting their 95% target?

I've been in Bognor Regis over the New Year and had my first real taste of using L800 and VoLTE. Visiting the same places as last year and I've now had good 4G signal and reasonable speeds allowing me to stream video, where as last year it was weak 3G that kept going to no signal so no streaming etc. I am lucky in that I can force my phone to 4G only mode, otherwise it kept switching to unusable 3G.

This led me to wonder...

Would raising the priority of L800 above 3G cause issues for 4G (non-VoLTE) phones when they were moved down.

E.G. would it cause an extra delay because you would get pushed to L800 first (that you cannot use because no VoLTE) and then get passed to 3G after a long delay?

The current setup is such a pain (if you don't force your phone to 4G only) that I figured there must be another reason (than capacity) they are using this priority setup.

Just an idea.

I just wish I had a regular signal.
For much of today and yesterday there has been no signal where I live yet I am in an 'Excellent' coverage area according to the map.

Roll on the end of my contract and I can leave 3.

I'm probably going to move to Vodafone on monday when my sim expires because Voda actually seem to be invested in their network. And yes 3's 3G is undeniably good most of the time, but it doesn't cut it when the other 3 are begining to go mostly 4G and almost certainly be be nearer 80-90% 4G or even higher (for EE).

12 hours ago, Three postage a message to their official Facebook apologizing to customers about an outage that some are facing, it might be related to your issue:
https://www.facebook.com/ThreeUK/posts/1209755389039412


I don't think this is the case. A non-VoLTE phone would just go straight from 1800 4G to 2100 3G without considering 800MHz as it can't register to it. It's my understanding that when you are connected to a cell, the network has a fallback option in mind should you reach a poor enough signal and 800MHz wouldn't be an option if the phone isn't VoLTE capable.

I don't use facebook or twitter.

Why can't they post something on the coverage pages.
It doesn't even say what areas are affected unless you need to register for facebook to see that info.

I would assume it was a national outage. They should have a "live status" page where national service updates can be placed. I would guess that their core network must have got a little overloaded with all the "Happy new year" texts.

I was using them heavily, so it didn't affect everyone.

But this is the bit I'm confused about. If they're only allowing VoLTE phones on the 800Mhz band then why does the priority have to be lower? Why can't they raise the priority above 3G?

Perhaps it's because voice handoff doesn't work / isn't deemed reliable enough, so it's better to keep you on the circuit switched network for as long as you can.

3 would have a reason to be conservative, as they attracted huge criticism back in the day as they were heavily reliant on 2G roaming, but of course could never seamlessly do the handover from 3G to 2G while keeping the call going - it'd drop once you lost 3G coverage (which was quite often)

They don't want the 800MHz band getting swamped with users. The way they have rolled out 800MHz is few and far between, one or two masts are considered to cover an entire town, and they may well cover the most part of a town but if the priority is set so that 800MHz is higher than 3G, any capable phone for miles will connect to them, ignoring the usable 3G sites, and the extremely small amount of serving sites with a big footprint will become extremely congested.

They have set the priority so that if there is 3G, you will be on there first. You could find an area where there's 5-6 (maybe more) 3G sites yet the whole area could also be covered by a single 800MHz site and would get completely swamped with users if it was higher than 3G priority,

Three needs a much more dense rollout of 800MHz if they are going to change the switching priorities. They also need more 1800MHz to keep people off the limited 800MHz bandwidth as in areas with no 1800MHz, 800MHz would get destroyed by AYCE users. They need VoLTE on 1800MHz too.

I think when EE goes public with their 800MHz+VoLTE, we will see how it should be done.

They most certainly can as T-Mobile USA have done in the USA. They recently got 5MHz of low band spectrum and have rolled it out properly. Not enabling access to the extended range until 80% of masts in the area have got it so it's dense enough then really belting it out. It means that you get high speed LTE on band 2/4 there in a lot of places, I often see screenshots of tests above 100 from there with pings in the low twenties around the internet and you get extended range for really good penetration. The plan Three have works if you do it properly with investment.

We do moan a lot about 5MHz but if 800 is done properly where there's a lot of 1800 supplementing it from every mast and it's dense then it'll actually work well because of the other improvements LTE brings like lower ping and the hard cell edge and more robust signal (to borrow a DevonBlokeism). 10MHz would have been even better but it'll still be good for the network if it's done properly.

T-Mobile USA have a good marketing line for it was well "if you haven't tried our network recently you haven't tried it at all" not "#makeitright".

Yeah considering that 5Mhz of 800 can carry the same amount of data as 10Mhz DC 3G then they just need to get it on a lot more (if not every) mast.
Once most handsets become 4G then they will then have the same issue as 3G has, too many users so, yes, they would then need to get 1800 rolled out to congested masts in an attempt to offload traffic.
This may allow them to change priorities but as I have said before I'm not sure 1800 on it's current low power is enough and may still leave 800 with too big a gap to fill in places.

From a hint that Bookey gave (and I could be wrong) i think EE will be turning up the 1800 power and changing CSFB to 2G when they "800" a mast so 800 only has the last tiny bit to fill.

Three can't do this. They have no 2G so 800 is always going to be strained as far as I can see.

That and as they have so much 2100Mhz, and when the number of 3G phones gets small enough, they'll be able to move a block of 2100Mhz over to 4G, as that's also a widely supported 4G band on most phones.

Hi all, hope everyone's had a good Christmas and a cracking start to the new year.
Sorry this message is a bit late, been very busy lately.

Seems like a very good strategy from T-Mobile USA, my rough estimates from Manchester show that 1 in 5 EE4G masts have Three 1800, and 1 in 10 Three 800.
Things were a fair bit denser in London, but Three 1800 is still lacking to be a proper backbone to the 800.
Taking into account London being denser, I'd guess around 4000 1800 masts, well off original targets. Obviously this is a very crude estimate.

I reckon Three could get away with increasing 800 priority now and it not causing too many issues in the short term, simply because many masts are giving out speeds around 20-30mbps, both because of compatibility and priority. As long as the 1800 and 800 density increased at a steady pace as more handsets were compatible, it would probably balance.
It just annoys me getting speeds of 25mbps of a 800 mast, as they are so few compatible handsets I reckon if they were all allowed access it wouldn't be completely swamped, and as more handsets became compatible you'd hope Three's rollout pace would be ahead of the game, but this is obviously Three we're talking about, probably completely unrealistic

They first do some "planned maintenance" and if you still have a signal after that, they call it a "network improvement".

It means bashing things with a hammer and seeing what happens.

Nothing mostly.
Or it breaks.

Always works on old TVs or lawnmowers I find........

3 are doing planned maintenance on the 6th January in my neck of the woods too according to their coverage checker.

Also noticed that they have extended their 4G coverage in Northern Ireland to include Derry/Londonderry, Portstewart, Ballymena, Larne, Randalstown, Bangor, Newry & the International Airport. It looks like because 4G from 3 was only very recently introduced in Northern Ireland that 4G1800 & 4G800 is being brought on line at the same time from enabled masts. In comparison between 800 and 1800 coverage, 800 appears to also cover Coleraine, Antrim, Newtownards & Lurgan.

If you are correct in saying that non-VoLTE phones wouldn't even be able to register on 4G800, then the priority should be:
1) 4G1800
2) 4G800
3) 3G2100

And seeing as though more areas currently have 3G than 4G, the fallback to 2100 should still work. It'll also improve indoor reception (for VoLTE phones) as the phone would go to a solid 4G800, rather than a potentially weak 3G2100.