Originally Posted by The Lord Lucan:
“Not where i live and work, 3 has poorer coverage here in Edinburgh, despite the Three sim priority to cling on to 3G for dear life where the EE will switch down to 2G to preserve call quality and reliability. 99% of the sites here are MBNL so id say the 3 sites here are under far more stress, likely due to the poor 3 4G coverage and the near blanket EE4G coverage taking the stress off EE's network. Speeds are rarely compatible as some sites EE is faster and some sites Three is faster. Overall much the same.. can't say i've checked recently as i'm always on 4G with EE though.
The reason for the weird figures in the site finder website was that pre MBNL EE had many more sites than 3 so didn't have to use such high outputs. I doubt there is much variance nowadays like for like. What people are seeing is SIM/Handset priority. EE switches down as a quality of service thing, 3 don't have the luxury of 2G fallback.”
“Not where i live and work, 3 has poorer coverage here in Edinburgh, despite the Three sim priority to cling on to 3G for dear life where the EE will switch down to 2G to preserve call quality and reliability. 99% of the sites here are MBNL so id say the 3 sites here are under far more stress, likely due to the poor 3 4G coverage and the near blanket EE4G coverage taking the stress off EE's network. Speeds are rarely compatible as some sites EE is faster and some sites Three is faster. Overall much the same.. can't say i've checked recently as i'm always on 4G with EE though.
The reason for the weird figures in the site finder website was that pre MBNL EE had many more sites than 3 so didn't have to use such high outputs. I doubt there is much variance nowadays like for like. What people are seeing is SIM/Handset priority. EE switches down as a quality of service thing, 3 don't have the luxury of 2G fallback.”
To be fair I'm using the same cheap dual sim phone that I had an EE sim in so the hardware is unchanged. I did post before that pretty much everywhere I went, I would have a stronger VOD (2G) signal than EE 2G/3G (mostly 3G). The reason I wanted to compare is get an idea what an 800 signal might be like for people like me in very rural / hilly areas if it were rolled out at similar power levels as the 900 / 1800 /2100 signals. The answer is very much better as far as I can see. Even where EE dropped to 2G, VOD would usually report better on my phone. In fact I only remember one place (the pasty shop in South Brent) where I had more EE bars than VOD.
Now, upon stating my 'research' and admitting it was anecdotal and not scientific I was told that my cheap phone probably works better at 900 than 2100 so this was the reason for the pretty much consistently better VOD signal strength. Now I've put a 3 SIM in the same slot as the EE one and in my honest opinion it compares more favorably to the VOD signal. Of course, there are some gaps which EE doesn't have as the 2G backup seems to have been totally turned off around here.
I'm not biased towards any network and will go with what is best for me. I can't go with 3 on it's own as there are too many gaps. VOD works better for calls than EE but has little or no data as yet.
IF 3 have a mass 800 switch on and get VoLTE working well, they might be an option.
IF VOD actually roll out 3G to the extent of their rivals and it actually works rather than bars but no data, they might be an option.
IF EE roll out 800 so that it will actually work in old stone buildings where you don't have the wifi login, they might be an option.
I don't care to be honest, just want a phone that works. I still maintain that using 3 3G is faster and more reliable than EE 3G around my way. Just no 2G or 4G yet. Bah.



