Hi Guys, There are still some Orange network masts around here (code 33) and I want to do a little testing on their legacy backhaul but for some reason my Samsung Galaxy S7 REFUSES to STAY connected to the Orange mast(s)! Any possible way to lock the Orange network code? (234-33)

I hope so. Looking out for a deal for my brother

Probably not. You would need an Orange SIM.

The reduced SIMO deals are now on the EE website:

15GB / 500 mins/ unlim texts for £20/month (data capped 20Mbps)
20GB / unlim mins / unlim texts for £25/month (fastest 4G)
30GB / unlim mins / unlim texts for £30/month (fastest 4G)

Until 29th November.

30GB for £30 sounds like a very good deal to me! As is the 20gb one.

Would avoid the 15gb one as I am paying £19.99 for 16 GB and it's not capped at 3G speeds. A 4g plan on 3g speeds... Not great!

Speaking of, just seen a sign outside a Virgin Mobile store and they are now offering 4g! About time...

Can I just comment on how uniformed, even ignorant that statement appears to be?

A cap at 20Mbps is pretty much 3G speed, although I don't know what happens to the uplink. Is that capped at all? I assume also at 20Mbps, which is clearly faster than 3G could ever be.

Virgin also caps, which makes 4G somewhat less useful, although Virgin already knew that 4G in itself isn't really a 'thing' anymore.

The 30GB for £30 is a really good deal. I called 150 and got it. Nice

Does these new sim only plans include eu data roaming? or just call and texts?

@ beansOntoast

According to the old EE status checker, upgrade work being carried out on the Wansford GPRS only site and on the adjacent 4G sites at Wittering and Sutton today.

Wonder if the Wansford site is finally getting a makeover????

Hmm, I upgraded on thursday and got 15GB (full speed) for £20. Wondering whether i should get in touch and go for the 20Gb package.

Max deals include eu data taken out of your allowance. Essentials doesnt

Hmmm.... That T-Mobile 2G only Wansford site does need a bit of a makeover, as 3G along that area is quite weak.

I wonder what will happen though, seeing as though Three have a mast just up the road? Will they upgrade the Wansford site to full MBNL 3G/4G and then decommission the Three site? That'd probably be the best bet.

Or will they get Three to upgrade their site into MBNL as well, thus having two 3G sites?

It might be in theory, but in my experience (not just at home where 3G is crap) it's incredibly rare to get 20Mbps from a 3G connection. In five years of travelling around the UK, from North to South, I think I've only seen it once. And that was in @Devon's part of the world.

Maybe it's improving as 4G takes the weight off it, but I still think 20Mbps from 3G would be a fairly rare sight. 20Mbps from a capped 4G connection would be almost certain a lot of the time, which I guess would be the benefit of going for this plan.

No, you are right (and this has been discussed before). 3G is really sub 10Mbps at best and more like 5Mbps or less a lot of the time. That's before any congestion slows the throughput to a trickle and cell breathing leaves you with 1 bar and drop outs.

A consistent 20Mbps on 4G is a completely different ballgame when compared to what 3G often supplies most users.

Perhaps I'm spoilt, as I get 15-20Mbps quite regularly. On Three, EE and also Vodafone (on upgraded sites). I assume O2 would be the same.

I can also get 3-4Mbps on the uplink too, which is pretty much at the max.

Latency is always the issue, where 4G excels. However, 20Mbps would be a real bummer for me when Three gives me speeds of 25-80Mbps at home (the latter up the road, outdoors) and EE 30-150. Vodafone can even get me up to 25-30 at times, but seems limited as I assume I still only get 800 from the two local sites.

There are places in London where it's almost worth dropping from 4G to 3G, as 4G seems saturated in parts. 3G has probably seen a drop in usage, so can cope better.

On a slightly related note, here is a speedtest I did at the weekend in a place with excellent Three 3G

https://s11.postimg.org/a9ulo3e0j/Sc...117_003305.png

And there are plenty of places for me where I've had similar results, but these are the fastest I have seen.

Here's a test at home on EE 3G.

https://goo.gl/photos/9Lhc3J77HwuzgBXS7

It's getting more rare here now.
Sometimes I get a really fast speed but mostly 3G tests are 5-12Mbps. Upload more often than not, 1-150Mbps.
I did think it would speed up as 4G rolls out but it seems not.
I'm wondering if this is because 3G is being given a smaller percentage of the backhaul as we go forward.
Perhaps almost to make it slower in readiness for some of that 2100 to be brought across to 4G. Bring the speed right down so no one notices when they nab 10Mhz. : )

I agree here; I was thinking that there's a stark difference between a 20mbit/s cap applied to your account versus a network that's so overloaded (or under-specced) that it has no hope of delivering even 2mbit to a user in a given area.

Right now, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of users wouldn't notice a hard 20mbit cap; if the network can deliver the 20mbit then it'll likely have a low latency & everything should work, bar 4k streaming. If the user is in an area where the cells themselves cannot deliver 20mbit, then the hard cap makes no difference; the bottleneck is elsewhere.

Not on some of the good masts outside of congested towns and cities, no. I'll give you it in cities, for example Leicester 3g was about 3Mbps, and 4g was better (about 20mbps).
But outside of heavily congested places, both in towns and in rural places (where there is decent back haul) 20Mbps can be, and has been, achieved quite regularly in my experience.

Yes, it's more likely that 20Mbps can be achieved on 4g, and that the speed will remain constant for much of the signal range of 4g, but it still doesn't deny the fact that you will get 20Mbps download from 3g. (4g upload is much better than 3g download.)

So what are you suggesting? A national 4G network and personally allocated rural 3G masts installed at the bottom of their garden for those people not wanting to be on the modern 4G network that has no problem in maintaining 20Mbps for its customers?

That sounds like something I'm sure all the networks are considering .

Nice speeds there, just shows that 3G can deliver, certainly in terms of download speeds.

The basic EE plans should be 30Mbps limit, that way you know it'll be faster than 3G all the time, and would handle pretty much anything. Though personally, if I wanted a 4g plan, I'd want at least 'double speed', or 60Mbps. Yes, my phone can do 100Mbps (I got 97Mbps) but the difference between 60Mbps and 100Mbps won't actually mean much in terms of real life usage. Though I'm not switching from my 16GB plan unless I have to, which has no speed limit.

Well O2 and Vodafone are going big on small cells, especially for indoor locations. So it's not that crazy an idea!

EE need to do this just as much if not more than VO2