Originally Posted by beans0ntoast:
“Shouldn't do, because all of my calls go through 3G on the WCDMA Only mode. And if I got a call whilst being on LTE/WCDMA mode, the mast would switch to 3G.”
Actually your handset switches when it gets the incoming paging signal over the current connection be it GSM, WCDMA, or LTE.
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“The only issue would be with the weird masts, like the monument mast on the A11, which are 2G/4G - in which case, the call would indeed fail, and although it would be good to be able to make/receive calls anywhere I go,”
You're deliberately hobbling your phone by turning off 2G. This is a very odd thing to do if you need to make or receive phone calls.
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“ data reliability is my no.1 priority.”
then can I suggest you get a MiFi for data, WiFi to your phone, and reset your phone to being a phone, instead of crippling your phone.
You really should stop talking about this topic, you've been told by people who work for networks, and those of us who have read up on the topic, that 2G is not going to go. Phones are not perfect and are not calibrated scientific equipment. Your phone is perhaps £700 unconnected brand new, compared to the £1.5million or so a 2G/3G/4G transmission mast, cabinets, and antenna cost. It will often do what you don't want - and you may find other makes of Android, or other handsets (e.g. WinPho, Symbian, iOS) handle the switching better for your requirements.
3G/WCDMA/UMTS is going first, but it may be 10 years away, it may be 2 years away. Nobody can tell; it will depend on the quantity of LTE capable phones (User Equipment) sold and in use, and the networks have this information I would assume its commercially sensitive. At the moment they are all building wide ranging (physical coverage) and dense (reliability) networks. Its still early days for the UK LTE market.
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“Aah, thanks for the explanation. I suppose that Three are aiming for coverage density before the Orange 2G gets switched off in certain areas. Though saying that, I thought that Three were turning off the Orange fallback when they thought their own 3G was good enough?”
This is purely a commercial decision for Three, and unless you know someone who works for them who can comment, nobody really knows. We are guessing. It may be due to cell breathing or backhaul cost that Three have decided cheaper to pay EE to run the Orange fall back. They could have no registered customers in this area. (Recall Three only has approx 10million customers).
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“Also, I thought that 2G roaming didn't occur unless there was no Three 3G available? Certainly in buildings whereby 3G can't penetrate, but 2G1800 can, there'd be roaming, but otherwise it would go 3 3G?”
Three commerical decision. They have no 2G roaming anywhere I've been in the south east and south west recently. They did have in Scotland last time I was up that way.
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“Chances are, if and when that mast goes 3 L800, the Orange 2G would definitely be switched off.. though I thought EE's long term plan was to eliminate the Orange 2G/3G code anyway.”
Won't be EE's call if Three want to pay them for the service, EE will retain the service. Look up 'Software Defined Networking' for some background.