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EE 2G/3G/4G Discussion Thread (Part 2)


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Old 19-05-2016, 17:31
jchamier
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For very very remote locations, that are 2G only, what are we expecting to happen to these? There's masts in the middle of nowhere that can't be connected via fibre of microwave, surely. Are these going to have 4G antennas but still limited backhaul?
I don't think there is anywhere that Microwave can't be used - but the original EE statements did say a 'handful' of masts may not get upgraded (and I guess remain 2G only) but I wonder if those are in incredibly remote rural locations.

Even the scottish islands can be reached with microwave from a location with fibre. Anywhere there is mains electricity technically can be reached - its just a matter of cost!
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Old 19-05-2016, 17:34
moox
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For very very remote locations, that are 2G only, what are we expecting to happen to these? There's masts in the middle of nowhere that can't be connected via fibre of microwave, surely. Are these going to have 4G antennas but still limited backhaul?
More places will have fibre than you think. e.g. islands. Especially as the rural broadband projects march onward and create demand for high capacity fibre links to more remote locations (I believe this is why EE now has 4G coverage on the Isles of Scilly - because there's now a high quality fibre link to the mainland through Superfast Cornwall).

There must be very few (if any) places where microwave to a fibred site can't be made to work
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Old 19-05-2016, 17:44
de525ma
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Even the scottish islands can be reached with microwave from a location with fibre. Anywhere there is mains electricity technically can be reached - its just a matter of cost!
Yup, Voda/O2 have 4G on Tiree already.
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Old 19-05-2016, 17:45
bookey_uk
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This! Especially if you go from an area with 3G and 4G, to a 2G/4G mast with no 3G, and your device is set to ignore 2G. . Or an area from 3G to 4G800. The call will drop if there is no reverse Srvcc.

Same with data. If I go from 3G to that weird mast near the A11 monument, I'll end up dropping the stream until the phone then finds the 4G from said mast.
Don't disable 2G it's a whole network layer you are missing out on!! These repetitive comments about the shape of the network today and 2G being no good to listen to radio, I am sorry to say but your are going to have to accept a 'sub standard' level of service until EE completes the network wide rollout of LTE and upgraded backhaul on the 3G network.
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Old 19-05-2016, 17:46
de525ma
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You can see why companies are working hard to disable access to the engineering screens in Android. You should not be disabling 2G. It should not be possible to do this.
Not sure I'd remove the possibility. It's useful for testing and diagnostics, and exceptional use cases.

Those who access those screens should know that it may have an adverse effect on the service they receive and thus not moan about it.
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Old 19-05-2016, 17:59
matty1000kk
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Finally! The mast on top of the Cinema in Clacton has finally been 4G'd

Decent speeds as well but I suspect microwave backhaul with this ping http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/1945466554

No 3G yet so fallback straight to 2G when you initate a call.
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Old 19-05-2016, 18:29
barker71
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I don't think there is anywhere that Microwave can't be used - but the original EE statements did say a 'handful' of masts may not get upgraded (and I guess remain 2G only) but I wonder if those are in incredibly remote rural locations.

Even the scottish islands can be reached with microwave from a location with fibre. Anywhere there is mains electricity technically can be reached - its just a matter of cost!
I dont even think that is essential, I'm sure back in the day Orange had a mast in Wales somewhere that was Solar/Battery powered! I'm sure bookey or someone can confirm
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Old 19-05-2016, 18:36
d123
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1. Very few people set their phone to ignore 2G.
By "very few", do you mean one?
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Old 19-05-2016, 18:51
Skippy2005
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Don't disable 2G it's a whole network layer you are missing out on!! These repetitive comments about the shape of the network today and 2G being no good to listen to radio, I am sorry to say but your are going to have to accept a 'sub standard' level of service until EE completes the network wide rollout of LTE and upgraded backhaul on the 3G network.
Hey bookey_uk did you see you see my post yesterday thanks.
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Old 19-05-2016, 20:42
beans0ntoast
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You can see why companies are working hard to disable access to the engineering screens in Android. You should not be disabling 2G. It should not be possible to do this.
It should be possible if you are aiming for being able to take calls, whilst having data reliability as your no.1 priority.

Also, my ZTE Blade 3 had a 3G/4G only mode, yet didn't even support 4G, so surely such a mode could also be implemented on devices such as the Galaxy S4?

And anyway, surely rooting your device (not that I actually know how to root it, I'd have to get someone to root it for me) would give you access to all areas of the device, thus allowing you to create your 3G/4G only mode?
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Old 19-05-2016, 20:44
moox
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It should be possible if you are aiming for being able to take calls, whilst having data reliability as your no.1 priority.
But you'd get this in automatic mode, no? The phone and network know when to switch up or down between the technologies as appropriate.
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Old 19-05-2016, 20:47
beans0ntoast
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But you'd get this in automatic mode, no? The phone and network know when to switch up or down between the technologies as appropriate.
It would on most phones, as I've seen people on here (and elsewhere) say that their phones (usually iPhones) cling to 3G until the signal is virtually gone. Which is something I'd appreciate.
The older Samsungs (such as the Ace Plus) also do this, cling on to 3G until there is little or no 3G.
Yet Samsung messed up big time on the S4 by allowing it to drop to 2G, when 3G is still perfectly usable, and up to 2/3 bars in strength.
If you had the choice of a 2 bar 3G signal, or a 4 bar 2G signal, what would you choose if you wanted data reliability? On the other hand, what did the S4 choose?

EE have got it right. Samsung haven't - yet the phone still works fine in every other aspect. Hence the requirement for LTE/WCDMA.
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Old 19-05-2016, 20:49
beans0ntoast
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Finally! The mast on top of the Cinema in Clacton has finally been 4G'd

Decent speeds as well but I suspect microwave backhaul with this ping http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/1945466554

No 3G yet so fallback straight to 2G when you initiate a call.
Doubt it would be microwave at those speeds - correct me if I'm wrong but microwave masts are usually limited to 30/15 on 4G, i.e. single speed?
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Old 19-05-2016, 21:04
matty1000kk
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Doubt it would be microwave at those speeds - correct me if I'm wrong but microwave masts are usually limited to 30/15 on 4G, i.e. single speed?
Pretty sure that's not the case. Microwave is easily capable of supporting double speed sites with decent backhaul on the other end.
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Old 19-05-2016, 21:07
_m
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Doubt it would be microwave at those speeds - correct me if I'm wrong but microwave masts are usually limited to 30/15 on 4G, i.e. single speed?
Nope. My local microwave fed mast-
EE: https://imgur.com/a/JfMs1
Three: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1639139465

I worked out this site to have at least a 400Mbps microwave and you can get some that can do over 1Gbps which is more than enough for most sites.
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Old 19-05-2016, 21:22
Toffee-Brann
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When I'm using VoLTE on my iPhone 6s Plus, I sometimes notice an animation stutter when making a call through the dialer or recent call list. Is it just me, or is this a known issue that hopefully will be resolved with a carrier/iOS update? It doesn't actually happen all of time, but it does more often than not.

It's completely stutter free when VoLTE is switched off.
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Old 19-05-2016, 21:34
_m
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Doubt it would be microwave at those speeds - correct me if I'm wrong but microwave masts are usually limited to 30/15 on 4G, i.e. single speed?
I don't get what it is with your sudden assumptions that microwave=slow. There are microwaves that can go up to 3Gbps symmetrical and for a site carrying G18 and L26 for EE and U21, L08, and L18 for Three and EE, you're never going to need any more than 2Gbps backhaul. Though obviously most sites aren't balls to the walls like this and load isn't distributed evenly across sectors and technologies/bands so in most cases a 500Mbps microwave link would suffice and spectrum congestion would occur well before backhaul congestion.
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Old 19-05-2016, 21:34
bookey_uk
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When I'm using VoLTE on my iPhone 6s Plus, I sometimes notice an animation stutter when making a call through the dialer or recent call list. Is it just me, or is this a known issue that hopefully will be resolved with a carrier/iOS update? It doesn't actually happen all of time, but it does more often than not.

It's completely stutter free when VoLTE is switched off.
It's the phone failing to keep up with the faster call setup...
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Old 19-05-2016, 21:38
Toffee-Brann
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It's the phone failing to keep up with the faster call setup...
Ah I see... Hopefully it will be fixed with an update in future.

Thanks.
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Old 19-05-2016, 21:54
DevonBloke
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Doubt it would be microwave at those speeds - correct me if I'm wrong but microwave masts are usually limited to 30/15 on 4G, i.e. single speed?
My mast is on Microwave and I get 30ms.
There's a newly upgraded Tree mast near me that has MW and I've had 107Mbps off that.
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Old 19-05-2016, 22:07
jchamier
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It would on most phones, as I've seen people on here (and elsewhere) say that their phones (usually iPhones) cling to 3G until the signal is virtually gone. Which is something I'd appreciate.
The older Samsungs (such as the Ace Plus) also do this, cling on to 3G until there is little or no 3G.
Yet Samsung messed up big time on the S4 by allowing it to drop to 2G, when 3G is still perfectly usable, and up to 2/3 bars in strength.
If you had the choice of a 2 bar 3G signal, or a 4 bar 2G signal, what would you choose if you wanted data reliability? On the other hand, what did the S4 choose?

EE have got it right. Samsung haven't - yet the phone still works fine in every other aspect. Hence the requirement for LTE/WCDMA.
You're forgetting the network may be pushing you down to 2G for reliability. Hence my earlier suggestion for a MiFi with data sim which is likely to not be profiled for voice. Yes the S4 could have poor antenna and radio software and making the wrong decision, or its doing exactly as per spec. You and I don't have professional network monitoring hardware to see the SNR over time. (Like BT engineers have JDSU for ADSL faults)
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Old 19-05-2016, 22:08
jchamier
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It's the phone failing to keep up with the faster call setup...
Must be software given the CPU ; on my 6s I've turned odd most animations as they annoy, silly zooming.
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Old 19-05-2016, 22:20
rasseru16
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Finally! The mast on top of the Cinema in Clacton has finally been 4G'd

Decent speeds as well but I suspect microwave backhaul with this ping http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/1945466554

No 3G yet so fallback straight to 2G when you initate a call.
Is this the main mast covering the town centre, it's shared by O2/Vodafone who already had 4G there?
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Old 19-05-2016, 22:29
matty1000kk
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Is this the main mast covering the town centre, it's shared by O2/Vodafone who already had 4G there?
That's the one! Suprised it has taken so long tbh but really fills a massive hole as decent data has allways been poor for EE here yet o2/Voda have had 4G here for a while like you say.
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Old 19-05-2016, 22:32
beans0ntoast
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Nope. My local microwave fed mast-
EE: https://imgur.com/a/JfMs1
Three: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1639139465

I worked out this site to have at least a 400Mbps microwave and you can get some that can do over 1Gbps which is more than enough for most sites.
That's a very good speed you're getting; in fact it's pretty much the same speed as you'd get off a fiber mast! I've probably got things wrong then, and it's one of those high speed Pasolinks that Pedro C put up on his website - which are capable of 1Gbps+.

So long as the mast that is being received off is fiber, I don't see any problems

I don't get what it is with your sudden assumptions that microwave=slow. There are microwaves that can go up to 3Gbps symmetrical and for a site carrying G18 and L26 for EE and U21, L08, and L18 for Three and EE, you're never going to need any more than 2Gbps backhaul. Though obviously most sites aren't balls to the walls like this and load isn't distributed evenly across sectors and technologies/bands so in most cases a 500Mbps microwave link would suffice and spectrum congestion would occur well before backhaul congestion.
I think I got a bit confused... I forgot about the Pasolink microwaves (high capacity), so maybe this was an area where fiber would have been very difficult, and micro was easier.

I was probably assuming that it was an older microwave that hadn't been upgraded, rather than a modern Pasolink capable of 1Gbps.

Thank you for teaching me about how that works, I shall remember next time!

My mast is on Microwave and I get 30ms.
There's a newly upgraded Tree mast near me that has MW and I've had 107Mbps off that.
That's where I was getting the 30Mbps from, on microwave! Though I remember, your mast was old Orange (now MBNL), and is awaiting a better backhaul (either high capacity micro or fiber).

Also, isn't your mast in a daisy chain of micro's, i.e. the mast you receive the micro from, is also connected via micro? I seem to recall you saying that your 3G was also speed limited due to backhaul.

You're forgetting the network may be pushing you down to 2G for reliability. Hence my earlier suggestion for a MiFi with data sim which is likely to not be profiled for voice. Yes the S4 could have poor antenna and radio software and making the wrong decision, or its doing exactly as per spec. You and I don't have professional network monitoring hardware to see the SNR over time. (Like BT engineers have JDSU for ADSL faults)
Pushing me down to 2G would be fine for call reliability, but if I want data reliability, then it's certainly not the right choice. 4G can do up to 100Mbps (or higher, though the S4 only supports 100Mbps - though that's still faster than what I'd ever need), and 3G can do up to 20Mbps on most masts. On most decent masts, a 2 bar signal strength for 3G can still get me about 5-10Mbps, and even on the worst masts (excluding the overly congested ones or the ones running on ancient backhaul) you'll get more than 55kbps on 3G, no matter what the signal strength. 2G, however, will give ~150kbps on EDGE, and ~30kbps on GPRS. The former is pushing it a bit, and the latter (which is still in use on a lot of the masts near me) is totally unacceptable and unusable. Hence the WCDMA/LTE requirement

But if I went for a MiFi, then what was the point in me getting the 16GB SIM deal from EE? As Mi-Fi's can't take calls, and I'm not switching SIMs all the time... I know that the old Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus didn't do this, but from an article that I had read about previously, the Galaxy S6 seems to act strangely in regards to signal as well...
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