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


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Old 14-03-2016, 17:44
Pedro_C
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Commscope Andrew tri band. Most likely 800/1800/2100

Front ports (not wired) are for 800.
The back two inputs will be for 1800 and 2100. The Powerwave 1800 MHAs are visible and it looks like there might be some 2100MHAs there too (behind the panels)
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Old 14-03-2016, 17:49
DevonBloke
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Yeaheehay!! I was right. Cheers Peter.
: )
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Old 14-03-2016, 17:51
InfamousTeal
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It's just come back online. I'll go and see what it looks like now

Bookey it would be great if you knew what the work was happening for
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Old 14-03-2016, 18:06
InfamousTeal
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Okay so been to see it again. They're obviously coming back, the wires are hanging loose from the mast and also EE 4G seems to be off completely.

http://imgur.com/a/4JTO3 (didn't take big camera sorry )
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Old 14-03-2016, 18:58
beans0ntoast
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There is one thing I am very very confident of.
By mid to the end of 2017 (and remember that's only 15-21 months away), EE 4G coverage will be so immense that nothing, nothing will come remotely close.
Low power 1800 and no 800 make this prediction look ridiculous right now but when both these things are fixed (which is not far away now), you will simply not believe how good it will be.
By all means bookmark this post and tell me I'm wrong when we get there.
I agree - also, even when the old Orange masts are all integrated in (like the one I said about on Saturday), the network will be close to being awesome round my area.

800 will be the first out of those two and will come soon, the full switch on of 800 being in 2 or 3 months time, if my original guess of Q2 2016 is correct

High power 1800? Got to wait until a lot of devices are doing VoLTE; otherwise 2G will get overloaded (as CSFB will have to go to 2G as well as 3G). But that will probably happen too.

Actually, I've thought of something. So long as my Samsung S4 doesn't do its crazy "I must drop to 2G very quickly" thing, with 4G on full power I should be ok and not experience any drop outs - as I will be doing tunein, spotify, youtube and other internet based things over 4G (which is faster than 3G) and calls will go over 2G - ideally with HD Voice being turned on for 2G as well. So theoretically I won't need 3G and it might be able to be refarmed to 4G. But doing that will leave a lot of users on legacy devices either upgrading or moving networks.
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Old 14-03-2016, 19:01
beans0ntoast
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4G1800 being turned up will get rid of one other bloody annoying "feature" too.
Firstly 3G will disappear if you have VoLTE phone.
Secondly it will mean the end of that, 3G holding on to a completely unusable weak signal and refusing to switch to 2G, thing that drives me nuts!
What drives me nuts is the opposite - i.e. my Samsung Galaxy S4 (on Virgin) decides to drop to 2G when 3G is still available (albeit weak). Which is no good for streaming media.

If the S4 behaved itself, I wouldn't have a problem with 2G
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Old 14-03-2016, 19:08
beans0ntoast
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They can set accurate thresholds for when the switching between frequencies happens. This functionality is built in rather than being a cludge like switching between technologies often is.
So your handset will switch to 800 well before you end up with an unusable 1800 connection.

Eventually frequency switching will not be required as we will all have CA handsets. These will be connected to all frequencies at once and this allows the network to more accurately load balance between them simply by altering the bias one way or the other.
If this happens, then what will happen if you suddenly go out of coverage area for a particular band? For example, if I was doing CA on 800, 1800 and 2600, and I lost reception of 2600, would it try and search for 2600 again? Or would it just CA the 800 and 1800?

Chances are there would be some super rural areas whereby only 800 would be used, but they'd be few and far between... right?
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Old 14-03-2016, 19:23
Thine Wonk
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If this happens, then what will happen if you suddenly go out of coverage area for a particular band? For example, if I was doing CA on 800, 1800 and 2600, and I lost reception of 2600, would it try and search for 2600 again? Or would it just CA the 800 and 1800?

Chances are there would be some super rural areas whereby only 800 would be used, but they'd be few and far between... right?
I'm not an expert, but from my reading your phone reports it's received signal strength back to the cell case station controller (BSC) and that is fed back to a RNC?

There are pre defined band priorities and signal thresholds which cause the base station to switch band. If you can get better reception from another serving cell with a more prefered priority then a planned smooth handover happens.

I think that's roughly how it works, the idea is that it shouldn't be sudden, it should be managed. However if it is sudden (going into a tunnel) you'll likely lose signal all together and have to reconnect to the network to the best cell and most prefered band on the same priorities as before.
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Old 14-03-2016, 19:48
Craig Arthur
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My closest EE Ex Orange mast looks like it's getting an 800Mhz upgrade, currently there is no 4G at all. http://arthur.scot/P_16_0128_TEL-Site_Plan-655174.pdf

Planning application has MBNL logo on it however there is on H3G from this site. Good news for the mobile dongle, less so for the phone which is on 3. Hopefully a branded MBNL application signifies the site being MBNL'd at some point and the filling in of the coverage hole. Phone likes to lock onto the 2G and takes for ever to go back to H3G when you travel around.
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Old 14-03-2016, 20:33
DevonBloke
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If this happens, then what will happen if you suddenly go out of coverage area for a particular band? For example, if I was doing CA on 800, 1800 and 2600, and I lost reception of 2600, would it try and search for 2600 again? Or would it just CA the 800 and 1800?

Chances are there would be some super rural areas whereby only 800 would be used, but they'd be few and far between... right?
Well if a band disappears it, well, disappears and yeah, then you would be just on the other two. 2600 would just re-join if you came back into range.
Virtually no sites that I know of where only 800 would be used (I would have to confirm that properly) but as a general rule EE's current plan is to get 4G1800 on every single site so it will eventually become the new base technology.... one day.
800 is just to add extra reach where it's needed.
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Old 14-03-2016, 20:37
DevonBloke
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I'm not an expert, but from my reading your phone reports it's received signal strength back to the cell case station controller (BSC) and that is fed back to a RNC?

There are pre defined band priorities and signal thresholds which cause the base station to switch band. If you can get better reception from another serving cell with a more prefered priority then a planned smooth handover happens.

I think that's roughly how it works, the idea is that it shouldn't be sudden, it should be managed. However if it is sudden (going into a tunnel) you'll likely lose signal all together and have to reconnect to the network to the best cell and most prefered band on the same priorities as before.
Yeah, we were talking about carrier aggregation and what happens when connected to multiple carriers.
The network can load balance between carriers so for example if you were on 1800 and 2600 the cell can literally see-saw your bias toward one or the other depending on loading.
Makes for a much more efficient network.
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Old 14-03-2016, 21:44
matty1000kk
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It would be nice if EE updated their coverage map at some point. It seems ages since they last updated it.
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Old 14-03-2016, 21:54
Minardi
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Have the personal tariffs been changed recently? Noted the business ones have been changed when I went on the EE site over the weekend. Phoned up and managed to knock a tenner off of our business phones, can't complain.
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Old 14-03-2016, 22:02
DevonBloke
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It would be nice if EE updated their coverage map at some point. It seems ages since they last updated it.
Would be nice wouldn't it.
I'm sure it will be updated soon.
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Old 15-03-2016, 00:43
Zee_Bukhari
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I was with no coverage on BT Mobile from my work place to almost near my home, that's about 7-9 miles away, only calls were allowed through, no data at all. Not sure what happened tried rebooting device and searching for network.

Got data at home but wonder why there was no edge, 3G or 4G on BT Mobile (EE) for such a large distance.

My Three phone on the other hand had full 3G or 4G coverage.
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Old 15-03-2016, 01:22
The Lord Lucan
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It would be nice if EE updated their coverage map at some point. It seems ages since they last updated it.
Everyone is busy making the network awesome..
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Old 15-03-2016, 01:28
CheshireBumpkin
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A rather random query here, that I'm hoping one of you knowledgeable folk may be able to answer...

My currently unused S6 (EE sourced, with EE firmware) is sitting on my desk without a SIM card in it, but connected to t'internet via wifi.

When EE eventually release Marshmallow for it, will the OTA update be flagged and downloadable on the phone whilst it doesn't have a SIM in it? It's not connected to the EE network without a SIM so I'm not sure it would ever get an update released by EE. I'm really not sure how the OTA update identification / verification process works....
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Old 15-03-2016, 06:42
red_snow
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I noticed some odd behaviour yesterday on my S7 Edge. In a place where I normally get no signal I noticed at times my phone displaying a few bars of signal but no indication of what it was (no 2G/3G/4G symbol).

I have no idea what it was. I'm sure if there is no signal or extremely low (unusable) I normally see a crossed circle or just no bars period.

Any ideas?
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Old 15-03-2016, 06:43
Broken Hope
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Everyone is busy making the network awesome..
Not in Nottingham they aren't.. I get an awesome Edge data connection when I'm inside at work.
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Old 15-03-2016, 08:00
Gigabit
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I noticed some odd behaviour yesterday on my S7 Edge. In a place where I normally get no signal I noticed at times my phone displaying a few bars of signal but no indication of what it was (no 2G/3G/4G symbol).

I have no idea what it was. I'm sure if there is no signal or extremely low (unusable) I normally see a crossed circle or just no bars period.

Any ideas?
It will be the signal when making emergency calls. Samsung display that as if it was normal signal.
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Old 15-03-2016, 08:29
The Lord Lucan
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Not in Nottingham they aren't.. I get an awesome Edge data connection when I'm inside at work.
It will come. That Edge will be 4G by the end of the year. Likely the site has already been 2G refreshed, likely just needs a card and suitable back haul and away you go.
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Old 15-03-2016, 08:30
kev
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Not in Nottingham they aren't.. I get an awesome Edge data connection when I'm inside at work.
In the part of Nottingham city centre I work in I'm now getting one or two solid bars of 4G all day long! Until this week it's been No Signal or the Signal box with some Edge if the signal box is down.

LTE Discovery reports as an unknown band rather than the usual Band 3 too, additionally all 12 neighbouring cells are now LTE rather than a mixture of UCDMA/GSM... (between -99 and -120 RSRP)
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Old 15-03-2016, 08:51
Broken Hope
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It will come. That Edge will be 4G by the end of the year. Likely the site has already been 2G refreshed, likely just needs a card and suitable back haul and away you go.
I get either Edge or 1 bar of 4G, it's a fairly new building so likely blocking the signals, standing outside I get good 4G, it's just annoying that it's barely usable indoors.
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Old 15-03-2016, 09:21
Synthetic42
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A rather random query here, that I'm hoping one of you knowledgeable folk may be able to answer...

My currently unused S6 (EE sourced, with EE firmware) is sitting on my desk without a SIM card in it, but connected to t'internet via wifi.

When EE eventually release Marshmallow for it, will the OTA update be flagged and downloadable on the phone whilst it doesn't have a SIM in it? It's not connected to the EE network without a SIM so I'm not sure it would ever get an update released by EE. I'm really not sure how the OTA update identification / verification process works....
As long as it has some kind of data connection it'll update
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Old 15-03-2016, 10:08
red_snow
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It will be the signal when making emergency calls. Samsung display that as if it was normal signal.
OK that is fine, however I know that there is very good O2/VF in this building but the handset does not display those bars all of the time when there is no EE signal (which is 99% of the time). Are you saying that it will only intermittently display those bars of another network for emergency calls? If so it is extremely intermittent as I have not really noticed it before!
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