Welcome to Norfolk Jon! Still too many not spots in many areas.

Vodafone always seem to have their 2G available though :P (annoyingly)

Given I rarely make or take calls, 2G may as well be no signal. I have to assume that had I taken my Vodafone SIM, I'd have had 2G and no data.. or data at 0.0001Mbps or something and a ping time equal to a drive from London to Norwich... or Newcastle!

I know all about the phone coverage issues at Hunstanton, I've been there plenty of times!

All of the masts are at the top of the hill, by the school - there's a mast for every operator. O2, Orange, Vodafone, MBNL.

Vodafone is 2G only but the panels are well positioned.

The MBNL panels are craply positioned, with none of the panels pointing down to the town - hence why the very poor coverage. The MBNL mast does have EE 2G/3G/4G and 3 3G (don't know about 3 4G).

Haven't tested the O2 and Orange masts but from what Sitefinder says they are 2G only.

Orange (1800MHz 2G) and O2 (900MHz 2G): https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.93...8i6656!6m1!1e1

Vodafone 900MHz 2G, EE 1800MHz 2G, 2100MHz 3G, 1800MHz 4G, 3 2100MHz 3G:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.93...8i6656!6m1!1e1

Note that on the EE/3 side of things, there is no panel whatsoever on the left hand side of the mast (unlike Vodafone 2G), meaning that very little signal is radiated in that direction. That direction is down the hill towards the seafront - which, although not having a panel there means not wasting radiation by broadcasting straight to sea, it also means not having a panel for the vast majority of Hunstanton Tow, i.e. the shops, seafront area etc! hence, when I go there, I end up with about 17% 3G if I am lucky - in some areas, there is absolutely nothing OUTDOORS (let alone indoors).

And here's a view from the other side of the mast:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.93...8i6656!6m1!1e1

As discussed before, no panels whatsoever from MBNL point towards the seafront, and the vast majority of the town.

I hope someone sorts that out and changes the direction of the panels - if I lived there, and had a head for heights, I'd have probably yanked the panel round myself by now!

4G worked OK indoors in Costa in Hunstanton so not all bad.

4G suffering at Cadwell Park, needs a bit more capacity.

Every now and then the phone got a sniff of 4G. But not for long.

Yes but beans your using the S4 which is known to have a crappy antenna which won't help your overall experience. Samsung's have always been known for having poor antenna setups until the s6 edge plus arrived.

Trouble is, not even a good antenna will make up for a very weak signal caused by no radio waves sent in your general direction... especially since EE are using 3G2100 and 4G1800...

Yes, Vodafone may still be 2G900 only, but at least they got their antenna positions correct so that there is at least some coverage (albeit 2G). Whereas in some places EE can't even get outdoor coverage, and it wasn't just me who reported this.

Surprisingly surprised by EE coverage at the Reading Festival this year.

O2 / Vodafone / Three were absoloutly useless, falling to "No Service" often, and then back to full service LTE with no actual throughput. O2 phones wouldnt even ring or recieve text messages. When recieving a call from anyone in this place on O2 the audio quality was completely worthless, words could not be heard.

EE however, I was in some places getting very good and reliable throughput (I did one test and clocked 2.1mbps/18mbps on LTE which i'm very happy about given the number of users)

EE 4G worked fine, EE 2G worked fine but the 3G network was unusable for anything but calls - I kept being pushed onto 3G in crowded areas but toggling 4G in my settings got me back onto 4G to use data again

Given that it was the only network that actually worked, and it worked very well I am impressed. I was even managing VoLTE calls with Wideband Audio which was incredibly surprising.

From what I gathered, there were 6 CoW's there in total, 2 of which were most definitely O2.

And it's things like this that make me like to use EE, because it can actually handle a crowd incredibly well.

There will be some reason as to why MBNL don't have a panel there. They wouldn't just go away from a standard 3 sector mast because they don't like an area or something. With the panels being fairly recent looking dual input Kathreins (can do GL18/U21 for EE and U21/L18 for H3G), I doubt that it'll change any time soon.

I'm not familiar with the area so may be wrong but perhaps having a panel on that side would still not give adequate coverage down on the seafront (Voda's G09 will go a fair bit further than EE) so they may be planning a site elsewhere to give better coverage to the front.

Vodafone are also at the top of that mast so they win the competition there... If only the EE antennas were at the top and Vodafone below...

This is actually the least surprising thing.
Voice ALWAYS has priority over data so you will find VoLTE calls will connect all the time.
I was at the Firework championships in Plymouth where unfortunately there is only EE coverage from one 4G1800 cell and the edge of the cell as well (2-ish bars).
I had absolutely no data at all (well ok, maybe 0.1Mbps sometimes).
However I tested VoTE about 5 times and it connected every time and full HD voice, no problem. Pretty cool really.
Every 20Mhz of spectrum in theory can handle 800 simultaneous calls (so 200 calls for their 5Mhz chunk of 800Mhz spectrum).
With the CoWs EE could have easily had 40Mhz or 55Mhz of bandwidth there on each cell of each site so you would have been unlikely to run out of voice channels even if the data wasn't working at all.

You must have had a similar problem to me, I was sitting on the other side of the bay (in Devonport, on the first night) and lost data connectivity for quite a lot of the time. I don't have VoLTE though so couldn't test that

What happened, Jon?

Yes this was the case during Coldplay at Glastonbury. At points no data but VoLTE calls went through every time

There are three panels, it points more towards Old Hunstanton. The network status checker reports a fault on it currently.

Don't know. Wi-Fi Calling is as far as it went. Even now with Android 7 final there's no VoLTE support for EE (or Three) and no Wi-Fi Calling for Vodafone, Three or others.

It doesn't seem that Three is that bothered about it, and we're still of course waiting for EE to properly start introducing support for VoLTE on a whole range of phones it has been selling this year that are all 'ready' and some sold as being so.

It's only by a few meters though... I think that panel arrangement would be more crucial than a couple of meters more.

If EE turned that panel round a bit, I'm sure that the situation would improve quite a bit! Unless they're going to upgrade the 2G Orange mast... but even that doesn't point in the direction of the town center.

If Vodafone/O2 put 3G and 4G on that VF 2G mast, then VF and O2 would have a clear advantage in that area and EE/3 would be toast!

I think a quad panel setup would probably be a better idea - 4 panels, with the 4th one pointing into the town.

Or even one of the old style omni setups, with just a single sector - that'd have enough power to give more indoor coverage (and general coverage) to Hunstanton than what is currently the case.

You know I think that's a really good idea but why don't we go further. Why don't we just make every mast 4 sectors so that the beams can be tightly focused? more capacity for all.

Oh wait we can't do that because it doesn't work.

Sure you aren't one of H3G's RAN architects?

I think I'm very occasionally switching to 800MHz 4G on my iPhone 6s. Getting a full bar 4G signal in my house when on WiFi but turning off WiFi and actually trying to use it, I get kicked off and put onto 3G.

Still, if that's the signal I'm gonna get then wow!

It will.

Case in point - L1800 mast more than 10 miles from me. Not a sniff of 4G in the house, outside the house, or within a couple of miles of the house using a Samsung S6.

Same mast, depending on weather conditions - one bar of 4G in the top room of the house on the side the mast is on, albeit >10 miles away. 10Mbps down and 2Mbps up on an Honor 7.

Astonishing really.


With the greatest respect, and as much as I criticise EE - their network engineers and planners have probably forgotten more than you or I will ever know about antenna setup and placement.

Even if they have forgotten South Cheshire and North Shropshire exist.

And yes, before you feel it necessary to tell us all (again) - that will be because we have copper backhaul, only delivering up to 2Mbps throughput etc...

Fingers crossed!

Try going into field test when it goes over to 4G then you can confirm that it's 800 and not your phone going a bit special.

We were outside the Aquarium at the Rockfish cafe waiting for them to start bringing round half price fish and chips. Which they did. Both nights. : )