Originally Posted by daveyfs:
“So, off topic blather about branding aside, is 800 actually fully activated now?”
Yes.
Users in the north had their block lifted earlier this week. The south at 0001 this morning. All sites were at full power since the end of November. [The divide was near Watford Gap, Northamptonshire apparently)
Once there were no major issues, the coverage map got updated after 7am.
There are going to be some issues with the map, in that you can't really see the 800 sites. You can search for a post code and if that area is 800 only, you'll be told you need a 4G Calling handset. It all depends where the pin is.
Otherwise, scrolling around the map won't help. I think 800 is just part of the normal 4G map, so it could be a bit misleading to PAYG users or those who won't realise some coverage is dependent on VoLTE.
I am sure that will be fixed in due course, but the important thing is that every pay monthly user can access 800 now. And mobile broadband users should be okay too.
Edit: Oh, and EE is staying as EE. In fact, EE may well have moved a lot of staff to St Paul's with other BT employees - but is very much independent. So much so that Marc Allera's first thing to do was paint the walls in their offices in EE colours so it was quite clear that they're NOT BT. In fact, BT wants to make sure EE doesn't suffer as some other BT services have, so has every reason to let EE continue doing what's clearly working.
Nobody can say what will happen in the years to come, changes of staff and management etc, but I think BT would rather become more like EE than the other way around.