Yes, 800 will be the "last resort" 4G, before it drops to 3G.

Just meant on 4G. I expect for capacity reasons you simply won't go on 800 if anything else is available, and there won't be any carrier aggregation either.

Much of this announcement isn't about wanting to get it 800, but rather knowing it's there and that it may help in some locations to reduce the use of 3G or 2G.

I get rubbish 4G in my office, quite often it drops to H, if i can connect to 800 here, should i see 4G?

I would think there is a good chance, but obviously it still depends on many other factors. 800 isn't, as someone else has said, God. It isn't going to mean indoor coverage for all, or it working in a basement everywhere.

It will still matter where the site is, the building construction and so on.

Other solutions can be found for indoor issues. Wi-Fi calling is one solution for the home or office, but small cells are another. I don't know what EE's strategy is on this compared to Vodafone/O2, but that's a much better way to ensure your airport, railway station, shopping mall etc has solid 4G throughout - and with high speeds and capacity.

Vodafone is doing a lot on this, and I hope to be able to go and see the equipment soon (probably new year now) and how it works at places like Gatwick and Heathrow (so far, not every terminal is done).

Yeah, my phone isnt supported by EE, so i cant get WiFi calling

Wish they did an app like 3.

They won't. Even Three will eventually drop inTouch, which was just a stop-gap solution.

I have had mixed experiences with inTouch, but native support is the way forward.

Yep, but they need to support non-branded phones.

I have to say I'm not sure I understand EE with this launch, why bother with so few sites live? I thought three cut it to the bone with there 800mhz launch but at least you could see a difference when they did, even with the annoying below 3g priority level, it also doesn't take three many sites to cover massive areas, when I tested it earlier this year managed to travel from Nantwich in South Cheshire to Shrewsbury and Telford only using 3 or maybe 4 cell towers. They didn't seem to be under particular pressure to launch 800mhz like three was and have had longer to do it, so why bother with so few, I'd have thought they'd at least have added it to sites three have previously upgraded as a minimum

I don't know why there are so few, but EE has a lot more 4G 1800 so I'd say that it's far more likely you're getting 4G on EE than Three - even if speeds are often comparable, and in some cases Three can be faster.

Three has limited spectrum and seems to need 3G to cope, hence prioritising 3G over 4G 800. It really needs to refarm 3G spectrum to 4G as soon as possible, and of course bid on more spectrum.

Because Orange/one2one started at 1800 and needed more sites, assuming EE didn't get rid of loads of sites with the merger, I think that in a lot of places 1800 will do quite well indoors simply because there are more sites. 800 being unrestricted on power, unlike Vodafone/O2 is another bonus, but perhaps not quite so significant.

Six months ago I'd have loved 800 to fix some local problems. Today, they're fixed and I am getting 1800 4G. In fact, I've got 1800+2600 a lot of the time. So 800 won't really make much difference now.

As time goes on, 800 will actually become less important as coverage improves. The plan doesn't seem to be to merely cover the rest of the UK with 800 and have done with, much as I am sure BT considered it.

There are much better ways of supporting non-branded phones than a shitty app that likely won't work as well as expected.

They may as well spend the time needed to make the app and support all devices on implementing native VoLTE instead.

So much misinformation given by EE:

"@drivesjohndeere We are doing 3000 masts by this Christmas Steve, it's Santa's little treat. Robyn"

They've said that there is NO way they'll ever adopt an app for reasons I have before. Three chose to do it that way, and they did get a year head start, but EE won't.

- App reliability and support issues, especially when it comes to OS updates
- Need for separate dialler with the associated support issues
- Performance issues and impact on battery

It's a non-starter and while I actually suggested EE could do this to activate older phones, I now realise that they aren't going to do that.

Their various CS channels make it up as they go along...

Ok so we know that anyone eligible will be activated by 01 Dec but do we know if it will be a text / sim update or a new set of carrier settings to update and therefore we will know when we can use it. Or is it all done behind the scenes and we won't know anything till we test out on 01 December?

I think it's literally an account change that's probably done silently without any input from the user. I suspect EE have been planning this for a long time and so already have the groundwork in place on all the supported devices..

I got a 'good news, 4G is coming' text when they were doing upgrade work on nearby sites being 4GEE's (even though we've had 4G since 2013) so I would hope that there will be some text to mention 4G Calling when I'm provisioned.

Of course I've had VoLTE for some time on 1800/2600, but it would make good and obvious business sense for EE to announce it to anyone using a compatible phone and having been activated.

I believe it's just a case of letting the sim numbers onto the new frequency, so any customer can use it assuming they have the right handset

It's a weird situation, I was able to see and connect to 800MHz in September so I don't know what updates will be required...

https://s19.postimg.org/hp46scz4j/IMG_3055.jpg

I was able to pickup 800MHz at my home until a week or so ago. I wonder if it will still be working and at higher power when I am next home...

As mentioned in the EE thread multiple times, back in September 800 wouldn't have had device restrictions on it so anyone could end up on it.
Now they seem to have blocked everyone from it and are going through the process of allowing certain people/devices back onto it.

I assume before there was no block and now the phone needs to not only be provisioned (to restrict payg users) but must also successfully connect to VoLTE with the IMS settings. Only if both of these things 'pass' will you be able to use 800 now.

I was told today that EE is testing 1GB/s at the moment, in Hatfield. Damn, I'm always one or two steps behind..!

I had a weird situation today. I have a BT mobile £5 a month sim in an Asus Zenfone 2 as a sort of back up for my main phone on 3. The Asus is capable of picking up 800mhz signal but doesn't have VoLTE support so I was very surprised today as I was driving through Newtown in Mid Wales and picked up Band 20 4G on it. I did have to force the phone to 4G to get it otherwise it chose 3G above it, but it did connect. I even managed a speed test of 28Mbps whilst connected to it!
I'm very confused as I'm not even a proper EE customer and the phone doesn't even support voLTE.
Has anyone else had this?

Worse than the separate dialler is the separate text message list. Total bloody nightmare as far as I'm concerned. The overall EE line is It would lead to poor customer experience and you kinda need to avoid that. : )
Native WC is just brilliant. Totally Transparent. You don't even know you're using it unless you look.

So not going to let the riff-raff use it! Would you be able to see just 800 coverage on their coverage maps?

Thanks. Kind of thought that was the case.