Ofcom coughs 3G coverage maps The UK regulator has finally released nationwide maps of the 3G coverage available, and it will come as no surprise that anyone planning to take a dongle to the Highlands will be out of luck. It's not just the Highlands though, users will struggle anywhere with an interesting landscape - the maps overlap well with …
"How to get operators to build network where there aren't enough people to make it viable is a taxing question"
Stop 'em quoting coverage as a %age of the population, and start making 'em quote it as a %age of land mass. With a stronger minimum signal quality to count.
If every other - larger, more dispersed - country can sort decent signals waaaaay out into the sticks, wtf can't I get a decent signal a mile from the flamin' M25?
Surprising the poor showing of Vodafone and O2, especially considering the latter's tie up of the high-end smartphone market with the data-hungry iPhone and Pre
Glad I'm on 3; their network can be ropey at times, but works on HSPA 3G more often than not (various bits of Scotland)
Ofcom ducking the issues, obfuscating and not having the customer's best interests at heart.
The whole mobile broadband thing boils my p*ss. Operators are selling this, contracts and dongles like wildfire, but with little mention of the VERY patchy coverage. My 3 mobile broadband coverage in my home town is dire at best, if they are the best of the bad bunch then the rest ought to hang their heads in shame...not that they will. No doubt they will keep taking the money whilst avoiding mentioning how poor the service really is.
We have rubbish mobile in parts of Wensleydale as we have hills and the permanent population isn't large. But the transient population numbers millions as we're a tourist centre. It hasn't occured to mobile operators that their customers get fed up when on holiday and they can't use their phones as they've not unreasonably chosen to holiday where not many people live
Yesterday I was looking at Three's coverage map for where I live (outskirts of suburban south Birmingham). There are few areas with "good" coverage, and you don't have to wander very far at all (a mile or two) to be in a "no signal" area.
Meanwhile, back in 2G land, on the M40 between those well known low density areas Birmingham and Oxford, in my experience it's near impossible to either (a) hold an uninterrupted conversation or (b) maintain an uninterrupted GPRS connection.
Still, GSM's in its infancy, once the GSM telcos have recovered the billions they wasted on 3G licences (didn't each of them pay over £4 billion?) I'm sure they'll get back to investing in improving coverage around the country. Say around 2099 if they're lucky. By that time Three might have some decent coverage too. Maybe.
Screw 3g, I'd like to just be able to make a call thanks,
This month I was charged £96 by o2,
This is because as well as my usual (£45) iPhone tarriff, I was charged about £50 because I apparently send ~900 text messages in a month (Quite how I had the time with such a twatty tiny un usable keyboard, i'm not sure, then again, virtually every message I send requires a follow up because a spastic was left in charge of the dictionary - no, not me, someone at apple)
Yet, despite paying £100 for one month of a service, I was unable to conduct a call from a landline here at a business park, to a mobile belonging to my housemate, in a city centre, without it cutting out every twenty seconds and the last minute of the call was just me hearing him go 'cant hear you' while i say 'GO AND EAT YOUR FKING LUNCH' over and over again
Marvellous technology, well worth the money, and if you can't make a frigging phone call, after all these years, who's to expect to be able to retrieve some data from anywhere special,
utter cak, if everyone weren't so busy whacking off over the pile of pounds they've amassed for no reason other than to whack off over, maybe the human race could progress
It's no wonder I keep seeing iPhone owners twittering about lack of 3G signal.
P.S. Vodafone and T-Mobile above Orange? Looks to me Orange has far more coverage, even in the south.
One of the reasons I stick with Orange is not the customer service (which like everyone's is sh*t), it's the coverage, especially outside of the home counties.
Sadly though Orange's Mobile Broadband offers are also sh*t and Vodafone/T-Mobile have some of the better PAYG mobile broadband offers.
I use Virgin 3G/GPRS via a dongle for Mobile Broadband.
No mention of Virgin in the article, but it must be the worst one for coverage.
When I can't get a connection and search for other mobile operators there are usually one or two - 3 and Voda seem to be the most common.
However at £5 a month I can't bring myself to spend £15 a month for any of the competitors.
Ever thought about why O2 have the iPhone and Pre?
The thought occurs to me that this could have a lot to do with their cutting a better deal for the handset makers in question, as they know damned well that these products being offered on a network with better coverage would mean that they could kiss their user base goodbye.
Which do you think's cheaper, investing in the network or buying a couple of well-hyped devices that come with a guarantee of joe public beating a path to your door?
The maps themselves are pretty laughable as they've taken a big purple marker to Edinburgh and surrounding area for O2 3G is which is a complete lie. 3G coverage in that area is spotty beyond belief.
Surely OfCom should be all over the providers as they are selling a service which they themselves have quite clearly documented DOESN'T WORK.
People who live out in the country are constantly banging on about all the reasons why living in the country is so much better than living in the city, they wouldn't give it up for anything etc.
Well there are disadvantages too... Suck it up!
Having said that it should be made easier to find out if somewhere has coverage or not before you buy i.e somewhere to put your postcode in and it gives you full (and easy to understand) information about coverage in that, and the surrounding area.
I just took a look at those maps and compared them to the ones here in the states. I don't know how you "get operators to build network where there aren't enough people to make it viable" but the US seems to have figured it out.
After all, I get 3g service in a dire little coal mining town 6 hours from anywhere in the goddamn mountains where the only computers are in the mine's command center.
"Orange is in the middle, but wins the competition for the most northerly 3G with apparent coverage somewhere around Fresgoe, though we didn't manage to confirm that with Orange."
And don't bother trying to confirm that either. It's O2 FTW - they are the only operator pumping 3G goodness in Shetland... and you can't get any more northerly than that!
I have a 3 dongle and a 3 mobile and while the coverage is fairly good for Northern Ireland, most of southern County Down is poor with no coverage contrary to the map shown.
I have found the best and most detailed Three coverage maps from the Three website. You can zoom in and get very accurate results which tally with real world use.
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