Coughing for 4G, getting 2G... Networks' penny-pinching SECRETS REVEALED

Top 4G? Shockingly, the team that completed the London commuter train connectivity study we covered yesterday has reported the use of half-rate codecs among UK mobile providers. Half-rate codecs were developed as an economy measure and their use shows penny-pinching on the part of the networks. According to the study, O2 used …

[Tom 38]

Population density

The problem with stations - well, pretty much the whole of Central London tbh - is that there are just too many people with too many smartphones trying to do things all at the same time.

If you leave work at 5:30, you might get 5 bars of 3G/4G signal, but try and use it to stream music or video and it will be slow as hell.

[tirk]

Re: Population density

Yup. As another example try getting the latest scores from a crowded football ground at half time.

[Irongut]

Re: Population density

Or try sendng a text message to your other half during a match when you live across the road from a stadium.

Bloody hooligans.

[dotdavid]

Re: Population density

Indeed. As someone that uses Kings Cross (probably the same cell towers as St Pancras) regularly at rush hour it is very flakey using data sometimes, which is a pain when you're wanting to look up train-related data (the apps often display departure platform way before the departure boards do). At off-peak times it's much better.

I wonder if the testing of stations was done at the same time of day at all stations? Else I would expect the results to be a little flawed.

[Boothy]

Re: Population density

We have one of our UK offices next door to St Pancras, and our corporate phone supplier is O2.

We get no signal from O2 in the building, even stood next to a window, despite being about 5 floors up, with clear sight across the roof tops of London! (EE works fine).

[Peter Mount]

Re: Population density

Victoria is similar - from the station to south of Battersea can be a mobile dead zone during peak hours. 4G is slightly better than 3G but not much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Population density

Population density isn't static away from stations, football grounds, etc either.

Try being stuck in a traffic incident on a major road.

If you are in a traffic incident on a major road, please make your call, get your message through, cut the chat, and HANG UP. Thank you.

Someone in the area may want to make an emergency call and be unable to do so because of Network Busy.

Been there, seen that, multiple times. And not just in London.

[JeffyPoooh]

Puh! You think that half-rate codecs are bad?

Rogers in Canada, at come cell sites in rural Nova Scotia, has 3G towers connected to the Internet with what appears to be a dial-up connection. Five bars of lovely 3G signal. Excruciatingly slow connection to the world. I suspect the tower is wired to the world with copper phone lines for the audio, and (being too far for ADSL) dial-up data.

I've seen it in enough different locations at enough different times to support my conclusions. Perhaps there's another explanation, but I can't think of it.

[Dr_N]

There's a switch for that...

You used to be able to switch on/off EFR/EHR with a few #* code key presses on the old Nokias...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't have a problem with half rate

My Nokia 2140 (not even Enhanced Half Rate) was fine for voice calls.

[Lallabalalla]

Survey rated O2 highly?

Really? survey by whom? And compared to what exactly? No signal at all?

[dotdavid]

Re: Survey rated O2 highly?

Survey of O2 management? :-P

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing a network....

"As technology has progressed, we’ve seen the advent of better codecs on 3G – notably wideband AMR, which both EE and Vodafone offer."

So do Three. In fact it's only O2 that don't have WB-AMR on 3G.

It's also standardised for 2G, but nobody uses it. Probably for much the same reason that HR is common.

[Anonymous Coward]

Editorial standards please

In the picture of the two people in the bar, which one is the tester and which one is the barkeep? C'mon Reg, inserting a simple (l) or (r) when you name people in pictures should be standard practice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Editorial standards please

Should be fairly obvious.

Ignoring the name<->skin colour correlation; the tester is 'explaining', so would most likely be the one holding the tablet (particularly at that angle etc).

The barkeep is most likely the one with lanyards around her neck for operating the till (this type of testing would require the testers to carry identification).

[Arachnoid]

Re: Editorial standards please

Or as your on the tinternet you could try searching if your unsure

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/drissa-coulibaly/4/680/7b6

[Queasy Rider]

Re: Editorial standards please

What part of "Drissa Coulibaly, GWS operations director (right), explains mobile testing to the bartender" didn't you get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Editorial standards please

@QR: But when was the "(right)" added?

Things can be updated based on comments. You need to keep this temporal factor in mind.

[Chad H.]

>>>>>Interestingly, the GWS testing found that bandwidth was better when the train was moving. The firm said 24.18 per cent of data failures occurred while they were on trains in stations

At a guess, I'd say this probably has something to do with big granite and other stone walls blocking radio signals.

[Pedo Bear]

When traveling on the Oxford to Paddington service I never got any service on my iPhone 5 even though it showed I had full signal from EE. As soon as I got on the train and out of the station everything stopped, when I got off at my destination and away from the station it would be fine. Yes I got service every now and then but 90% it failed.

[Anna Logg]

" In your correspondent's opinion, to have regressed to the two-decades-old sound quality of EHR as a matter of course is penny-pinching of the highest order "

Really?. Don't think I've ever heard anyone moan about the actual sound quality of a mobile call in those two decades; dropped calls yes, lousy headsets yes, all sorts of other factors, but not the speech codec quality.

[Vince]

People do moan about the quality. Maybe you couldn't hear them as you were receiving the moans in half-rate?

[Cliff]

Cross Country Trains, Virgin, too.

Those decade-old rolling stock from Italy (the ones with slidey does and smelly loos) have some kind of miracle signal attenuation. They can make any network a miserable experience, perhaps they're worth a try for some of us non-London readers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cross Country Trains, Virgin, too.

"Those decade-old rolling stock from Italy (the ones with slidey does and smelly loos) have some kind of miracle signal attenuation."

I suspect it's the design, which has far smaller windows than older inter-city and suburban carriages. The huge area of metal presumably acts as a leaky Faraday cage.

[Cliff]

Re: Cross Country Trains, Virgin, too.

I can only imagine the windows are metalled too - they really are buggers for it.

[werdsmith]

Couldn't give a stuff about voice call quality, as long as I can be understood and hear the other party.

By all means use half rate to increase capacity.

But, sort out the data network, 3G or 4G whatever. At the moment it's fourth world, and I say fourth because many third wold countries I've visited have top quality mobile networks that make ours look pathetic.

The coverage stats are BS. The cell capacities are very poor. There are too many places where 3G + could be useful but just isn't available. What a crowd of useless slackers the networks are. Even EE.

[96percentchimp]

"Couldn't give a stuff about voice call quality, as long as I can be understood and hear the other party."

Doesn't that mean you could give a stuff about voice call quality?

[werdsmith]

"Doesn't that mean you could give a stuff about voice call quality?"

No, it means "by all means use half rate to increase capacity".

If I wanted to hear the person on the other end of the phone in Hi-Fi HD supercodec Dolby 5.1 Surround, then I wouldn't be using a device with a tiny speaker.

[Billa Bong]

"We continue to invest £1.5m every day in our network"

I wondered why O2 charge £6/MB roaming in the US.

Wishing for end of contract so I can move to 3...

[SpeakerToAliens]

Why wouldn't the phone companies use it if your phone supported it?

It lets them provide twice as many simultaneous calls per cell tower at an acceptable audio quality, so why not?

In crowded locations/during emergencies that would be a real boon. Also, doesn't it increase the phone's battery life as the phone would only have to transmit/receive in a half-size time-slot instead of a full size one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray for science!

Back in 2008, my 10 year relationship with Orange (aww, remember them?) came to an end, and a new life with O2 began – SIM Only deal with my existing phone.

Whilst I was impressed with the better signal strength o2 provided, the quality of the voice calls was noticeably poorer than Orange eg ‘tinny’ and occasionally broke-up. O2 customer services were having none of it, insisting that there couldn’t possibly be any difference between the two networks providing the signal strength was similar. I gave up trying to convince them.

In 2012, I switched to Vodafone – again, on a SIM Only – and once again, the difference in voice quality was quite profound, but this time, MUCH better. Vodafone’s recent introduction of HD Voice has been the icing on the cake (though it’s a shame it doesn’t yet work cross-network).

After many years of thinking that O2’s voice call quality was far-short of the other networks, it’s actually quite satisfying to see the reason for this, and know that I wasn’t just imagining it.

[Mr Sceptical]

Can any of you feel 2G/GSM radio?

Slightly off topic - am I the only person who can feel (as in a distinct sensation in the side of my head) when my phone has dropped to 2G? It's quite unpleasant, therefore I tend to use a bluetooth or wired headset if it's not 3G. If it's a long call on 3G I tend to use a headset anyway as I can't be bothered to hold the phone up till the blood drains out of my arm.

FYI - I get a sensation on the side of my scalp above the ears on the side I'm holding the phone after a few seconds exposure. Maybe I'm just sensitive to my nerve endings being microwaved...

Tinfoil sweatband time?

On topic - my commute from Wimbledon Common to Waterloo (train from Putney) has several distinct areas of no signal, for no obvious reasons such as obstructions. Rubbish networks the lot of them. I'm on Vodafone at the mo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Can any of you feel 2G/GSM radio?

"several distinct areas of no signal, for no obvious reasons such as obstructions."

The obstruction might be obviously visible to you, might not, who's to say.

The obstruction doesn't need to be near you, it just needs to be between you and your phone's chosen base station, and big enough to cast an RF shadow where you are.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was standing outside King's Cross station last night, in the shiny new square, full of people waiting for other people and I thought I'd check the state of the various tube and train lines so I could pick the least worst route home. *gets phone out of pocket*...*switches on*...GPRS. G-P-R-S.

GPRS, in 2014, outside one of the country's busiest railway stations. Of course, since 3G became the norm and long before 4G was a glint in the chief marketing officer's eye, anything on 2G spectrum is a disaster. No matter how many bars you may have, taunting you in that notification bar, when you see that G or E symbol as your data bearer you may as well be hooked up to /dev/null.

In the end I gave up waiting for my phone to find some 3Gs and went underground where, miraculously, all lines were operating a "good" service.

This was O2.

[Gavin Park Weir]

I would like to know what time of day this was tested?

about 6 months ago I had a 2 hour wait in Waterloo from 4pm to 6pm. I connected PC via tether and ran a ping test throughout.

4pm I was seeing around 120ms.

By 5:05pm rose to around 2200ms

by 5:15 stopped working - no packets were pass

All tests to bbc.co.uk using Vodafone 3G.

This bears out my daily commute experience which is that I can't do anything internet in waterloo at rush hour.

Given I have wifi at home, wifi at work and wifi in the pub I only need it when commuting. Generally a bit rubbish then.

[Roland6]

Not really sure what the article was actually saying!

Back in 2000~2002, when the 3G networks were being specified by the 3GPP, one of the differences between 2G and 3G was in the voice codecs. 2G supported a very limited range of codecs and bit rates, before it dropped a call. Whereas 3G took advantage of more recent developments to use a wider range of codecs and bit rates. Which meant that 3G could be both superior and inferior to 2G depending on network congestion, noise etc. before falling back to 2G.

Given 4G currently 'drops back' to the 3G/2G voice service as it has no native voice service, (yes I know one is in development) I don't see the point of the article unless what is being said that with 4G voice is being artificially constrained when there is no technical reason for a phone not to be using the better quality 3G codecs and data rates.

[Dave Bell]

Not just London?

Out here in Rural England, about a mile from the motorway, the coverage is pretty crap. And even the network coverage maps that the networks provide show horrible gaps in coverage along the main roads, even for voice phones.

The voice coverage does tend to be a little bit better than predicted, but I still suspect the maps are rather old, and take no account of the reality that trees grow.

I don't feel any great sympathy for you London guys, but we could all benefit from more honest phone companies.

[Anonymous Coward]

confused report

There is a lot of confusion in this report. 4G networks do not support voice calls anywhere as no UK network has yet introduced VoLTE. You always have to fall back to 3G or 2G to make a vocie call on a 4G phone. The report should have made clear whether it was talking about vocie calls only or also about data connections.

[gazthejourno]

Re: confused report

When you say "there is a lot of confusion in this report", what you actually mean is "I read the headline and jumped straight into the comments without reading a word of the actual report which goes into depth about half-rate codecs and networks' misuse of a fallback option as the default setting for 4G customers".

Another day, another commentard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: confused report

well no actually. I did read it and it is confused. You are plainly just a troll who needs to get out more. I bet you vote for UKIP.

[Roland6]

Re: confused report @gazthejourno

I think the article and some of the comments show a large degree of ignorance about mobile comm's...

Firstly, what is totally missing from both the report and the article is any indication or consideration of the load on the cell and mobile network at the time of testing. Without knowing these it is impossible to draw any substantive conclusions about the usage of EHR codecs on GSM. Given the constraints on GSM connections, it would not surprise me to find that the network operators permanently operate their GSM spectrum in EHR mode in cells known to typically have high user densities and 'peaky' usage, such as at St. Pancras where with a train arrival you can rapidly gain a few hundred users, who then disappear again into the underground.

Going back to the beginning of 3G, the first usage to which the new spectrum was put was voice not data! This was because the networks 2G (voice) spectrum was reaching capacity, simply moving some of this traffic on to another frequency band improved the service for everyone (well not always for for those business users who's employer took the 3G discounted rate and discovered they were the guinea pigs...) With the uptake of 3G and now 4G, operators are being left with lightly used 2G spectrum (hence why some have made enquiries about converting the spectrum to 3G etc.), so it makes sense for networks in some areas to favour a "drop back" to 2G for voice traffic rather than put additional traffic on to the 3G spectrum, particularly for their 4G (data) users - I ask what is the real benefit of serving a 3G voice connection to a 4G data user? (Yes I know I'm looking at this more from the perspective of the network operator rather than the 4G user.)

So unlike Simon Rockman, I don't believe regressing "to the two-decades-old sound quality of EHR as a matter of course is penny-pinching of the highest order", quite the contrary, it shows they are optimising the usage of their existing assets, particularly as the operators are currently bound by Ofcom to maintain the 2G/GSM service.

Yes the article is lacking in clarity and understanding of how mobile networks work (wrt voice services) and hence is confusing.

[gazzton]

Re: confused report

@gazthejourno

Nicely done. In one short reply you've managed a stunning display of ignorance and self importance (on your part), nicely balanced by complete contempt for "commentards" and an inability to see another's point of view probably because of the restricted view offered by having your head so far up your own arse.

[xyz]

I'm still mystified how...

...the bloke that got on the train at Luton Airport Parkway from who knows where, can rabbit away to his friends in who knows where, whilst the rest of the train is waving its hands in the air trying to grab a bar for a signal as we trundle into King's X/SP. Never understood how that works.

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: I'm still mystified how...

Simple....he's training for the PFY slot by being as irritating as possible suggesting something in IT is straightforward and you, the user, are doing it all wrong.

He has no connection, no conversation, just a smirk as he wins another round.....PFY 10, (l)users 0

[withaar]

Is there an app for that?

I am interested in testing this myself. Is there a way to monitor codec use during calls on my android?

[earl grey]

MOAR BARTENDER!!!!!

What were you saying?

[Henry Wertz 1]

AT&T has that beat

2% EHR? 5% half-rate? AT&T (here in the USA) has that beat. For years, they had been running *100%* half-rate codec (except a few markets, like Seattle, where they ran the network properly.). Why? I have no idea, obviously they don't need the capacity when it's like 2AM or whatever, and half-rate *does* break up in poorer signal conditions where a full-rate codec has enough additional error correction to keep working, and sound tinny and crappy the rest of the time. They recently FINALLY began to seriously worry over voice quality when T-Mo began advertising "HD Voice" calls.

I don't know what the percentage is, (I think pretty uncommon) but T-Mo would also reportedly use half-rate... but *only* when the site is near capacity, and *only* when you're close enough to the site (i.e. good enough signal quality); when the user gets further away from the site (or deeper indoors or whatever to lower singal quality) they'd get pushed to full rate anyway to avoid call breakup.

[roger stillick]

4G, 3G, 2G, who cares ?? there is no service...it costs $$...

Joke Alert= the wired telephone foks here in the USA are required to monitor overloaded interoffice trunk lines and MUST add more virtual trunk lines as needed... not so for the wireless folks, physical radio equipment is needed to augment anything other than messing w/ the codecs...

Having a wireless world is a great idea... most long time wireless areas are served by remenants of the wired telephone world with an entirely different set of equipment and service values / mind sets. hint= old time service areas really don't expect much wireless use so they provision wireless sites and test stuff accordingly ( for no service)...no problem, coffee time.

3rd World places and China / South Korea expect all service to be wireless and engineer for a 100% solution, every time ( for lots of wireless service)...no problem, coffee time.

IMHO= folks in old time big cities and populated suburbs arre getting quietly hosed by the wireless folks who sell everything up to and including network TV on the wireless networks that actually overload several times each day with just phone traffic... the oher stuff is handeled by using other paths for data / TV... still the IP overhead is huge and overloaded... i have no idea how to fix this except by spending serious $$ on radio stuff, sompthing wireless carriers in most places simply do no do ( milking the cash cow is the only possible solution).

Joke Alert= i await folks saying all sorts of radio faciities are available everywhere for customers to happily use...RS.

[Nathan 13]

Stations

7 out of 10 of the worst stations are on the same route, London to Bedford Thameslink. Thats more than coincidence?

[roger stillick]

Re: Stations, precisely...

The USA wireless folks do not have a monopoly on lack of needed radio facilities to provide actual good service...

hint= Verizon is not one of these miserly folks, but, they are also are the most expensive as they actually provide service...everywhere they are in the business of wireless services.

caveiat= i am both a Centurylink and a Verizon customer... both 'Get It'...RS.

[Roj Blake]

Re: Stations

It implies that they travelled down that line and tested those stations during the rush hour, but did the other stations when it was quiet.

[Rolf Howarth]

Mobile communication is a joke

I don't care about penny pinching, if the mobile operators could just provide ANY kind of service it would be a start. People are encouraged to waste huge amounts of bandwidth by promoting pointless things like streaming video while most of the time I can't even send a sodding 40 byte text message reliably!

I wish some of the networks would progressively throttle the bandwidth so that the first 10MB a day say are at full speed and after that it progressively drops back the more you use. (Actually, you might make the throttle calculation period shorter like 30 minutes, but you get the idea). If any of the networks could GUARANTEE a certain basic level of service by throttling excessive bandwidth usage I'd switch to them like a shot.