EE most 'reliable' mobile provider for cities – Ofcom Communications regulator Ofcom has named EE the mobile provider with the fastest speeds in four major cities, according to research published today. EE came out on top in all five categories: download speeds, web-browsing speeds, upload speeds, video streaming and even - gasp - telephone calls in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool …
I think it's quite nice to be able to select the networks individually, if they were all selected at once then the map would be quite difficult to interpret. I notice that the signal type and location selections are persistent so it's 1 click to change networks.
In the case of my home postcode it's mostly uncovered for 4G data, the best network is O2 but their coverage engineers have been very sneaky because the border between 4G indoors and nothing literally follows the postcode boundary. Naturally outside the postcode boundary is mainly grass and open spaces, the houses are all inside it.
Yeah, the mobiler checker is no better. For Vodafone and EE it says I'm likely to get good voice signal. In actuality if I go out into the garden it is useable. Inside the house it's sometimes not even possible to send texts. That's why I ended up getting a SureSignal booster. Sadly that meant moving back to Vodafone which I swore never to do over a decade ago. I also had to pay £50 (discounted from £100) for the privilege of using my broadband and electricity to compensate for their crappy coverage.
I'm not even that rural. Just a small town roughly half way between Birmingham and London.
I agree, one that works would be good. In my case it persistently over-estimates the strength of voice, 3G and 4G data signals. In theory I can use 3G and 4G indoors and have good voice coverage. but the reality is that I never get a useable high speed data connection, and voice signal quality is at best middling.
And Ofcom could crowdsource the improvement of the map if they let users feedback to them actual user results. Sadly the feedback tool asks if the map is good or bad, but it doesn't ask WHERE (and they specifically ask not to include any identifying or location information).
RootMetrics is only marginally better. It does at least indicate that large parts of Brackley have poor coverage. However my house on the outskirts is shown inside a green hexagon albeit but not far from the border of an orange hexagon. But really it's only the difference between Ofcom's 'Everything in your town is tickety boo' to 'Careful now - some of your neighbours might have issues occasionally'. Both are a far cry from 'Without a booster your mobile phone will be useless - stick with your landline'.
It would also help if the RM website was easier to navigate. It told me there wasn't enough EE data and suggested I choose a different network but none was listed. Then randomly on the layer drop down it added O2 and Vodafone.
I'm also wondering how the apps handle signal boosters like mine? With my signal booster on my phone is typically getting signal strengths of -70 or better. If it recorded that on the map my house would appear to have fantastic service.
About a year ago I moved away from EE. The reason was simple - indoor coverage was extremely poor (and this was in spitting distance of EE's headquarters in Paddington). Forget speed, I just wanted a signal without having to lean up against a window. Now I'm with O2, I rarely suffer signal issues.
So, I'm not sure how Ofcom got their results. Perhaps they drove around measuring speed outdoors and then extrapolated (probably incorrectly) for indoor coverage, or perhaps they put an app on volunteers' phones to sample data speeds. But then most people would select a mobile carrier they could reliably use, and this would minimise readings that negatively effect results. Whatever the method, it certainly doesn't reflect my experience of EE.
"Orange".
never had a good word about them since I was getting 5 bars up in every room of my house, and yet calls were going to voicemail because (as the caller said) "it has not been possible to connect your call".
Oh, and dropped calls a 5 bars.
Various handsets, so not likely to be my hardware.
I can personally attest that neither O2 or EE can give anything near a reliable signal where I live. I can furthermore guarantee that 4Mbps is a total joke, 66 yr old Post Office/BT phone wires here = 1.38Mbps avg whereas Virgin arrived 2 years ago and I get 120Mbps on them.
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