Hi. Ofcom? My mobe's call quality is crap – but you said it was fine Consumers will soon get proper information on how well their phone makes calls. Regulator Ofcom is to use an independent lab to test and rate phones for how well they actually make calls, and will release the information to the public. Too good to be true? Not according to the Telegraph. Ofcom reportedly told the paper that …
"but they’re reluctant to share the results of their testing in fear of retaliation from the handset providers."
I don't get this - not only does a phone that drop calls often make me want to get another phone, it will also make me want to move to another network as I have no real way of telling where the problem lies. If networks know which phones are poor surely it is in their interest to publish this as it is their network which gets a bad reputation, and if suddenly punters start moving away from those phones in droves, and networks are less happy to support them the manufactueres have some reason to improve their products? It may not be in the manufactureres interest to have these details published, but surely it is good for the network? Or is it that some popular phones work poorly on some networks but are fine on others?
Offcom's signal tracker shows that on Three I get a good 3g signal at my home outdoors. Nothing at all.
It shows 4g in the next street. Nothing at all.
Even voice calls are sketchy at best but according to Offcom and Three everything's fine.
How do I get Offcom to my street to show them it ain't the case?
I upgraded the dying work iPhone 5 to a Microsoft Lumia 735 a few months back. We stayed on the same contract with EE, now SIM only - so we buy as they break. Whether it's the plastic case, or better design, I now get usable coverage at home. The iPhone would (mostly) get enough signal to sometimes ring or text on the windowsill. But I'd normally have to walk outside, or strangely go into the bathroom and stand by the window, to call.
The Lumia now has signal throughout the flat, but sometimes crackles a lot if I'm not standing near the windows.
It's not turned nothing into perfect, but it's a big difference, working in the same environment. And only cost £150.
I'm obviously out of step with normal users though. For me, it's a phone that sometimes does emails, text and satnav. And I bought it for the excellent address book.
Given that Google maps uses info from phones to update traffic stats on roads could not a similar approach to be used for operator and phone performance on a geographic basis.
An app that occasionally reported GPS location, network operator, phone model, RF signal strength and optionally, a user 'quality score' would allow a dynamic data set to be built that gave an accurate view of network coverage on different phone types. This would reflect actual performance rather than 'predicted coverage' and also an indication of how each phone model affects things.
Problem would be getting sufficient take-up given that the operators are hardly likely to encourage it - they would much rather advertise 98 % coverage than have a system report 75% (or whatever).
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