Phones and data connection

[pvr]

At the moment, I have to go to London once a week. What I have noticed that it is very difficult to get any data connection on my iPhone whilst in London, in the station it is just about impossible to open a browser and it is very annoying not being able to check train times.

I am with T-Mobile, and London is the only city I have had this issue that even though I have full signal, I just can not get anything.

Is it a provider issue?

 

[markeg]

That's strange, I use a t-mobile MiFi and it connects fine throughout London :?

 

[NeilP]

What station are you at?

I've found my signal to be nothing short of perfect (3G on O2)

 

[Toe-side]

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/04/ee-connection-failure-internet-signal

There are a number of similar hits on tinterweb

 

[danmiddle2]

I believe it's to do with how EE re-utilised a lot of existing T-Mobile and Orange infrastructure to deliver the UK's first 4G network in London. It severely compromised their existing voice and data services (in my experience)... and was the reason why I switched provider. Even though I was on a 4G plan, the service was never good in almost any part of London.

 

[jimbo1958]

At the moment, I have to go to London once a week. What I have noticed that it is very difficult to get any data connection on my iPhone whilst in London, in the station it is just about impossible to open a browser and it is very annoying not being able to check train times.

I am with T-Mobile, and London is the only city I have had this issue that even though I have full signal, I just can not get anything.

Is it a provider issue?

I work in N22 and had a T-Mobile sim in my Ipad when I first got it and couldn't keep a connection for more than a couple of minutes. Switched over to Giffgaff(o2) which is fantastic at this location.
Others here with T-mobile phones are always complaining so yes there are issues in parts of London.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Bing]

I think that in general mobile network operators have struggled to forecast and build sufficient capacity for the demand. Data volumes have gone through the roof in recent years and the networks are struggling... Just because London (or any other city) is massively provisioned for data and you have a 3G signal with 4 bars, it doesn't doesn't follow you will get a high speed connection because of the huge number if people competing for that bandwidth.

Conversely, the focus on city centres seems to have affected investment in rural areas (also experiencing massive increases in demand) and each operator's coverage varies. I have Vodafone, live in a large town in Kent, and yet my phone displays no signal repeatedly through the day and has even dropped calls - never happened 2 or 3 years ago, Vodafone coverage used to be second to none. My wife has a different problem on O2 in that for some reason it can take literally hours for her to receive a text from me, or for a text from her to reach me. Some of the arguments that has caused have been nothing short of spectacular :roll:

Some fun facts...

There are approximately 6.5bn mobile connections globally, worth $960bn a year - 25% of this revenue is data traffic. 75% is voice & texts, and the days of speaking on the phone are far from over - approx 17bn phone calls are made each and every day.

In 2002 just 18% of the world's population had a mobile phone - now 93% have some form of mobile phone or device. In Europe the market penetration of mobile devices is 137% - so just about everyone has a device, and many have more than one. Europe isn't special though - 73% of all mobile users are in emerging markets such as India, China and Africa.

Data traffic on Vodafone's network accounts for 73% of all traffic on their network, and the amount of data traffic increased 53% in the last year alone.

... despite of all of this growth, and of course the need for tough choices as to where these companies should spend the billions required to keep pace, we (quite rightly) just expect it to work :lol: