Belfast Area coverage still very poor

[Anonymous]

O2 phone coverage in the Belfast area is once again useless.  Texts won't send, calls won't connect the network is always 'Busy', there are frequent 'Error in connection' messages.  The signal strength bars jump up and down even when you're standing on one spot.  The connection errors happen even when on (apparently) full strength.  A call will connect and drop after a minute or two.  It's been going on for weeks now, and has happened, for weeks, on several occasions even this year.  And it's not just me; my friends' O2 phones are exactly the same.  O2's service status says everything is fine, which it clearly isn't.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Sorry to hear of your troubles.

Are friends and family members on the same network having the same issue in your area.

http://status.o2.co.uk/

If you think the mast is faulty even though its showing ok on the Service Status Checker you can report it to 02 by ringing them on 202 from your phone.

They will need to know ;

Location ie your post code.

What is happening such as dropped calls and or no service etc.

Does it happen on 2G or 3G or both.

Are other people in your area also affected.

Length of time the issue has been going on for.

Have you tried switching to 2g.

Also cleaning your sim card can help.

Have you tried an alternative phone to see if the issue lies with your own phone.

Carrying out the swap my sim service has been known to help too.

This process moves your number / tariff from your original sim and transfers it to a new blank sim card.

http://swapmysim.o2.co.uk/ is the link to follow if you choose to do this.

Bear in mind it can take from approx 2 hours to 24 hours to fully activate and by turning your phone off and on throughout this period helps to reset things.

[Anonymous]

I too have had no service for almost 2 weeks,  i have 4 iphones with O2 which cost me just over £150 a month and currently there all useless.

I have checked the service status page which states...

"Sorry a phone mast close to you isn't working

This means you might experience problems making calls, using the internet, or sending/receiving emails in this area.

Updated 06:00 (refreshed hourly). Recent faults might not show yet."

I have been checking this page everyday for the past 6 days and theres been no change or other information in either the unexpected issues or planned maintence tabs.

Nothing about if its being fixed or when its likely to be fixed.

Some information with regards to when this will be resolved would be great.   Although i do not beleive it takes this long to fix this so i can only assume O2 is not attenting to it at all.

I have been with O2 for over 6yrs i know that am in a O2 covered area,  O2 also confirms this on there website so now having to travel over a mile and a half inorder to use my phone is a real pain.  If this level of service (or lack of as the case is) continues for much longer i will be withholding payments.

As things are the service is not fit for purpose.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

This is a copy & paste taken from 02's T&C

2 The Services we supply and what you can expect of us

2.1 The Service isn’t available everywhere in the United Kingdom. It isn’t available in all other countries. It may be restricted to certain areas of those countries where it is available. Not all Mobile Phones will be able to receive the Service. We may not provide the Service to Equipment that is not able to receive the Service or is not approved by us. Some Equipment facilities may be available at a later date and additional charges may apply.

2.2 The Service isn’t fault-free; a range of different geographic, atmospheric or other conditions or circumstances beyond our control can impair it. For instance, coverage is affected by things like the thickness of the walls of the building you’re in. It might also depend on how many people near you are trying to use the Service at the same time. For more information about the things that affect coverage and data speeds, please look at the dedicated Network pages of our Website at o2.co.uk/network. You’re entitled to the quality of service generally given by a competent mobile telecommunications service provider, using its reasonable skill and care. We may carry out upgrades, repairs and maintenance works to our network from time to time. Sometimes technical issues or outages on our network can occur. If something goes wrong, we’ll try to fix it quickly.

If you still feel that 02 need to look at your circumstances then you could fill out the online complaint form.

02 dont pay compensation so ask for loss of service reimbursement or something along those lines.

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref(User):str(Mobile),C...

[Anonymous]

Cleary you have focused on the part were i said i was going to withhold payment which doesnt surprise me as thats what matters but if youd read all of my post youd have seen the bit were i stated what the live service status page says about a tranmitter not working.  My service prior to the past few week was been fine give or take the outages that o2 suffered recently.

The 2 parts of the o2 t&c you posted have no bearing on this case at all as clearly it is a fault which o2 have confirmed on there live service page.

To further support this if you look at o2's twitter page you will see loads of tweets from people in belfast all saying the same thing "no service"

I had posted here in a hope that id get some updated information on this fault rather than a quote from the T&C obviously that was a mistake on my part.  One i shall not make again.

I will take the matter up with O2 directly.

Have a nice day.

[Anonymous]

This is and always has been a customer based forum and as such you would not get any updated information in regards to fault repairs or service updates from 02 here. 

If your wanting an official response then contact 02 directly or fill out the complaint form I've already posted.

I've posted the quote of T&C's to highlight what 02 expect to offer as a Network to its customers.

This part does have bearing

"We may carry out upgrades, repairs and maintenance works to our network from time to time. Sometimes technical issues or outages on our network can occur. If something goes wrong, we’ll try to fix it quickly."

Obviously if you withhold payment then that would have a significant effect on your credit file if it went to default status.

Lets hope your service returns asap.

[Anonymous]

I was in Antrim and Templepatrick last week for a few days and I did notice that the signal was very poor. I was able to get a 2G signal without any problems but 3G was almost non-existant! I did get H+ a couple of times outside the hotel in Templepatrick but only 2G inside.

And at least that was a far better signal than I got while at the Wickerman festival over the weekend...I was lucky to even get a GSM signal (not gprs or GPRS!) so couldn't even send texts until early on Sunday morning!

[Anonymous]

You're not alone, by any means!

I've got the same problem too, in a number of locations near home in West Belfast. 

To marginally improve the quality of phone calls (working from home) I have to rush upstairs each time the phone rings.  Texts need to be resent up to 10 times to be successful (even when there is one bar on the signal strength). 

I've even downloaded the TuGo app to receive texts/calls over wifi (with normal method set as the priority), and I often receive texts through it up to an hour before I receive them the normal way.  At least I can receive calls when people are trying to call me, but I shouldn't have to rely on this to simply avoid people getting routed to voicemail so often.

My sister who works nearby also mentioned that in the last few months her reception on O2 was very bad.  My wife who has recently switched to O2 is having the same kind of problem.

I cleaned my sim and it seemed to work better for a several minutes, but then reverted to bad quality again.  This is a new phone, and I am careful not to get fingerprints on sims in case they degrade the connection much later on.

I downloaded the OpenSignal app for my Galaxy S3, and after a couple of weeks monitoring the stats for "Time with no signal" is 13% of all the time, with an average of -102dBm.  This is terrible service quality.  (51% of time on 3G, 36% on 2G, 13% on nothing.)  Stats for the last hour are 59% of the time with no signal, and all day today is 42% of the time with no signal.  The icon that says "You are in a dead zone" is shown too often.

This is a terrible service for someone who relies on a mobile for a high proportion of calls for work.  And it's a pattern of poor quality that others have suffered as well. 

I hope that this improves soon...

[Edited with revised stats.]

[perksie]

This is where O2 want to be by 2015 with 98% indoor coverage with 2G 3G and 4G:

http://www.o2.co.uk/network/future

If your location isn't working normally and nothing shows here report it to O2:

http://status.o2.co.uk/

[Anonymous]

Perksie, there's nowhere to report poor reception on that second link you posted.

I've since had a thought, and switched to 2G only, and reception is far better, with far fewer dropped calls or text, and better reception. 

It seems that 3G here is worse - could it be related to the rollout of 4G?

I'm sticking to 2G at home, and I've downloaded a widget to allow quick change to auto/3G when I'm elsewhere and need faster data.