UK 3G coverage is poor by comparison - why??

[Anonymous]

I've just spent a few months in Australia and South Africa. Not surprisingly I chose not to roam on my 02 account but bought a local PAYG sim for each country respectively and got a local number.

In South Africa my carrier was Vodacom and in Australia it was Telstra. In both countries I was able to tether and use 3G extensively. I almost never found the phone I was using dropping connection speed to EDGE or GPRS. It was usually 3G or nothing.

In both countries we did long road trips and found the 3G coverage along major highways to be very good. Sure there gaps in the service, but in general I could get a decent net connection most places.

Returning to the UK we drove back from Heathrow along the M4. Most of the time connection was GPRS. Only around major towns was the connection speed 3G. sitting here in a small town in the Westcountry I'm stuck with GPRS.

I really do believe that by comparison with other countries the UK carriers are backsliding on improving net connectivity and signal. Put simply, they are not upgrading their masts and pocketing revenue streams instead of providing a modern service that we can all use efficiently and effectively.

It's time that the Government and regulators stepped in and spelled out to the carriers that they must invest or risk losing their licenses.

Both South Africa and Australia have far larger geographical areas to cover, with much sparser and smaller populations to service. If the carriers in these countries can perform and provide such excellent 3G service it raises serious questions about why the UK carriers are failing to maintain such good standards.

How much longer should we put up with this?

[Anonymous]

O2 have just rebuilt our local mast (no service for last two days and vans at the side of the road) and I was hoping for 3G. It is particularly important for my wife who wants to be able to take card payments on her 3G iPad3. No joy, it is still 2G and not even Edge.

What was the point of O2 and the other service providers paying billions for 3G bandwidth in the government auction, when they have not upgraded many of their masts to the later system. The argument is that they spent so much on buying 3G that they have not been able to afford the infrastructure. However unless they spend the money to upgrade all their masts to 3G, they will not earn their money back from 3G by selling data packages. I suppose O2 will go straight to 4G but unless it is backwards compatible and I don't think it is, it will leave all of us with 3G devices or 4G working on the wrong frequencies, (e.g. my iPhone 5) in the slow lane. 

Wilson

[adamtemp64]

@wilsonlaidlaw

As part of the ongoing network upgrades.

All o2 masts will eventually have 2g 3g and 4g as the bits at the bottom of the mast will support all 3 types in one box.

They may have finished the exterior works on that local mast but not enabled it yet.

O2 will be providing at some point in  2015 indoor coverage to 98% population on all 3 types of network. At present no network has to provide in building coverage but the 4g block band 20 800mhz has the requirement for the indoor coverage and minimum 2mb data speed indoors. lots of info on the ofcom website.