Issue with mast where i work

[paulbacon]

We have a mast on our building at work that has always been dodgy. Calls/texts are fine but data can cut out and according to the o2 status its had a high demand status for many months. Seems that has sort of been fixed now though, until this last week or so

Around lunch time you cannot use any data. Calls/texts are fine but the data just wont connect at all. Other o2 customers at work having the same thing so its a mast issue. The status page will change to "we're investigating a mast may be down etc" and a few hours later it goes back to normal and the status page updates to say everything is ok. Now a one off fair enough technology does have problems, but its been like it now every day at lunch time for the past week. They arent working on the mask as its on our building we would notice

o2 support just echo what the status page says, so what could be causing it to die for a few hours every day and then be magically fixed until the next day?

[Anonymous]

---

@paulbacon wrote:

We'll be carrying out some maintenance on our phone masts in this area on the 25 Febraury

We have some progress....maybe. Although it is for mast no2 where i work, not the one im on. But we shall see

---

They might be looking at switching some of the traffic from the mast at your work to the other one, to balance out the loads.  That might help with the capacity issue.

From where I'm understanding is that technically there isn't a 'fault' with your local mast, its just that at certain times of the day the capacity is topping out and the status checker is reflecting that.  When the load on the mast drops and it isn't hitting capacity the checker is going back again. 

If I'm right, then the reason why you're not seeing any progress is that there isn't any progress to be made - for the situation to be 'fixed' O2 would have to either a) build a brand new mast to increase the capacity it can take or b) route some traffic away from that mast towards the other mast further down the road.  Maybe 'B' is what they're doing on the 25th.

Of course I could be wrong, but thats what your situation looks like to me.

[Anonymous]

Exactly the same thing has been happening in Lincoln for about three weeks now. The status page saying exactly what is reported here. Even where I live I looked on Monday and it stated that mast work was taking place today (21st). I re-checked last night out of curiosity and the maintenance notice had gone!

But if you type in some various places at random, such as Sheffield, Boston etc. you get the same messages about masts and high usage.

This is a joke O2. Get it sorted!

[paulbacon]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@paulbacon wrote:

We'll be carrying out some maintenance on our phone masts in this area on the 25 Febraury

We have some progress....maybe. Although it is for mast no2 where i work, not the one im on. But we shall see

---

They might be looking at switching some of the traffic from the mast at your work to the other one, to balance out the loads.  That might help with the capacity issue.

From where I'm understanding is that technically there isn't a 'fault' with your local mast, its just that at certain times of the day the capacity is topping out and the status checker is reflecting that.  When the load on the mast drops and it isn't hitting capacity the checker is going back again. 

If I'm right, then the reason why you're not seeing any progress is that there isn't any progress to be made - for the situation to be 'fixed' O2 would have to either a) build a brand new mast to increase the capacity it can take or b) route some traffic away from that mast towards the other mast further down the road.  Maybe 'B' is what they're doing on the 25th.

Of course I could be wrong, but thats what your situation looks like to me.

---

Only thing that doesnt quite add up is the timing of when the mast goes down. We have had capacity problems for ages on this mast, and usually it stops you accessing the net for a few mins then kicks back in. This issue is different tho, its always at 12.19pm and just refuses to load anything after that time.I know people who have gone to work on a Sunday and got the same thing, when the office and town centre is very quiet, so wouldnt think it was a capacity issue then

[paulbacon]

Well after the work on the neighbouring mast today it seems it was working at lunch time. Slowly but working so its a start.

Slightly off topic, but how does the status checker work? Do the status of masts change automatically after a set number of complaints or is it manually changed?

[jonsie]

It's changed manually by network services.

[paulbacon]

Well its still broke, might not completely die but crawls to speeds of the 1980s. i give up now with o2 fixing it, its been dodgy for the best part of a year.

Only thing i can do is wait until my contract is up and get the hell away from them.

[paulbacon]

So 1 month on and after several people have complained at work to o2 they say they're "aware of the problem". The problem has been there for over 1 year now (got alot worse in the last month or so) so i dont expect a fix soon.

After 1 guy had a go down the phone to customer service they offered him free internet access all month. Shame the mast hardly ever works for him to use the free internet

[Anonymous]

I'm afraid the "Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working on it" is a standard line from both o2 and Vodafone and is somewhat meaningless.

Despite the status checker saying a mast near my location is suffering from high usage (6 months now) I had to report it so that a ticket could be raised for the engineers to look at it.

O2 operate a crazy crazy system.

[paulbacon]

Well someone at work got an answer from o2. Bascically nothing they can do, its just a busy area at lunch time. And there was me thinking they could add capacity or another mast but no, they just wash their hands with it

There only solution was to give the cancellation number and tell o2 you refuse to pay anymore and cancel your contract as they have admitted not providing a service. Good CS that isnt it, if you have a problem tough **** you have to leave

[Anonymous]

---

@paulbacon wrote:

Well someone at work got an answer from o2. Bascically nothing they can do, its just a busy area at lunch time. And there was me thinking they could add capacity or another mast but no, they just wash their hands with it

There only solution was to give the cancellation number and tell o2 you refuse to pay anymore and cancel your contract as they have admitted not providing a service. Good CS that isnt it, if you have a problem tough **** you have to leave

---

As easy as it sounds, adding capacity/new masts is a very difficult process which takes months, if not years to organise.  First of all you have the costs to take into consideration, second you have things like planning permission.  Even if O2 wanted to rock up next week and build a new mast, without planning approval it doesn't happen. 

Have you ever tried to get planning permission to build something large in your garden?  Times that difficulty by about 10000 and you have planning permission from councils when you want to build something just a little bit larger than your common garden shed!.