Three HomeSignal
 

Home Signal can help enhance your indoor signal. You may be eligible to get a Home Signal box if you have trouble connecting to the network indoors, you live in a rural area or if your house has thick walls that block your signal.

www.three.co.uk/homesignal


This is great news for me as for the last year signal in my home has been so poor, to an extent that i get no signal at all im some areas in my home. Apparently these are only available to customers through 2nd line support, some customers may not be eligible and if you're on a sim only contract you cant get one of these yet.

They also have a how to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=DK6f2c2KEV0

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

I've been trying to get one of these today and its proving quite difficult, even though i've reported signal issues several times, been given £5 off every month and given the opertunity to cancel my contract early without penelty and still they are making it difficult to get one.

I've arranged a call back from another team within 24 hours who will escilate the issue further.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

Yeah it does seem they're not keen on giving them out at the moment, I have 2 iPhone 4s, 1 Blackberry 9900 and a HTC Wildfire on contract with 3 and all 4 of them get no signal in parts of our house. Rang 3 and they credited me £5 AGAIN and said they will call me back in 3 days.

It seems they must be able to check some how to see if your phone either loses its 3G signal or roams onto T-mobiles network which would show poor 3 signal in your home. So I imagine they will be monitoring how often my phone loses signal over the next few days.

So fingers crossed they let me have one as if its like the Vodafone version it will be full 3g signal anywhere in the home.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

3 cannot roam onto T-Mobile. They use Orange as their one and only roaming partner.

Get your facts straight.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

They dont roam technically onto t mobile but i am sure there is some sort of sharing agreement between tmobile and three, and im sure they dont use orange as a roaming partner anymore either.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

I've just asked for one of these. We've had issues in our new home ever since they switched off the Orange roaming agreement here last year.

The agent I got through to knew exactly what I was asking for - checked my signal - talked me through the issues I've had (no signal on the bottom two floors of our house) and then said that someone will call me back tomorrow with the details.

I'll let you know how I get on. I find the service great outside of my house, but here the signal is shocking!

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

still not managed to get one from the 2nd line support team. going to get a call back from a supivisor later today...

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

3 don't offer an 2G service anymore, they don't roam on any other network other than MBNL's which operates the 3G network coverage for 3 and Everything Everywhere. MBNL is a 50/50 joint venture between 3 and Everything Everywhere, i'm sure it will be the base for 4G as well.

But 3 do not use 2G back up anymore which caused problems for a lot of people.

There are some areas, rural areas which may still use Orange but this is less than 1% of the UK population, because Orange 2G is not as big as O2 2G and there will always be some rural blackspots.

www.mbnl.co.uk

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

Also don't forget that the backhaul network for MBNL is managed and maintained by Virgin Media Business. ;)

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

That's right, I would have expected Cable and Wireless Worldwide or even BT to have been chosen, maybe the thought of Cable and Wireless Worldwide going down the pan put them off.

But the focus is more on 3G and 4G now, that is another reason why 3 stopped the 2G back up to save money.

All networks should really be investing and focusing on 3G and 4G, you've got the networks selling phones like the Blackberry Curve 8520 when it only offers the 2G range of services, they're going backwards rather than forwards.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

but im sure only t-mobile/3 masts are shared, the orange masts are not shared with three?

Anyway i got a call back and was told that the service was not enabled in my area yet and that they will give me a call back in 1 month time and let me know the progress.

he did mention that any discounts i get due to signal and any offer of early termination will be ended once i get this homesignal kit.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

It's good to see we are all having trouble getting one of these. I have just come off the phone with Three and they said that they were more than happy to send me one but wouldn't refund the £100 if it didn't work for me as I requested it.

I think they are now getting inundated by calls for this as we have all suffered form bad reception for too long. I'm been going for two years with reception indoors!

Good luck everyone.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

I was told that I would be eligible for one, but my local mast "needed upgrading" to allow it and there's no plan for that at the moment.

Heaven knows hoe that works!! :rolleyes:

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

i was told some rubbish like that too.

Only thing keeping me with 3 is the cheap contract and unlimited data, otherwise i'd be off to O2 with their 900MHz 3G

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

Sorry but I think the use of these products by 3,Vodafone and Orange is unacceptable, they should be investing in the networks rather than palming you off with equipment to boost signal as that shows that the network is clearly not good enough.

Cable and Wireless did this when they owned One2one offering Free Voicemail because they knew the network was terrible and people were missing phone calls so they offered voicemail free to everyone, this was withdrawn by T-Mobile over the last few years on the latest price plans as the possibility of missing a call because of network coverage issues is a lot less. You will still get free voicemail on most pay monthly plans as well as old Up2you/pay as you go plans such as the Standard plan and Pay as you go everyone which were available between 1999 and 2006.

3 offered free voicemail because of the same reason, they then thought that the network was up to scratch and thought they would stop free voicemail in 2010 on pay as you go.

I also don't like the idea of mobile networks charging for 'call diversion calls' if I divert all my calls to a landline or someone else because of bad network coverage of where I am, the diverted call does not come out of my minutes but they charge me the standard rate for that call!

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

I think its fine networks offering these systems, as it isn't always possible for the signal to penetrate through this walls in old homes, or areas with lots of trees.

I have 2 large masts within a short distance from my home, one of them just at the end of my street and the other very close too, but due to there being so many large trees near my home it prevents the signal from getting into my home properly, there has never been a good signal in my home on any network, until recently with O2/Vodafone (i know this because of my friend and brother) maybe due to 900MHz 3G.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

I really want VM to offer one of these. I live in an old Glasgow tenement and get very little or no signal on any mobile network in my flat.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

Maybe you should send an email to Virgin Media CEO office and suggest it. Orange launched that which is available for certain mobile phones, now that it is Everything Everywhere, i'm sure it will be easier for Virgin Media to offer.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

Or I could just ask at work ;)

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

i got a call back today from Three saying that upgraded a mast near my home and if i got any improvement with signal, i said no, so they booked a home signal kit to be delived to my home either tomorrow or friday.

I'll update this thread to let everyone know how it goes...

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

Cable and Wireless Worldwide offer a mobile service to its customers as well as Thus customers as a virtual network but in very large buildings such as Tesco, they have installed masts suitable for indoor use. It means that Cable and Wireless Worldwide customers as well as its own staff are no longer tied to one desk and one phone. The mobile numbers are allocated to Cable and Wireless Worldwide meaning that customers or staff diverting calls from there office landline phones or calling Cable and Wireless Mobiles do not incur extra termination fees as it is in-house.

Now i've often wondered why Virgin Media doesn't use its own allocated numbers, the cost of calling Virgin Mobiles from a Virgin Media landline costs the company up to about 4p per minute which is charged by Everything Everywhere.

Now what I think Virgin Media should do:

1 phone for all use (Similar to BT Fusion)
Geographical numbers for Virgin Media customers 01/02
And whilst indoors route most calls via Voip over a Virgin Broadband connection

It would be an end to bad network coverage indoors
Cheap calls to all destinations including international when run via Voip
Use of geographical numbers would be an end to having seperate numbers
Use of geographical numbers, cheaper for people to call you

And spell the end of Virgin Media's expensive home phone service!

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

Got my homesignal kit today, set up it which took me less than 2 minutes. Took the kit about 3 minutes to finish setting up (they say 10 minutes)

Straight away my signal went from 0-1 bars in my room to full bars. went downstairs into the kitchen and it was showing 2 bars i was expecting more, although i have 5 rooms downstairs so its a largish house.

Going into the room directly below my room and got 4 bars.

I was maybe expecting the range to be a bit more, especially when the signal went down to 2 bars in my kitchen.

I'll do a bit more testing later but overall im happy to finally get a half decent signal in my home.

---------- Post added at 14:42 ---------- Previous post was at 14:40 ----------

Doing a speed test in the same room as the kit using iphone speed test app i got 6.55Mb down and 3.18Mb up.

This is an improvement from below 1Mb i was getting before the kit.

Re: Three HomeSignal
 

Does anyone know if there is a way to allow more people to connect to the home signal device at one time as the limit is just 4?

Everyone in my household are on 3 which is 5 people and my friends who visit a lot are also on 3 so i was hoping at least 6 at any one time.