Few VM mobile questions

[Qtx]

For the last 6 months (around the time t-mobile/orange change) the VM reception where I live has been poor. Mostly at 2 bars, very occasionally 3 or 4 but only for brief moments. Often drops to none so I miss calls and just get a voice message alert. Also drops to 3G from HDPSA often.

Before I could change between t-mobile and orange manually although this often took me form 2 bars down to 1 bar. Tried doing the last few days and notice there is no Orange option to manually select. To rule this out as being a problem with my older phone I had some friends test their signal here on newer phones and they got the same reception and lack of network choice.

So the first question is why is the reception so bad now? Is there anything I can do to fix this without having to shell out of my own pocket?

My VM contract runs out in a months time and I intend to get a new phone and make more use of it so reception is more of an issue now.

Any help or advice appreciated

[BenMcr]

Unfortunately it's a possible that the change will down to the merging of the Orange and T-Mobile networks - in some areas they are turning off masts where they 'duplicated'

[Qtx]

Strange that they think this level of coverage is acceptable in South London. Not surrounded by tall buildings of any kind either.

What are the chances of them letting me get out of contract early due to this decrease in service availability? My contract ends in December, about 6 weeks away and its only a £10 a month tariff.

I would have considered staying with VM but if its an issue that can't be resolved then its pointless.

Edit: Just tried again and for the first time in 3 days it has shown the Orange as a network to connect too. Just 1 or 2 bars like the t-mobile option, with it switching between 3G and H for data every 5 to 2 seconds. SO I must be between 2 masts and get bad signal from both of them.
Edit 2: Even though I turned off auto switching yesterday, seems it just auto switched form Orange that I selected back to T-Mobile.

[BenMcr]

You can't stop it switching to the strongest network out of Orange/T-Mobile anymore, that stopped earlier this year as it's now counted as one network

[qasdfdsaq]

It's still physically two networks and broadcasts as two networks. You can stop it switching automatically on many phones, but obviously EE have worked hard to make sure things do switch.

Chances are the Orange mast was down for upgrades (4G anyone?) and having T-Mobile signal to fall back on is better than the old days where you would have ended with a beautiful "No signal" sign on your phone...

[Qtx]

Spoke to customer service to get disconnected and they put me through to a network engineer type guy. The engineer guy did try every trick in the book, although sounding very sincere. He said Orange should be the best signal and I should get a 95% strength from it. Told him the info I posted above and he asked what phone I had, which he then went on to say he had one of these too and had to switch it for the same reasons as I was giving.

Luckily for the last month or so I had been testing all this on friends VM connected phones when they visited here. Was the same on an S3, HTC one X etc. So I had only made this thread today and called them after confirming it one last time yesterday, just to confirm my own hardware was not at fault or if you got more bars on newer phones. So let the guy know this and he then said it could be the structure of my house. Again luckily I had been testing this problem on my phone and the others in the garden too, not even 1 bar more outside.

After all this and doing some more checks he then told me I was actually on the farthest rim of the towers (which contradicts the 95% orange signal he said at the start) and although he couldn't see why it should be bad, he heard me cut out multiple times when talking to him. He also told me there is a tower down nearby today with engineers on site but this didn't explain why it has been like this for 6 months.

Even through all of this, he was a nice pleasant guy to talk too as were all the other people in the mobile departments I spoke too. Top marks to all of them!

Got through to retentions who allowed me out of the contract without even having to pay this months bill as they could see on there system there is a fault in my area. Didn't ask if it was just the engineers comment or a fault that was already there as I had been on the phone for over 30 minutes already xD

10 Minutes later I got my cancellation/tariff cancelled sms(disabled data on my phone straight away lol) and also my PAC code.

Again, have to give Virgin Mobile top marks for how I was spoken too and how it was dealt with by all departments, even retentions. Are these different people from the Virgin Media support/retentions lot?

[qasdfdsaq]

As departments, yes. As companies, they used to be, not sure about now. Virgin Mobile (and Virgin companies in general, the actual ones) tended to have a reputation for good customer service, nthell isn't really a Virgin company but rather bought rights to the name (and may have bought over Virgin Mobile - I'm not sure)

---------- Post added at 04:34 ---------- Previous post was at 04:33 ----------

Anyways, I'd be curious what Sitefinder had to say about your local masts - http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/ Bung in your postcode and see what it comes up with as the nearest.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Qtx

Again, have to give Virgin Mobile top marks for how I was spoken too and how it was dealt with by all departments, even retentions. Are these different people from the Virgin Media support/retentions lot?

Virgin Mobile is owned by Virgin Media but they have completely different customer services and and technical support.

[Qtx]

Yeah exact relationship between Virgin Mobile and the Virgin Media branded company is not exactly clear. Just know one is a pleasure to deal with, the other is the worst company I have ever had to deal with :P

Thanks for the link. There is an O2 mast literally 50 meters away which I think is on the roof of the pub. What sort of distance is too far away?

There is only 1 other mast location within a close distance which houses 3 masts: Three at 2100 MHz, T-mobile at 2100 MHz and T-Mobile at 1800 MHz.

The next nearest one after that is a T-mobile at 2100 MHz.

Next closest is a location with 3x 02 masts. Another Three at 2100 Mhz mast is a similar distance in the opposite direction.

Just behind that last Three mast is the first Orange location with 2 maststhere, one at 2100 Mhz and one at 1800Mhz. These masts are twice the distance away from me as the first t-mobile one and almost twice the distance as the second t-mobile one I mentioned.

---------- Post added at 09:34 ---------- Previous post was at 09:32 ----------

Originally Posted by Peter_

Virgin Mobile is owned by Virgin Media but they have completely different customer services and and technical support.

Thanks for clarifying that Peter.

[Qtx]

Worked it out roughly as the crow flies from my place. The closest Orange Tower is 650 Metres away and the closest T-mobile 350-400 metres away. The next closest T-Mobile is 450 to 500 metres away. So makes sense why I always switched to T-Mobile and not Orange like the engineer suggested.

The Three mast 350 Metres away seems to be licensed for higher power at 35 dBW compared to the 32 for T-Mobile. Does this actually make a difference or is it just due to the different frequencies?

[qasdfdsaq]

Different frequencies = different technologies. 1800Mhz is 2G (and in some areas, 4G) 2100Mhz is 3G.

How far is too far depends on the actual (not licensed) power and where it's pointing, and more importantly on the number of buildings/walls in between. In clear line of sight these things reach hundreds of miles but in the city will be stopped dead by anything more than a couple metres of concrete or brick (e.g. 4-8 walls depending on thickness).

If the signal has to go through (not over or around) any more than 3 or 4 rows of houses then you're looking for truoble.