Are we being shortchanged on UK mobile data coverage ( minor rant, sorry)

[steve69]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Sca...A8F4-9464-4198-92A7-2ADD410E40E7?tag=mhf04-21 is the link to their store on amazon if you can't find it!

Hmmm £290 for 100Gb spread out over 1 year......Pricey....

 

[starquake]

Hmmm £290 for 100Gb spread out over 1 year......Pricey....

Lol, you are looking at the wrong sims.
Look at the Three 500Gb sim bundles valid until November 2026, 18 months service for £80 one off fee.

Should say many thread on here on the deals offereed, the website was doing 1000Gb for about £2 a month eqivalanet a week or two ago.

Direct link to a decent deal https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D2XWPPXB/?tag=mhf04-21

 

[steve69]

Lol, you are looking at the wrong sims.
Look at the Three 500Gb sim bundles valid until November 2026, 18 months service for £80 one off fee.

Should say many thread on here on the deals offereed, the website was doing 1000Gb for about £2 a month eqivalanet a week or two ago.

Direct link to a decent deal https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D2XWPPXB/?tag=mhf04-21

I appreciate your help and it seems a good deal. But it only works on 3 - not multiprovider - and I am already on 3. Also my modem and phone can only operate up to 4g anyhow. (they are 6 years old).
I am tempted but I tend to take a "better the devil you know" approach to life...also as I'm far from "savvy" with these things.
I will mull things over for a day or so. Definitely tempted to take the plunge.

 

[starquake]

I appreciate your help and it seems a good deal. But it only works on 3 - not multiprovider - and I am already on 3. Also my modem and phone can only operate up to 4g anyhow. (they are 6 years old).
I am tempted but I tend to take a "better the devil you know" approach to life...also as I'm far from "savvy" with these things.
I will mull things over for a day or so. Definitely tempted to take the plunge.

Do a search on here and you'll see many threads with many of us on these sims. The sims also work in 4g only routers, we have a couple in areas with zero 5g coverage. (well the sims I run do), so I didn't put a 5g router in as no point given zero 5g off the towers).

I (personally) run 3 EE ones at moment *unlimited, and about 4 of the Three ones, including family who have zero broadband at home and need this (BT can only offer 8Mbit there on adsl, so mobile is the only way of getting streaming data!). It sounds too good to be true, but they do work, and I've been using them since 2019 personally.
And yes, it's for a router in the van not for a phone typically.

However, like anything companies can go bust, if you in doubt, buy on amazon on a credit card, you should be protected that way!
Smarty at £20 a month for a similar sim is frankly a bit of a rip off (and also slower) (and is also Three only, and also is prioritised the lowest of all Three sims from my own experience).

 

[steve69]

Do a search on here and you'll see many threads with many of us on these sims. The sims also work in 4g only routers, we have a couple in areas with zero 5g coverage. (well the sims I run do), so I didn't put a 5g router in as no point given zero 5g off the towers).

I (personally) run 3 EE ones at moment *unlimited, and about 4 of the Three ones, including family who have zero broadband at home and need this (BT can only offer 8Mbit there on adsl, so mobile is the only way of getting streaming data!). It sounds too good to be true, but they do work, and I've been using them since 2019 personally.
And yes, it's for a router in the van not for a phone typically.

However, like anything companies can go bust, if you in doubt, buy on amazon on a credit card, you should be protected that way!
Smarty at £20 a month for a similar sim is frankly a bit of a rip off (and also slower) (and is also Three only, and also is prioritised the lowest of all Three sims from my own experience).

OK you've talked me into it......new SIM ordered.
One has to take a chance now and again doesn't one?.....

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[Langtoftlad]

OK you've talked me into it......new SIM ordered.
One has to take a chance now and again doesn't one?.....

Please let us know if it works as expected...

 

[Gellyneck]

Please let us know if it works as expected...

Ours works well in our ZTE MU 5001 with or without a Poynting aerial.

 

[Carpmart]

I think it'll rapidly change now there is FTTP everywhere (which 4/5g towers need for backhaul) in suffolk in particular.
Campsite on Cambridge/suffolk borders last yeardidn't work at all (campsite had starlink wifi), this year has Fibre, and the local cell tower went from almost zero service on 3/EE to full 5g this year at home broadband level speeds. Had some similar experiences in some campsites in both Kessingland and Dunwich last year where year before was poor to non-existant, this year additional 4g bands (28+32 coming into service) and 5g in one of them.

I'm aware areas of suffolk (friend lived above Coddenham a few years back) still with 0 cell service, and landlines sitll only way of reaching them as broadband is also non-existant, but things are rapidly improving with the Fibre rollout.

My house in Suffolk, outside Stow (12 miles out of Ipswich) has gone from poor ADSL only to VDSL (rolled out 2017 ish), to now having 4 seperate FTTP backbones to my street (Trooli, Cityfibre, BT and the local Gas pipeline folk).. FTTP came live last month and we now have 1G down/up.
Dad in Needham Market has the fibre going down his street last week from Trooli, with BT likely to follow in next year.

At moment Three/EE are both bad however in our town (and Needham)...

The key thing as you say is economics -> right now with no FTTP backbone realy in the rural parts, a cell tower backhaul is in the tens of thousands (I used to do this for a living). Once FTTP is there however, a 1 to 10G service is very cheap as in 10-100x less money for the cellular networks, and this high cost item is one of the reasons filling in gaps was uneconomical before.

Back in 3g days a cell tower for EE in a London building I worked at we only provisioned 10Mbit backhaul -> and that was at a huge cost at the time. These days same location 20G of backhaul would cost significantly less.

So in summary I expect 5g rollout to be relatively rapid now the VodaThree merger is in progress -> given Voda's own fibre backbone (partiacualrly in suffolk) is very good indeed. (Vodafone also are part of CityFibre colab, so as an example the expansion in Cityfibre in the region means eas(ier) cell tower backhauls).

We use nothing but Internet radio in our Van, mostly with the Three sim in. Drove from Suffolk to Chester on Thursday without a single drop out using our Van system (MU5001 connected to the roof antenna).

Sounds like Lebara isn't any good.

I’m not sure the back haul has been the limiting factor for many years now, although I do acknowledge this was the case years ago.

3/EE/O2 have been sharing infrastructure and cost of fibre digs for back haul for many years. They have a separate JV company based in Marlow which facilitates this.

The limiting factor has been and always will be spectrum and its availability. 900mhz is great for propagation and in building coverage and the cycling of this by O2 and Vodafone (main holders of 900) from 3G infrastructure to 5G is what is helping with improved coverage.

Several operators have never had 900 and have had to make do with 1800, 1900 etc. this is why H3G’s network is so crap in building!

What’s really needed is a recognition by UK plc that mobile forms part of UK’s critical national infrastructure and support it accordingly with useful spectrum which will support more pervasive propagation and accordingly improve the service for all.

 

[starquake]

Ours works well in our ZTE MU 5001 with or without a Poynting aerial.

Thats our use from 1st May to date. I've been working in the van a lot of this month (away for 3 of the 4 weekends) so our data use has been relatively high - despite not watching TV... most work related stuff.
So when you say you can get a lot of data through on these contracts I think the above demonstrates that. It's only not the full 1Tb as I've not needed that much data. Thats our use from 1st May to date.

Ours is also in a MU5001 as you know .

 

[starquake]

I’m not sure the back haul has been the limiting factor for many years now, although I do acknowledge this was the case years ago.

The issue with Suffolk in particular was that excess build costs were extreme prior to the BT OR (council funded) fibre builds. A site we had in Ipswich had > 40k in build costs, and that was in a town with an existing fibre network. If you were not on the existing fibre routes, the excess construction costs were mad.

Ditto in Felixstowe around the docks, despite there being fibre in ground there.

A WISP business I know in the area had to backhaul wirelessly as putting fibre head-ends in was literally in the hundreds of thousands (to a place where the Fibre network already built).. Same business told me last week their (build) costs on a new fibre are now nearer £2k thanks to the above works being complete. The issue was historically fibre build costs were all put on the consuming cell tower etc. Now OpenReach just need to cost to the nearest node that was put in for the FTTP roll out, and the nodes are everywhere. (theres one literally at top of my street now).

Basically it's stuff like above which we don't see that was making micro 5g nodes and nano cells not really viable. Now they are very viable.

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[Widge]

May be down to available bandwidth and the numbers of people who use each mast. A dense country like the UK must have loads more traffic on each mast compared to other more sparsely populated countries. Get your kids and grandkids outside playing football and leave the bandwidth to us oldies

A friend who works in the industry days bandwidth is an issue, to the point that if it is tight, a tower will actually disconnect a voice connection if a new data connection request comes along.

 

[Shrimp]

We’ve both tried different mob providers over the years and at present are on 1P-EE, which is fairly good overall but still find areas that are less than useable.

 

[steve69]

but you should note you will need to manually change the APN on some routers for this, as some of the Avtex and Motorhomewifi devices default to smarty APN when they see a Three UK SIM.

How do I do this? I have a 6 year old huawai router.

 

[starquake]

How do I do this? I have a 6 year old huawai router.

username password and url usually in battery compartment of most routers including huawei. Usually enter that into a web browser and find the apn settings. If set to automatic probably perfect on a huawei.

For a scancom sim you have a choice of using apn 3internet with no username or password or three.co.uk with again no username and password. It’ll also work on the smarty settings but it won’t be as fast if that was set manually ( smarty is mob.asm.net from memory or something like that)

It’ll probably work without any changes though given age of device if set to automatic probably perfect

 

[starquake]

username password and url usually in battery compartment of most routers including huawei. Usually enter that into a web browser and find the apn settings. If set to automatic probably perfect on a huawei.

For a scancom sim you have a choice of using apn 3internet with no username or password or three.co.uk with again no username and password. It’ll also work on the smarty settings but it won’t be as fast if that was set manually ( smarty is mob.asm.net from memory or something like that)

It’ll probably work without any changes though given age of device if set to automatic probably perfect as huawei unlike zte don’t default to the smarty settings

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[funflair]

We’ve both tried different mob providers over the years and at present are on 1P-EE, which is fairly good overall but still find areas that are less than useable.

Have you tried 1p mobile outside the UK and more specifically can you stream BBC tv, 1p say no but when were with EE on Popit it worked OK.

 

[Shrimp]

We don’t use 1p for internet in France only use our allotted amount of data!

 

[steve69]

username password and url usually in battery compartment of most routers including huawei. Usually enter that into a web browser and find the apn settings. If set to automatic probably perfect on a huawei.

For a scancom sim you have a choice of using apn 3internet with no username or password or three.co.uk with again no username and password. It’ll also work on the smarty settings but it won’t be as fast if that was set manually ( smarty is mob.asm.net from memory or something like that)

It’ll probably work without any changes though given age of device if set to automatic probably perfect

OK. 3 SIM deal acquired and functioning nicely. Thanks for your advice.
.
.
.
However
.
.
.How on earth can you become a member of the online "My3" club.
.
Having registered my email and password I'm confronted with this:

Link an account or number​

Add all your numbers or accounts under the same email, to manage everything in one place.
What type of account do you have?
Personal
Business
What's your Three number?
.
.I have bulletholed the "Personal" and tried using the 3 phone number of the SIM but to no avail.
There are no other 11 digit numbers on any of the correspondence I received with the card. I can't proceed any further at this point.
Advice please.

 

[starquake]

OK. 3 SIM deal acquired and functioning nicely. Thanks for your advice.
.
.
.I have bulletholed the "Personal" and tried using the 3 phone number of the SIM but to no avail.
There are no other 11 digit numbers on any of the correspondence I received with the card. I can't proceed any further at this point.
Advice please.

Oh it's a business sim most of the three personal stuff doesn't work (ie, mythree). I wouldn't worry you can't monitor the data on the sim (as they state in the email) you just watch your device's data counters.

BTW, no different if you have a 3 business sim direct to your own company, none of their consumer stuff works on a business sim, blame Three not scancom.

If you run out of data they have texted me before though, can't guaratee it, I usually have 500/1Tb sims so I've only ran out once.

 

[steve69]

Oh it's a business sim most of the three personal stuff doesn't work (ie, mythree). I wouldn't worry you can't monitor the data on the sim (as they state in the email) you just watch your device's data counters.

BTW, no different if you have a 3 business sim direct to your own company, none of their consumer stuff works on a business sim, blame Three not scancom.

If you run out of data they have texted me before though, can't guarantee it, I usually have 500/1Tb sims so I've only ran out once.

It appears you have sold me a pup.
Cannot phone, cannot text.
You never made clear this was DATA ONLY sim and it is not clear on Scancom either. I cannot contact Scancom and will have to take my grievance to Amazon.

Are you sure the name isn't Scamcon?

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[starquake]

It appears you have sold me a pup.
Cannot phone, cannot text.
You never made clear this was DATA ONLY sim and it is not clear on Scancom either. I cannot contact Scancom and will have to take my grievance to Amazon.

Are you sure the name isn't Scamcon?

They also sell sims with text and phone calls -> for a van most of us want data only as we don't use the rest. Data/phone/text call ones also exist.

I only linked the one many of us use -> sorry if it didn't meat your needs.

The same supplier will supply a sim doing what you want on near any network cheaper than you would get going direct to them in most cases (unless you are a business with > 10 contract phones).

https://www.scancom.co.uk/collectio...mited-roaming-in-90-countries-from-2-day-test -> are their product line doing what you want if you do need that.

As said, many of us put them in a MU5001 or similar in our van so don't use the (more expensive) monthly contract sims.

 

[matbic]

I recently found a 5G router on eBay at a good price and have installed it on my van. It’s been interesting comparing the difference between my LTE-A Cat12 4G router and 5G. In UK and France.

In UK 5G was underwhelming to say the least no better than my 4G. On the other hand I recently spent some time in France where 5G was much better than 4G!

This makes for interesting reading:

Study Claims 40 Percent of UK 5G Mobile Connections are Really 4G

New research from SignalTracker, which runs a popular Android mobile app (but not iOS) for monitoring and examining mobile phone reception, appears to show that

www.ispreview.co.uk

Is this what is going on? How can I tell?

 

[starquake]

I recently found a 5G router on eBay at a good price and have installed it on my van. It’s been interesting comparing the difference between my LTE-A Cat12 4G router and 5G. In UK and France.

In UK 5G was underwhelming to say the least no better than my 4G. On the other hand I recently spent some time in France where 5G was much better than 4G!

I think the issue is the frequency bands used (today) in UK. Mostly the signal you pickup is a weak 3.5ghz. However in France they tend to use the old 3g frequencies (B1) 2100mhz, so it travels better.

UK is now freeing 3g for the same reasons at moment, so it should get better quickly, and where Three UK have moved to B1 signal alongside the 3500mhz signal, it is massively improved. I've said it before but it's literally better than my home broadband at certain campsites on Three.

There is also a difference between certain sims (some are speed capped on EE sims at least) so even if you could do > 200Mbit your sim may limit to 100 or 150).

5g is definitely improving rapidly here though, last year it was rare to pickup 5g signal in UK at campsites. This year I'm at 90%.

 

[matbic]

I think the issue is the frequency bands used (today) in UK. Mostly the signal you pickup is a weak 3.5ghz. However in France they tend to use the old 3g frequencies (B1) 2100mhz, so it travels better.

UK is now freeing 3g for the same reasons at moment, so it should get better quickly, and where Three UK have moved to B1 signal alongside the 3500mhz signal, it is massively improved. I've said it before but it's literally better than my home broadband at certain campsites on Three.

There is also a difference between certain sims (some are speed capped on EE sims at least) so even if you could do > 200Mbit your sim may limit to 100 or 150).

5g is definitely improving rapidly here though, last year it was rare to pickup 5g signal in UK at campsites. This year I'm at 90%.

That’s interesting, thanks.

The other thing that seems odd with 5G is the latency (measured as a ping to various sites) does not seem to be any less with 5G. I thought the latency was going to be better, instead it’s about the same as 4G.

Why is that?

 

[Rog NotJane]

Is there a version of this thread where I can just see Carpmart and Starquake discuss mobile coverage?

I worked in the industry too a while ago and I would not underestimate the poor deal you risk getting as customer of an MVNO. You definitely get what you pay for - especially when there is network congestion. The irony of this thread is that the next one along will be about finding the cheapest sim only deal…

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[Carpmart]

That’s interesting, thanks.

The other thing that seems odd with 5G is the latency (measured as a ping to various sites) does not seem to be any less with 5G. I thought the latency was going to be better, instead it’s about the same as 4G.

Why is that?

It’s all down to the speed of light, which is by definition, an absolute number around 300million meters per second! The only way a ping would be quicker is if it had less physical distance to travel, hence a 4G and 5G ping being similar values. Hope that makes sense?

 

[starquake]

It’s all down to the speed of light, which is by definition, an absolute number around 300million meters per second! The only way a ping would be quicker is if it had less physical distance to travel, hence a 4G and 5G ping being similar values. Hope that makes sense?

Indeed, it's this -> however ping's DO spike (ie, it won't be constant it'll be highly variable) when a cell is busy as the packets get lost, causing retransmission and 2-3x the time for it to get back to you if it gets stored in a cell sites buffer before sending. Remember all equipment has buffers (even FTTP btw) and uses these to maximise usage of line (so if for example a 100 byte packet can combine with a 1300 byte one it will -> a typical maximum packet size on ethernet is 1500 bytes.

One of the engineering latency challenges is above as with overheads certain equipment was sending 1536 byte packets a few years back making a single 1500 packet actually 2 for non cellular equipment to handle. This caused a latency increase as the equipment (not the client) broke the packets in half, and recombined at other end. Thankfully most equipment is sane these days and such "fragmentation" handling is done seamlessly at client end.

So latency's lowest bound is the speed of light + any equipment overheads. As an example a fibre SFP added a lower latency than a copper cat6 cable at 10g last time I was checking that.

Back in the day setting up some of the first ISP's in England (I'm old!), the fastest you could get to London servers from Birmingham was around 50ms on dodgy old E1 circuits (and on older technology thaan an E1 on serial was even worse - our first link was a 128K serial link back in 1997 ish!). As larger (T3/E3 lines) came in it dropped to 8-10ms from Birmingham to London inside our own network)... Then again as Ethernet (1G-10G) came in it dropped again. The misconception is this is because faster lines = lower latency. The reality was though as line speed increased, less equipment was between sites was reduced (less exchange equipment), and thus equipment retransmitting and adding latency decreased.

An interesting aside on the latency point is that radio is actually faster a-b than fibre -> which is why some trading networks in Chicago invested in radio links to the NY stock exchange and vice versa as it gave them a advantage over firms just using traditional fibre networks. This even exists today in the London stock exchange : https://www.londonstockexchange.com...ty/exchange-hosting/exchange-wireless-service

Given above 5g can be faster than fibre links ... though on conuumer grade equipment this is hardly likely.

 

[Rog NotJane]

An interesting aside on the latency point is that radio is actually faster a-b than fibre -> which is why some trading networks in Chicago invested in radio links to the NY stock exchange and vice versa as it gave them a advantage over firms just using traditional fibre networks.

And it's a significant difference, the speed of light in silica glass is about 60% of the speed in air. Fibre has much less attenuation though so it soon gets to be swings and roundabouts.

That said:

So latency's lowest bound is the speed of light + any equipment overheads. As an example a fibre SFP added a lower latency than a copper cat6 cable at 10g last time I was checking that.

Isn't lower latency one of the design goals of 5g so you should see better latency. I guess there are a lot of other factors at play so maybe the latency over the air interface is less but you don't see it because it's a rounding error on the latency of the fibre backhaul.

 

[Carpmart]

Indeed, it's this -> however ping's DO spike (ie, it won't be constant it'll be highly variable) when a cell is busy as the packets get lost, causing retransmission and 2-3x the time for it to get back to you if it gets stored in a cell sites buffer before sending. Remember all equipment has buffers (even FTTP btw) and uses these to maximise usage of line (so if for example a 100 byte packet can combine with a 1300 byte one it will -> a typical maximum packet size on ethernet is 1500 bytes.

One of the engineering latency challenges is above as with overheads certain equipment was sending 1536 byte packets a few years back making a single 1500 packet actually 2 for non cellular equipment to handle. This caused a latency increase as the equipment (not the client) broke the packets in half, and recombined at other end. Thankfully most equipment is sane these days and such "fragmentation" handling is done seamlessly at client end.

So latency's lowest bound is the speed of light + any equipment overheads. As an example a fibre SFP added a lower latency than a copper cat6 cable at 10g last time I was checking that.

Back in the day setting up some of the first ISP's in England (I'm old!), the fastest you could get to London servers from Birmingham was around 50ms on dodgy old E1 circuits (and on older technology thaan an E1 on serial was even worse - our first link was a 128K serial link back in 1997 ish!). As larger (T3/E3 lines) came in it dropped to 8-10ms from Birmingham to London inside our own network)... Then again as Ethernet (1G-10G) came in it dropped again. The misconception is this is because faster lines = lower latency. The reality was though as line speed increased, less equipment was between sites was reduced (less exchange equipment), and thus equipment retransmitting and adding latency decreased.

An interesting aside on the latency point is that radio is actually faster a-b than fibre -> which is why some trading networks in Chicago invested in radio links to the NY stock exchange and vice versa as it gave them a advantage over firms just using traditional fibre networks. This even exists today in the London stock exchange : https://www.londonstockexchange.com...ty/exchange-hosting/exchange-wireless-service

Given above 5g can be faster than fibre links ... though on conuumer grade equipment this is hardly likely.

Agree with all that… I was answering the posters question specifically in lay terms…

 

[Carpmart]

Indeed, it's this -> however ping's DO spike (ie, it won't be constant it'll be highly variable) when a cell is busy as the packets get lost, causing retransmission and 2-3x the time for it to get back to you if it gets stored in a cell sites buffer before sending. Remember all equipment has buffers (even FTTP btw) and uses these to maximise usage of line (so if for example a 100 byte packet can combine with a 1300 byte one it will -> a typical maximum packet size on ethernet is 1500 bytes.

One of the engineering latency challenges is above as with overheads certain equipment was sending 1536 byte packets a few years back making a single 1500 packet actually 2 for non cellular equipment to handle. This caused a latency increase as the equipment (not the client) broke the packets in half, and recombined at other end. Thankfully most equipment is sane these days and such "fragmentation" handling is done seamlessly at client end.

So latency's lowest bound is the speed of light + any equipment overheads. As an example a fibre SFP added a lower latency than a copper cat6 cable at 10g last time I was checking that.

Back in the day setting up some of the first ISP's in England (I'm old!), the fastest you could get to London servers from Birmingham was around 50ms on dodgy old E1 circuits (and on older technology thaan an E1 on serial was even worse - our first link was a 128K serial link back in 1997 ish!). As larger (T3/E3 lines) came in it dropped to 8-10ms from Birmingham to London inside our own network)... Then again as Ethernet (1G-10G) came in it dropped again. The misconception is this is because faster lines = lower latency. The reality was though as line speed increased, less equipment was between sites was reduced (less exchange equipment), and thus equipment retransmitting and adding latency decreased.

An interesting aside on the latency point is that radio is actually faster a-b than fibre -> which is why some trading networks in Chicago invested in radio links to the NY stock exchange and vice versa as it gave them a advantage over firms just using traditional fibre networks. This even exists today in the London stock exchange : https://www.londonstockexchange.com...ty/exchange-hosting/exchange-wireless-service

Given above 5g can be faster than fibre links ... though on conuumer grade equipment this is hardly likely.

Algorithmic trading between London and Frankfurt was significantly improved when direct fibre between London and Frankfurt was dug, rather than relying on Metropolitan fibre rings and their interconnects!

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