Which is the best mobile broadband for coverage in country areas please ?

Clattergate

Clattergate

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Ive got a booster thing on the van roof and had a THREE sim which has been pretty useless, my o2 mobile phone has been better overall... I've heard that Virgin are good but I have a constant battle with my broadband at home with Virgin so not too keen to go with them unless they really are good.
Ideally I'd rather not get tied up in an 18 month contract again

Any help gratefully received
 
I think Virgin piggyback on Vodafone? Sky piggyback on O2 and apparently have deals/rollover of unused data allowance etc. We have a Smarty unlimited data SIM (contract free) so also on Three network, may review options relative to any coverage challenges faced.
 
Coverage is very dependent on the area. So generalisations don't work everywhere...

Three concentrate their coverage for the most number of people. So you get good coverage in towns and cities and along motorways. But out in the sticks, there can be massive black spots.

Vodafone have traditionally ensured they cover map area. But that doesn't always mean you get the best speeds. Some of their coverage is using pretty slow towers now. And if a tower is congested, they'll aggressively turn down the speeds to ensure everyone gets something, but it might be slow.

O2 and EE are somewhere in between.

All the other networks like GiffGaff, Tesco, Virgin, etc. don't own the network, they just lease bandwidth off of the big 4. If a tower gets particularly congested, some 2nd tier providers get lower priority... but that's why they are cheaper.
 
We have 2 phones, one on Vodafone and one on O2, sometimes one is better than the other, there's been no outright winner but I'm happy with those 2 networks.

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Clattergate said:
Ive got a booster thing on the van roof and had a THREE sim which has been pretty useless, my o2 mobile phone has been better overall... I've heard that Virgin are good but I have a constant battle with my broadband at home with Virgin so not too keen to go with them unless they really are good.
Ideally I'd rather not get tied up in an 18 month contract again

Any help gratefully received
Click to expand...
Apparently EE have the widest coverage in the UK. 3 have best 5g coverage but that means very little today (unless you spend a lot of your Funster days in major Cities.)
I use Smarty (which uses 3 infrastructure) as they offered a vary reasonably priced unlimited package on a Monthly rolling contract. Some would argue that the ‘unlimited’ is still capped on a fair usage policy. I think I’d need to be living in the van for the policy to mean anything.

Clattergate said:
Ive got a booster thing on the van roof and had a THREE sim which has been pretty useless, my o2 mobile phone has been better overall... I've heard that Virgin are good but I have a constant battle with my broadband at home with Virgin so not too keen to go with them unless they really are good.
Ideally I'd rather not get tied up in an 18 month contract again

Any help gratefully received
Click to expand...
 
Never mind in the countryside - I can't get a decent signal at home next door to an international airport! Just changed to EE to try again - nada!
 
I find O2 have quite good coverage in places we visit.
I have a Tesco Mobile card (Tesco use O2), you can pay using Tesco Clubcard points, which half the cost.

Geoff
 
We have EE and Tesco have almost always managed to get a signal, can’t speak for north of Scotland as it has been so long since I was there.
We were at Ashbourne in Augusta last year with grandsons, so had 5 different networks, only mine got a signal and even that was lost in dips while on the move.
 
Are you intending to travel abroad? I was with Three for over 10 years. Whenever I was in Europe or the US, I was always struggling with getting a connection. I'd frequently have to manually select the network I wanted. Or I'd be dropped to basic 3G or worse. I'm under the impression that Three's deals with foreign providers don't guarantee much in terms of speed.

For our 6 month tour around Europe, I switched both our mobile phone contracts, and a SIM in our 4G MiFi hotspot to Vodafone. It was more expensive than Three, and at home in the centre of Birmingham, I was getting slower peak speeds than with Three. But throughout our travels we always had good data coverage.

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I think it’s completely random and depends where you are,to within a very short distance sometimes.

Where we live Tesco ie O2 is very good but half a mile away it’s useless.

What happened to free roaming????????
 
We have Three and Vodafone

Three always seems to get better coverage in the UK
 
This will be a slightly technical answer, but there is no generalised answer to your question of which is best in rural areas.

There are some principles that are useful for you (and others) to know about which impact what is known as propagation, effectively the way the radio waves are transmitted. Going back to the late 1980’s when the intustry kicked off (and when I first got involved) the UK govt provided to Cellnet and Vodafone spectrum in the 900mhz range. This has been repurposed many times by these networks and provides a very solid in building and difficult coverage area propagation opportunity.

Three when they launched and for the first ten years focused on optimising their network for data as it was the GTM USP. This made their data service, despite not having any 900mhz frequency, well optimised and genuinely a very solid data service. They generalised their network as they chased 10m subscribers in the last 10 years, to the detriment of their data service.

What this all means, with everything else being equal (devices, external antenna, length and quality of cables, location etc) that it is not unreasonable for me to say that you stand a better chance of getting data service on the 900 spectrum therefore O2 and Vodafone. This however does not take into consideration such as traffic shaping algorithms, fair usage policies and how they are implemented in the software defined parts of the networks. There are often also commercial considerations, which may mean that the subscriber doesn’t select the best network purely on the best service.

In summary, lots of technical reasons to use a certain operator but one can never be certain that the service configuration provides the optimal service. It’s therefore a complete lottery!

BTW, Virgin are an MVNO (Managed Virtual Network Operator) so do not own infrastructure, just a commercial proposition which you buy.
 
EE have Scottish ambulance contract so better than most in Scotland
 
I'm using giff gaff, 80gb for £20, they use O2, average speed around 25mps, we're in Northumberland at the moment. No problems so far

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Clattergate said:
Ive got a booster thing on the van roof and had a THREE sim which has been pretty useless, my o2 mobile phone has been better overall... I've heard that Virgin are good but I have a constant battle with my broadband at home with Virgin so not too keen to go with them unless they really are good.
Ideally I'd rather not get tied up in an 18 month contract again

Any help gratefully received
Click to expand...

We also have a booster thing on the roof with a THREE sim card.
Ours is a monthly PAYG contract (£10pcm for 30GB)
All supplied by the very good people at motorhomewifi

The issue of 'which carrier is best' totally depends on where you happen to be parked that night.

We regularly 'camp' on my mothers drive
(It's got everything we need, hardstanding, water, EHU dump station, hot showers, food, close to the sea, dog friendly, and it's free!)
The only downside is the mobile signal, it varies between non-existent and an occasional 1 bar if you are lucky.
I used the mobile coverage map https://checker.ofcom.org.uk/en-gb/mobile-coverage#vw=map here and it makes no difference which carrier you use, they are all dreadful/non-existent for the space in the red circle where I need coverage.

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However if we move 100m in almost any direction, we get a full signal!
 
I worked as a Community Nurse in South Wales, tried 4/5 different networks - all had blackspots, some shared the same blackspot so had no cover at all - as said - it depends on where you are.
 
Just been at Norden Farm near Corfe Castle. Absolutely nothing on EE and very little reception on 3 until you moved off campsite towards Corfe. Every network has black spots in the countryside.
 
We use a couple of different networks, but as we travel around it's Three who always seem to have the best coverage and fastest data speeds

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Probably why CB is still used when trying to find a field for collecting crops etc in rural areas
 
I have a dual sim phone and sitting at my desk in my home office, (work) EE no signal, (personal) O2 full signal, Virgin uses EE which we did use for personal, now switched to O2, We have a roof aerial for the MIFI one location that I have to go to has very poor 4G three service not able the stream, but if I go onto the router and search networks and select 3G three full signal no problem with streaming.
 

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