Is 4G already being switched off in some areas?

[Peter Mugridge]

I remember seeing 'E' and didn't understand what it meant, but recognised that using internet was basically impossible when it was there. Haven't seen it for a few years now. I thought of it as 'Excruciatingly Slow'.

I quite often see E, H and H+ in areas where you really wouldn't expect such a poor quality of network coverage - such as some locations in London, for example... I'd expect to see them in rural areas, but the middle of London?!?!?

 

[JamesT]

I quite often see E, H and H+ in areas where you really wouldn't expect such a poor quality of network coverage - such as some locations in London, for example... I'd expect to see them in rural areas, but the middle of London?!?!?

That could be a couple of things. Higher speeds will generally be higher frequencies which struggle to go through/round big buildings. The other is having too many people sharing a mobile cell will pull everyone down.
You fix both things with more cell towers, but the mobile operators won’t throw unlimited resources at it.

 

[Noddy]

I quite often see E, H and H+ in areas where you really wouldn't expect such a poor quality of network coverage - such as some locations in London, for example... I'd expect to see them in rural areas, but the middle of London?!?!?

H and H+ are increments of 3G (High speed packet access, and Evolved high speed packet access) sometimes known as 3.5G and 3.75G. The problem with cities is there are a lot of buildings which block signals (‘urban canyons’) so you have to have a really well designed network to fill in all the gaps. That’s not always possible.

 

[nw1]

H and H+ are increments of 3G (High speed packet access, and Evolved high speed packet access) sometimes known as 3.5G and 3.75G. The problem with cities is there are a lot of buildings which block signals (‘urban canyons’) so you have to have a really well designed network to fill in all the gaps. That’s not always possible.

Oh yes, H. I've seen that too but forgot about it.

E stands out as being the unusable one, though, for reasons which have become clear through this thread.

 

[jon0844]

I quite often see E, H and H+ in areas where you really wouldn't expect such a poor quality of network coverage - such as some locations in London, for example... I'd expect to see them in rural areas, but the middle of London?!?!?

There are still some sites with only 2G and 4G (newer sites with 2G retained as a fallback for all devices, m2m etc) and on occasion you can drop to 2G with GPRS or EDGE data until the phone/network bumps you up to a 4G band. This process is usually quite quick, but not always and some networks are better than others at moving you to 4G as quick as possible.

Some networks don't have the facility (I forget the technical term) and so if you connect to 3G and start consuming data, the phone won't go to 4G even when it is there until you stop using data.

EE is one such network that will move you even when using data, which is good because when you fall to 3G - say on a train journey - you may remain stuck on 3G permanently if you're using data (e.g. streaming).

As 3G is going, I doubt any network is going to bother to change things if they haven't already.