EE UK Leave Kent Village Without Mobile Signal for Two Weeks
Residents and businesses on EE’s mobile network in the area surrounding the tiny rural hamlet and civil parish of Leaveland in Kent (England) have complained after a fault with the operator’s local mast left them without a working 4G connection, as well as a poor signal in other areas (via other masts), for two weeks and counting.
The situation appears to have started around the start of November and, for the past couple of weeks, EE’s status checker for their local network has been stating that there is indeed a “service problem” in the area, albeit while also pledging to deliver “good service within 16 hours, but some fixes take a little longer.” Sadly, that message has remained unchanged for the entire time.
The mast itself is shared with Three UK as part of their network sharing joint venture with EE (MBNL – Mobile Broadband Network Limited) and Three’s checker also notes that they’re “fixing an issue” in the area: “We’re sorry for any disruption you experience. Our engineers are working on masts nearby, which means the rest of our network is handling more traffic than usual.” But some users on Three UK could still get a weak signal.
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The mast in question (eNB ID 29293 at 51°15’32.13″N, 0°52’9.83″E) appears to sit on the edge of a field inside a private estate. According to locals, the Estate and EE have been in discussions. Engineers are said to have attended last week, but as they did not inform the estate, they found the gates locked – these are just farm gates.
Tim Higgs, Local ISP Broadband for Rural Kent (B4RK), said:
“It’s really frustrating after having provided a business customer with a superfast Fixed Access LTE broadband service using the only mast we could get a signal from to then have no service for almost 2 weeks and EE seemingly unable to gain access to the mast.
What is more frustrating is that the only other 4G network available is Three and they are also on the same mast and also down. I have ordered a Starlink dish for my business customer affected by this outage, but the estimated delivery date is 21-27th November. I am however starting to think that Starlink will be delivered before EE fixes the mast.”
We raised the issue with EE, but they surprisingly offered no comment, except to confirm that it is a Cellnex site and their team was still trying to arrange access via the landlord’s representative. We suspect that the existing wayleave would probably have permitted them to climb over the regular farm gates to gain access.
However, in this country it’s always safest and politest to arrange access first, lest engineers be chased off by a shotgun wielding farmer, who might otherwise assume they’re doing something bad (sadly criminals do often attack farms and are not above pretending to be engineers). But in the meantime, local homes and businesses continue to suffer.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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You’d think the farmer/land owner would be just as keen to have their mobile signal restored since it’s the only mast in the area.
Maybe they have a Vodafone SIM?
Get off me land. Bang bang 🙂
EE mast was inoperative in the Wiltshire town of Pewsey for over 2 months – it’s only recently been repaired and service resumed. Asbestos in the cabin was mentioned as one of the delaying factors, as well as access. Luckily the mast serving my home remained operable.
Quick question mark – how did you find the eNodeB ID and geolocation?
Thanks!
cellmapper.net
You can see why the mobile networks are far more keen to build on public land now, there would be no issue if this was on a grass verge or pavement
I fully believe this mast was from a time when the mobile networks preferred putting masts on farmers fields but would be ironic if the reason it’s on the farmers land in the first place was because people objected to one on public land
Hopefully the people objecting all the monopoles for no reason other than “not in my back yard” who would also be the ones to complain when they have no signal take note they are the makers of their own misfortune
ISTR that landowners could command large wayleave payments for such sites but these have been cut considerably in recent years. I expect some landowners may use access as a bargaining tool to demand more generous settlements
At least its only two weeks – my local EE mast was problematic for over a year, delivering woeful 4G speeds and coverage – despite the Three coverage and speed both being excellent, and Three was/is sharing the same site as EE!
It seems like EE now has 3500MHz 5G on my local site, and this is apparently strong, like 3G, but 4G on 1800MHz is still lacking!
How can NR 3500 be stronger than LTE 1800?!
So much for “the UK’s best network”…
I’m in the exact same boat as you, with 3 providing 110mbps in my garden and EE not even getting 10mbps, hopefully the switchoff of 3G will help this situation, converting the airwaves into 4G, as 3G signal seems to be quite good where I am, just poor 4G…
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/06/court-ruling-brings-clarity-to-uk-telecoms-disputes-over-rents-and-wayleaves.html
Is the landlord playing hardball?
We need a roaming agreement between all UK networks, this would alleviate the issue when a fault occurs. Masts’ will always fail.
You mean like the SRN that isn’t even dependent on a failure?
Saying what we need when they are already working to deploy it is kinda meh.
I also believe Ofcom wants the 6G spectrum to be shared access by default.
National roaming is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory, but has many issues in reality.
buy a global sim. they lock on to whatever is the best signal / only signal and work across all the networks everywhere. Though I think you’re right, it would be great if there was an agreement and standardised installs with open RAN. But we’ll have to see what remains of the networks in the next few years. Who knows what will be left.
Where would be the incentive to invest with national roaming? The countries with the best coverage seem to have a small number of closely competing networks.
We have had the same problem off the Poston Herefordshire transmitter, no mobile signal for 13 days
No climbing over gates when I was in the job. Let alone accessing farms day or night without access arranged. Had one site where the cabin was chain wrapped, guarded by a German Shepard, and a cherry picker type vehicle blocking the microwave link until the access and payment dispute was settled.
Two weeks is nothing. Our EE (CO8) mast was originally installed in a Conifer wood high above the village to blend in with the countryside as we are in an AONB. Over the years the tree canopy/branches grew until they finally masked the signal from the antenna
On July 16th I lost signal to 3 x mobiles and 1 x mobile router.
Nearly every day, the EE network map displayed the normal waffle “We are working on it”
All BT/EE/PN customers in the village had sporadic or no service. Mobile broadband was dead
As the wood was “protected” the District Council would not allow any felling of trees apart from trimming of branches
We have no other choice of provider as O2,3 and Voda only provide a bare minumum of 1/2 bars of signal
It wasnt until the 16th September ( 8 weeks) when finally someone arrived with a chain-saw and restored service
EE would offer no compensation as it was not in the Ofcom rules for mobiles/broadband
Since then I have erected a mast with a 4g Poynting antenna to use the “3” signal from the local TV mast to avoid this fiasco happening again
Same issue in St Albans near the retail park. One bar of 4G but doesn’t load anything. Once inside a building there is no coverage.
EE have said there is an issue fixing the mast as its on private land. How difficult can it be to contact the land owner?