Hampshire Town Goes 6 Weeks Without a Fully Working EE UK Mobile Signal
Some homes and businesses in the Hampshire (South Coast of England) town of Bishops Waltham have been left with poor 4G and 5G mobile (broadband) reception from EE for around six weeks. This appears to have occurred after one of the few primary shared masts in the area went partly offline during stormy weather.
The town, which is home to over 6,000 people, is technically within reach of two or three masts that sit just outside the community – varying a bit depending on network operator. One of the main masts is a shared site in the SO32 area, which has a good view over the town but has also been struggling, at least for EE’s customers, since stormy weather in June 2025.
A number of other mobile operators in the area have also been experiencing issues, although it’s unclear if those relate to the same site or issue. For example, both O2 and Three UK are reporting that local network congestion “means your data could be slower than normal … our team is aware and working to make it better” (O2’s status). Three UK also recently had a service outage in part of the town, but they’ve since told ISPreview that “these issues should now be fixed“.
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However, the problems for EE’s customers appear to be more complex, with some locals reporting a protracted period of lost service lasting nearly seven weeks and others highlighting issues with weak 4G and 5G signals (likely due to roaming on to a different cell site). Some limited information via EE’s forum also suggested that there had been a delay in being able to access the site, and that engineers have since found they needed to carry out a treeline survey due to a site-to-site Microwave capacity (backhaul) link possibly being blocked.
An EE spokesperson told ISPreview:
“We’re sorry that customers are experiencing issues with their service and we’re currently addressing this. We encourage any EE customers in the area who might be experiencing issues to contact our customer service team so we can support them directly”.
Sadly, EE didn’t confirm what the cause of the issue was, although ISPreview understands that the operator has ordered replacement parts and are continuing to work with the landowner in order to access the site. The plan is then to carry out the work as soon as possible. In the meantime, impacted customers are being encouraged to use WiFi Calling, where possible, and they should still be able to make 999 (emergency calls) as these get routed via any available network.
The complexity of some sites, as well as any safety considerations and problems with existing access (wayleave) agreements, can sometimes mean that it ends up taking longer than usual to resolve such problems. The exact issues in this case remain unclear, but in the absence of a solid fix time, we can only hope that EE are able to resolve the problems sooner rather than later.
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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Poor show by EE. Now people are dropping their landlines reliable mobile reception is more important than ever & outages like this are simply unacceptable.
O2 Lost a mast near me about 5 years ago after the site was redeveloped. It hasn’t been replaced and the slow connection due to network congestion became the new norm. Then they on boarded a load of new customers from Virgin and it because unusable meaning a load of people have dumped O2.
The only good thing I can say is they refunded about 18months of airtime because of it
I thought EE had all kinds of technology to provide temporary coverage for issues just like this?
They boasted about having Rapid Response vehicles with a mast on board that they can drive to locations, the drone air mast and those airship type ballon masts.
Skelmersdale has been without mobile signal on EE for about two weeks now. Without warning they went offline and upon reporting a fault, I now get daily texts saying “good news, we’re upgrading the network in your area. Service will be restored in 30 days”. Not good enough.
Not just EE. The Winchester City center has been without Three signal for 2 months now. Literally no signal if using Three network.
Yep. Three is so terrible in Winchester that I moved to spusu. It now looks like Vodafone has improved a little bit so might look at them again.
Oh dear, what a shame. I live in a Dorset village with 3500 ‘ish people, only 7 miles from a Major conurbation and we don’t have a reliable 4G signal of any sort! And, no 5G at all. 3G if your lucky and now even that is being turned off. Bishops Waltham, go get a life.
Why don’t you move if the signal in your area is so crap that you post about it here, instead of telling others to “get a life”? You presumably chose to live in the countryside and weren’t frogmarched there by force.
I’ve got a Three 5G tower less than 200meters from my house.
No 5G & signal is dreadful. I’m with Three, so how does this happen?
Maybe it’s not powered on yet. The one at the end of my street was up for almost a year before it was switched on.
I live in a nice part of SW London and work in a posh part of W London. Never have I seen any high speed connection from my mobile. But it surprised me that I got circa 650 near a major NHS trust in SW London. I was totally shocked.
Last year in our village we lost EE for over 2 months
3 was on the same mast with the same problem
Phone signal was very intermittent, Broadband 2/3 Mbs
This was because the Mast was located in a very small wood of Conifers to make in unobtrusive in an AONB
The branches had grown over the Antenna and degraded the signal
Trouble was, the Trees were in a Preservation Area – so it took weeks to get the District Council approval to lop back the branches
I did get a full refund from EE for the loss of two mobiles and the crap Broadband
In Oxted Vodafone and 02 have had network issues for at least 6 months.
Partly due to Network Rail not keeping trees under control by the Masts.
The Masts in question are at RH8 9EU.
This is a scandal.
And Oxted has 12,000 people.
The real issue is the mobile phone company’s exaggerate potential coverage which Ofcom is now addressing.
The answer will have to be smaller fill in masts.