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Mobile networks roundup - Pitlochry, Scotland

LeakedOne

Super Pro Member
I've been in the wee town of Pitlochry for over a week now and finding there's issues with a mast serving the area with 5G for EE and Three.

The mast in question for Three has a full rollout of Bands 1,3,20,28,32 and 2 sets of n78 at 40mhz and 100Mhz.

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In the past someone else from the area was sending me fairly impressive yet at distance speed rest figures which peaked into 300's down and 120's up... however the past week has been woeful and a customer who was getting an installation if an external 5G CPE has been left bewildered and has now opted for Starlink to serve a cottage up the hill in Moulin.

1000000053.webp


Disappointing as the mast has line of sight and excellent stats but something has really gone wrong at this mast.

And as I mentioned in the title, EE seems to be having similar issues too,

EE has been getting tested this week using 4G only as I wasn't aware until two days ago they rolled at some 5G in addition to the 2 sets of B3 LTE....

The 4G speeds ran at 80-120mbps quite consistently across the day and night across the town. However they have also sporadically chosen days to nose dive, and with 5G in the mix things get horrible.

The EE side of this mast is broadcasting Bands 3,3,20 and n1,n28

Three have now finally put a message on its status checker saying there's an issue, but EE have not and EE also won't acknowledge me as ab MVNO user.
 
I've had some up to date pictures sent to me just now of the Pitlochry transmitter....

signal-2024-07-06-121024_003.webp


signal-2024-07-06-121024_004.webp


Credit: claz maintenance for sharing these with me whilst he was on a hike today.

As I can tell from this picture we have upgraded antenna for EE, Three has added a 5G Radio.

I will be looking to hike up to this mast myself in the coming week or so.
 
Is that the one with my name on it now LeakedOne? :rolleyes: 😁
 
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Just found 524878,

signal-2024-07-06-13-50-33-416.jpg


Appears to be O2 only, cornerstone managed, not sure about backhaul but possibly feeding another mast out to the east.

EDIT: I believe O2 has a wireless backhaul base station located here and better viewed from streetview here, I reckon this feeds pretty much all O2 sites in the area including the 5G one, whether it is used by any other operator I do not know.
 
Last edited:
Just found 524878,

View attachment 16048

Appears to be O2 only, cornerstone managed, not sure about backhaul but possibly feeding another mast out to the east.

EDIT: I believe O2 has a wireless backhaul base station located here and better viewed from streetview here, I reckon this feeds pretty much all O2 sites in the area including the 5G one, whether it is used by any other operator I do not know.
UPDATE ABOVE
 
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I was going to continue testing of the mobile networks in Pitlochry (town) but no point.

O2 is the only promising network here as far as bandwidth management goes but they have screwed up configuration on masts and they just constantly fight over the device connections causing issues....

But overall biggest problem here is the heavy usage of wireless backhaul....

EE & Three are both well equipped at radio level but the backhaul (seemingly shared) is appalling, your talking masts well equipped to do 500-2000mbps downstream are seemingly sharing what I would estimate to be around 300mbps wireless backhaul, this is making for impossible connections at most times of the day currently (tourist season) but then when those tourist head into hotels the locals are clearly reliant on Three for internet services.....

I also reckon that most hospitality staff are probably forced to use mobile networks for connections in downtime due to the lack of decent fixed infrastructure locally and the 'interesting' staff accommodations in town.

Vodafone testing is concluded as there is one mast.... its reliable, works but is satellite hauled.

As for myself, I'm currently sharing a flat until somewhere private and local becomes available (fat chance currently), we are sharing a BT Hub 6 connected to a 49/9Mb VDSL line which is fairly suffice apart from the Hub 6 is w***

Back too O2, I'm struggling to get another sim from O2 at the moment, keeps denying my order, Tesco have killed the rolling contract one and not sure if GiffGaff is worth trying out in this neck of the woods....

As it stands I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, I'm essentially living in temporary accommodation, I get moaned at for leaving my bedroom door ajar or putting the kettle on without closing the kitchen door so messing with the existing BT Hub or having an additional line to Openreach network installed is pretty much going to be a no go...

I'm also so fed up with the living situation that I think my new employer has some staff accommodations I might as well try, if this is near my workplace than I will not be using O2 but EE based on performance figures for 4G......

There is an EE mast out in the area of my new workplace and its a single radio band 3 mast, it however is backhauled with Fibre and works superbly all day long despite the heavy traffic in the area, the same applies to O2 but Band 20 sucks (though 40mbps all during busy periods means its well equipped compared)

I've said on these forums for the past few weeks that I'm quite pee'd off with the telco sector in this country right now, I have no interest in 5G, its a complete con game..... 4G (Long Term Evolution) literally has so much more potential than networks have let it have and they've simply gone an replaced it with a thing as un-impressively called New Radio,

In this series of testing in pretty controlled environment compared to the big city 5G has been the biggest flop on the table, I'll list by network why below...

Three - Has 2 n78 bands of 5G totalling 140Mhz in bandwidth, they also seem to have n3 DSS but this rarely connects, that sort of bandwidth has been seen when paired with its full 4G spectrum offering to hit 2Gbps, never hit 200mbps here (even standing next to the cell site)

EE - Has n1,n28 available along with paired B3+3 for 4G, if I use 4G Only the duo of 3's will hit 60-120mbps during the middle of the day but with 5G active (so adding n1) it becomes a horrible mess of 5-30mbps and is so unreliable.

O2 - Has added n28 to its B20 4G at one of its 3 sites covering the town, it will not connect to devices connected to other sites, if you connect to B8 which also broadcasts from the all the masts in the area it will also not connect, O2 has completely ballsed up the priorities in this area, which is a shame because when I have connected with it I've seen 20mbps turn to around 150mbps

Vodafone - No comment needed in this area, they are not a contender.
 
Can't believe Pitlochry has such awfully served mobile service. I've visited a bunch during my teenage years for family holidays as it's a really nice place. I drive through it every time I travel up to Halkirk to see my family.

I would have thought Vodafone would be mast sharing with O2 here seeing as I don't think Pitlochry comes under an unwind area. But, it would definitely be an O2 host so never going to be great for Vodafone.
 
Can't believe Pitlochry has such awfully served mobile service. I've visited a bunch during my teenage years for family holidays as it's a really nice place. I drive through it every time I travel up to Halkirk to see my family.

I would have thought Vodafone would be mast sharing with O2 here seeing as I don't think Pitlochry comes under an unwind area. But, it would definitely be an O2 host so never going to be great for Vodafone.
Interestingly... It looks like a local Vodafone mast is doing a grand job according to Cellmapper. Cell 20 on 511367 has a recorded max download speed of 904Mbps with an average of 589Mbps. That's some seriously good performance from a Vodafone mast. Most likely NSA I would imagine.
 
Interestingly... It looks like a local Vodafone mast is doing a grand job according to Cellmapper. Cell 20 on 511367 has a recorded max download speed of 904Mbps with an average of 589Mbps. That's some seriously good performance from a Vodafone mast. Most likely NSA I would imagine.
That menu isn't always accurate, although I say that and I can't really provide any reasonable examples proving inaccuracy
 
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That menu isn't always accurate, although I say that and I can't really provide any reasonable examples proving inaccuracy
Found one lol, this is a B20 only site and doesn't support 5G ENDC afaik

No way you're getting 480mbps download from a B20 only site

1000020256.webp
 
That menu isn't always accurate, although I say that and I can't really provide any reasonable examples proving inaccuracy
Yeah, definitely a pinch of salt sort of information for sure... but, can give at least a slight indication as to potential performance. The other 2 mast locations covering Pitlochry for Vodafone show around 30-40Mbps which is consistent with having just B20.
 
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