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Speed vs Signal Strength

WilliamGrimsley

Super Pro Member
Hi all,

Last year, I switched from O2 to 3 purely because I found O2's 4G speeds terrible. However, I'm now finding that even though 3's speeds on the whole are much faster than O2's, the phone signal is nowhere near as good and tends to fluctuate a lot more than O2's. It may be my area, but is there a reason for this? Do providers that tend to provide higher speeds, have more fluctuations/areas with no signal than others that are typically slower?

Cheers,

Will
 
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As I understand its more or less down to O2 using low frequency bands far more liberally than Three. If you look on a site like Cellmapper it's actually pretty rare to find O2 using higher frequency bands in places unless the tower would be completely unserviceable without it. In practice you get brilliant coverage which is pretty consistent, but yes, painfully slow.

Traditionally, Three has had higher frequency B3 as its base layer with B20 as infill instead. They don't have much B20 spectrum at all (half the amount that O2 does), and with the way Three has its network set up it will prefer a weaker B3 signal over B20, which is partially why the signal will fluctuate a lot more.

Densification would help, but financing something like that nationally would be any accountants worst nightmare. They seem to be focusing on creating a half decent urban network, whilst the other phone companies remain an option for those who are out in the sticks.
 
Last edited:
Thank you, all. That makes sense, Gary. I have found 3 to be better in urban compared to rural areas, especially on 5G.
 
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