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Three Concerns?

MarkyR74

ULTIMATE Member
Hi, after reading the news the other day that Three will be switching off their 3G network Im a little concerned, but should I be? I see that it won’t be turned off till sometime in 2024, still that’s only a year and a half away.
Where I live in North Dorset, my phone is on Smarty and constantly drops between their 3G and 4G signal, atmospherics also impact this a lot round here. Now Three claim to have upgraded the masts round here, so if that were true what are the chances of them upgrading them further once 3G is gone? Otherwise their is a chance I’d have no signal at all in places, their isn’t any 2G even to fallback on. It’s sad as between the two signals I usually have some service to use in most places.

I have ordered a Voxi sim to try out, it sure if I’ll stay with it though. But at least they have 2G to fall back on right?

Is their cause for concern for this? Or will 3 upgrade the masts so I can get a reliable 4G signal at least? Does turning off the 3G help boost the 4G? In some places it locks into 4 G and performance is abysmal and the 3G signal performs better in the same spot.
 
My nearest Three mast is 3G only, my router with directional antenna successfully latches onto a further away 4G mast, however my phone cannot do this. So unless they upgrade the 3G only mast to 4G only when 3G is turned off my phone when at home will be wifi calling only. Their announcement does not have any detail to know what is going to happen.
 
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Providers signed up to obligations "each mobile operator has committed to providing good quality data and voice coverage to 88% of the landmass by 30 June 2024, and 90% by 30 June 2026". However the minimum data speed requirement is very low.

Ofcom allows freedom for providers to change technology to maximise their spectrum licence. However I can't see any definitive obligation for them to maintain all pre-existing covered areas. So if they say introduced a new monopole that increased their 4G/5G coverage but not necessarily covered all of the existing 3G coverage, as long as they met the overall obligation, that appears fine by them.

Generally the assumption is that they will upgrade existing mast sites but as they appear to be introducing THREE only masts, not all new locations are getting approved and their sharing agreements change, how a specific location is covered by each provider may change.

They may also seek roaming agreements to meet their obligations.
 
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Providers signed up to obligations "each mobile operator has committed to providing good quality data and voice coverage to 88% of the landmass by 30 June 2024, and 90% by 30 June 2026". However the minimum data speed requirement is very low.

Ofcom allows freedom for providers to change technology to maximise their spectrum licence. However I can't see any definitive obligation for them to maintain all pre-existing covered areas. So if they say introduced a new monopole that increased their 4G/5G coverage but not necessarily covered all of the existing 3G coverage, as long as they met the overall obligation, that appears fine by them.

Generally the assumption is that they will upgrade existing mast sites but as they appear to be introducing THREE only masts, not all new locations are getting approved and their sharing agreements change, how a specific location is covered by each provider may change.

They may also seek roaming agreements to meet their obligations.

Thanks, this is what worry’s me, the legalities behind it. Seems they can as you say manipulate what the coverage means for them. maybe the rumoured merger with Vodafone will happen and then I’ll be better off on either provider anyway, but those things take years to happen.
Still your comment gives me some hope.
 
I currently have an iPhone XR but will be upgrading to a iPhone 13 or 14 Max this year, the 13 Max has a Qualcomm modem in it, not sure what the 14 Max will have, hopefully still Qualcomm.
The XR supports 4G bands, 1, 3, 20, 28, 32 on Three.

Hopefully Three rolls out more band 28 for better penetration
 
My Three connection (broadband) went off on Saturday, when it returned my Phone (Pixel 6p also on Three) briefly picked up a 5G signal
Before I could do a speedtest the signal went off again and returned as 4G, haven't seen a 5G connection since.
 
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It's likely Three will be continuing to introduce B28 in a lot of areas.

From what I understand so far, their existing B20 kit supports B28 with of addition of cables to antennas and combiners,

Three in Birmingham do seem to be enabling existing setups with B28 and new setups too.

As for re-using B1 spectrum, this should be as easy as configuration updates remotely to extend the existing 10Mhz allocation.

From personal testing I can say the B28 usage on 4G is a big winner for Three, broadcasting through dense urban areas for miles.

So B28 should cover where the 3G signal was and has been turned off, but with 4G? Is that right? And increase its range a lot?
 
Going forward we should see an improvement overall now that 3G's getting shut down. All of the remaining 3G towers should be swapped over to 4G by the deadline according to them. If I'm not mistaken that means they'll gain 800Mhz (or band 20) at a minimum, which should be an improvement over a weaker 3G signal.

3G-vs-4G-frequencies.jpg
 
Going forward we should see an improvement overall now that 3G's getting shut down. All of the remaining 3G towers should be swapped over to 4G by the deadline according to them. If I'm not mistaken that means they'll gain 800Mhz (or band 20) at a minimum, which should be an improvement over a weaker 3G signal.

3G-vs-4G-frequencies.jpg

They have only set a target year unfortunately. Thank you for the graph, makes it very clear.
Shame they don't have a site where you can see when 3G is turned off on towers near you.
 
19 years since 3 showcased 3G at Mobile Life event in Earls Court:

Was a good event.
 
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I just want to ask the knowledgable folk here, will this change to B28 also help with the awfully slow 4G speeds as well? That's is the other thing with Smarty on 3 is the 3G is faster by a considerable amount then the 4G is with 2 or 3 bars of reception.
 
I just want to ask the knowledgable folk here, will this change to B28 also help with the awfully slow 4G speeds as well? That's is the other thing with Smarty on 3 is the 3G is faster by a considerable amount then the 4G is with 2 or 3 bars of reception.
Definitely. I've started to see B28 in my town and it's a massive improvement over B20 4G both in terms of speed and reliability.

As @JitteryPinger said, B20 has only 5mhz worth of spectrum allocated to it, while B28 has twice as much, at 10mhz.

We'll know for sure just how much of a difference it really makes when Three roll it out in Canterbury, the city with the worst connectivity of any place I've ever visited, both in the UK and abroad...
 
Has anyone actually noticed lost of 3G signal in your area? Somewhere between the 14th of April and 14 of May, 3G signals seem to have been stopped on my local mast.

Scan_Networks_List.png

Please ignore the 3 ITA (Italy) operator, both Three and Mikrotik deny giving it this name, it is really 3 UK. Entry #1 has gone.
 
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