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West Coast Mainline and Mobile Data performance

ewanmclean2005

Super Pro Member
Good morning all.

Are there regular travellers on the west coast mainline on this forum? I have recently been making semi regular trips from Glasgow down to numerous cities in the UK, most notably London and Manchester.

With both O2 and Three on the Avanti Pendolinos I find mobile data performance incredibly poor for quite a large amount of my journey. I’m curious to know if anyone has poor data performance on Vodafone and EE and if anyone else has experience what I have travelling on the west coast mainline.

I generally find that mobile data performance is nowhere near as bad when I am on other train operators (like TPE or Northern) and I am wondering if the trains Avanti use themselves are like faraday cages.
 
As someone who makes this trip often I would say that EE is the best and most stable network on the West Coast Mainline

4G for most of the trip with occasional 5G as well

Vodafone on the other hand has good 4G but also drops to 3G alot

Three seems to be mostly 3G and has a lot of dead zones

Can't comment on O2 as haven't given them a proper test but I expect it to be pretty poor as there network is pretty congested in most places
 
I'd be quite interested to hear too.

Used to make trips a few times a month and Three was dreadful both on both Avanti and London Northwestern trains. Just about good enough to listen to a stream which could buffer ahead far enough for the dead zones, but nothing more.

For what it's worth, O2 actually seemed pretty decent based on what I saw on other people's devices, not least from an availability standpoint.

Pendelino trains have long been notorious for pretty poor signal (coating on their windows), but frankly the on-board WiFi isn't much better. That and how stifling they get ever since being refurbished...
 
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Pendelino trains have long been notorious for pretty poor signal (coating on their windows), but frankly the on-board WiFi isn't much better. That and how stifling they get ever since being refurbished...
It's one of worst trains I've noticed for signal penetration, I've not been on a pendelino still Virgin lost the franchise stifling after refurb they removed the AC?
 
O2 is largely unuseable and Three not much better. EE are by far the best but still not great. EE did have a plan to improve coverage along the whole of the west coast mainline. There was even talk of having a BTS and repeaters on the trains themselves but I've no idea where they are with that plan now.
 
They really need to fix the state of connectivity on the west coast mainline if others have been having problems then. Most of the time I find myself stuck with mobile data not working and WiFi connectivity leading much to be desired. I have a Lycamobile SIM at the moment which has recently started using EEs network so I am going to give it a try on my next WCML trip.

O2 is completely unusable, most of the time is spent on 3G. O2’s 3G does not work at all from most of my experiences. Three seems to pop in and out a lot but there are two complete dead zones. One is between Carstairs and Lockerbie and the other is between Penrith and Lancaster. Once I hit the towns and cities of the northwest of England I find service works better with 5G in places, however what I’m finding is there are gaps between cells (and I had a feeling it was to do with the heat coating on the windows signal degradation was happening).

Anyone have experiences with Vodafone?
 
It's one of worst trains I've noticed for signal penetration, I've not been on a pendelino still Virgin lost the franchise stifling after refurb they removed the AC?
The opposite problem in fact.

Cleaned out all of the heating grates, but left the heaters turned up the same way they were before. Not sure how it’s like now but in the winter months it was nauseating.

I never did figure out what company they used for on board WiFi… press releases seem to suggest a company called Pelion but no suggestion on what company they use for service…
 
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@ewanmclean2005 Since not everyone can connect to B20 on Lyca, if you want to really test EE, get a 1pMobile SIM as they have access to the full network.

I think the agreement between Vodafone and O2 was for Vodafone to manage the west of the country and O2 to manage the east? Maybe Vodafone is better on that line?
 
So EE seems to work absolutely perfectly on my west coast mainline trip this evening via Lycamobile. Im actually very impressed with how much better it works than Three.

I did a constant stream of YouTube videos to test the data performance from Glasgow to Lancaster, generally the most problematic area on previous WCML trips. This has been working great to be honest. I might hold onto a Lyca sim as a ‘just in case’ for future WCML trips.
 
I believe EE provides radio coverage for train communications, they have a lot of nodes on train track edges so it'll be natural for you to appear to get better services with EE on a train.
 
Thought this thread could do with some updated information for the West Coast Main Line

Tested from Edinburgh to Carlisle and back to Glasgow on all 4 networks for once thanks to Vodafone having the free trail and here are the results

EE best for speed and stability able to stream video and music just fine with no issues this has always been the case

Vodafone also worked great did drop to E twice but only for a second before shifting back up to 4G this is a massive improvement compared to a year ago when 3G was switched off was able to stream music and video and was fairly stable

O2 and Three both of these stuck to 3G or H+ for long periods of the trip and were pretty unstable unable to stream music or video without it buffering or dropping the connection so unfortunately no improvement there

This was from a TPExpress train I did the same trip last week but getting the Avanti back up to Glasgow and both O2 and EE were pretty much unusable but I have always found phone signal on Avanti to be weak due to the way there trains are made

On Avanti the wifi does a decent job but is speed capped at 2/2 for download and upload
 
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