On 06/08/2025 09:43, James Tobin via GLLUG wrote:
Meant to reply to @Polarian:
I have been in England and tried multiple operators with appalling
reception. I can use either of my two/foreign/numbers in the UK—both
picking up one of the same networks as my UK number—and get
crystal-clear reception in the same location. Something is clearly
amiss with the UK telco infrastructure.
One thing to take into consideration is that there aren't that many
networks, but there are a lot of branded resellers who piggyback off the
big companies like Smarty, iD Mobile, Lebara, Asda Mobile, Talkmobile
and Voxi who piggyback off Vodafone / Three.
So really, there is only O2/Virgin, Vodafone/Three and EE/BT underneath
everything. Ironic that BT sold off O2 to Telefonica, which was then
bought by Virgin, for them to then buy EE, which was originally owned by
Deutsche Telekom and France Télécom, which is a smaller company, having
sold off the ability to add cell towers for free to all the telephone
exchanges around the country as part of the O2 sale.
Also the current state of the rollout of 5G vs the turning off of older
technologies means that in quite a few places the bandwidth is
compromised between advertising 5G but not having the bandwidth, and the
older technologies not having the speed, so your phone may show it is
connected to a 5G network, but as soon as a call arrives, the cell has
to pass off the call to a 3G or 4G cell as it doesn't have the capacity.
So my guess is that the telcos can make more money from your oversea
provider by prioritising the call over newer technology, while their own
contracts are usually already paid for in bundled offers so doesn't
matter what the call quality is.
Lastly, I have noticed that the UK telcos like WiFi calling as it saves
them infrastructure costs, but they do not seem to make any allowances
for dodgy wifi / Internet connectivity. I have often had to disable it
somewhere where there was decent coverage via the mobile network, but
the call would go over wifi by default.
So you're not wrong, but I am not sure it is for the reasons you think
it is.
Cheers,
Marco
--
GLLUG mailing list
GLLUG@mailman.lug.org.uk
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug
