On Wed, 6 Aug 2025 at 10:22, Marco van Beek via GLLUG <gllug@mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote: > > > 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. >
Another reason a foreign mobile phone might work better is 1) A foreign phone can connect to any of the 3 networks: O2/Virgin, Vodafone/Three and EE/BT. It can automatically choose the one with the best signal. 2) Your UK phone can only connect to a specific one of them depending on your phone contract. So, in summary, there are many different aspects that affect voice quality. -- GLLUG mailing list GLLUG@mailman.lug.org.uk https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug
