Hearing all of these glowing reports makes me wish 3 covered well here. Despite them having a mast 2 streets from me in both directions they get no service in most of my house.

Go to http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/search and search post code UB8 1GD
There's a shopping centre around here & it's a fairly busy area.

You really get a feeling of why o2 and orange have such great service around these places. They literally have a mast every few metres. Comparatively 3 seem to have very few masts...
Sadly, everywhere I look 3 have far less masts than the rest. I'm just checking around where I live.

I even had issues getting signal inside Topshop on Oxford street London with 3.
Around London it's not great.
Check it out...
http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/search
Search london oxford street and zoom in.

It's so easy to find an o2, t-mobile, orange and voda mast. They're everywhere.

The 3 ones are quite sparse comparatively.

Not saying 3 is bad. They are fantastic, cheap and customer service isn't too bad. If they got a few more masts and could match o2 / orange I would switch back any-day.

I also notice where 3 has one cell pointing one direction. Other networks tend to have 2, 3 or 4 all pointing in different directions on the same site.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 12-Nov-12 04:29:38)

I'm not sure what is 'feeding' the masts around here but i've never seen over 4Mb on 3.

Fixed line speeds are around 6/7Mb.

3 in terms of network quality is far better than EE from my recent experience.

The old T-Mobile network is excellent, pretty much matching 3 for speed in most areas.

The Orange network..........horrendous. Getting sub 500k speeds in most areas, never seen over 2Mb and pings over 150ms.

Can't stream music etc.

I went on a 12month contract with three (£15 - 600mins 3000 txts/ultd data), but got out of it after three months, 3g network is fine in built up areas, towns/cities etc, but between them it is horrendous around East Anglia from my experience. I had tried all the modems I could in my SGS3. I told them a number of postcodes I couldn't get a signal and eventually they let me have my PAC code.

Moved to Virgin as of Monday (which runs off the back of Tmob/Orange aka EE) much better more consistent connection when I was out today (probably the 2g helps maintain a connection between residential areas?) plus speeds are better at my home and work address, bonus.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 23:57:58)

I have a sim only plan with Vodafone, on a very good deal (basically half price).

Unfortunately the data allowance is only 1Gb and I constantly go over so i've been trying out the various networks recently.

I know what you mean by 3. Weird network in the fact that they don't have a data connection at all on 2g. Outdoors, the signal is excellent and I am quite rural but there are places where it drops to 2g.

EE seem to have extensive Edge coverage. Saying that, the only time EE really drops 3G is in the rural location where 3 does.

The T-Mobile data network is excellent, really fast speeds. Orange is shockingly slow, can't even load photos on facebook.

O2 and Vodafone are MILES behind EE and 3 for 3G coverage.

Funny, as I was on Vodafone in exactly the same predicament, kept going over the 500mb allowance (I was paying £10.50 for 600 mins, ultd texts, 100mms, Vodafone passport and 500mb internet).

In the end I left them for three, but like I said it just didn�t work out. I need a phone to have signal in most areas, not only built up ones.

So far so good on Virgin

Edited by deleted (Thu 15-Nov-12 12:52:25)

coverage is subjective depending what street you live on or general area you live in

tried 3 twice my self over 2-3 months and my brother was with them for 2 years, main issue is out side or in green belt land or an motorway three is good, indoors your lucky if it works, where as O2 and orange put masts in housed areas and work places, not sure about other networks as i have only ever seen O2 expanding placing pole masts every 1 mile apart now (guess they are putting the 3g900 to good use)

also the other issue that was persistent issue with 3 in general getting Stuck with phantom 3G network (you got signal bars but they do not move, no voice/text or data services for 1-2 mins before the phone works out its really not connected any more and forces an network reconnect)

but TBO the other network operators have the same issue with Phantom 3G as well but 3 make the issues happen often due to bad cell placement and overloaded data load (the one plan)and not overlapping the 3g cells so to many dead spots for the phone to get confused and stuck
The phantom 3G happens on me giffgaff some times (same 1-2 min recover time) and my orange blackberry 9870 phone does it as well(but blackberry recover time is only 30 seconds to self fix the issue) why i tend to just leave my BB on 2G so i get no lost/missed calls due to 3G not been used (get 3x more battery life as well)

well t-mobile the full monty (£26 or £36) 3G only no 4G, Mostly unlimited data with constant traffic management (need VPN to use youtube i found)
and giffgaff they use O2 (£12) with 1gb an hour and 3gb an day data Ban limits

Have to echo the comments re Three being good in urban areas yet hopeless in the country. I'm currently with GiffGaff (O2) who have an excellent 2G network and reasonable 3G - it covers almost everywhere I need it. But I'm sick of their major outages (3 or 4 this year, one lasted 3 days) so have been trying ThreeUK on PAYG for a month. They are fine outdoors especially in urban areas but go indoors especially a mile or more from a mast and signal evaporates.

Check out the RootMetrics UK coverage maps for a "real world" view of signal. Data is crowd-sourced using iOS & Android mapping apps so the more people contributing the better. I've mapped most of Lytham St Annes (postcode FY8) on Three whilst a friend did O2 and they compare fairly well. However look at Three in South Ribble area of Lancashire (Leyland/Chorley - start with postcode PR7 and head Northwards) and you can see the difference outside of urban areas.

With regards to speeds I usually got 2-4mbps on Three, similar to O2. If next to a Three mast then I got 5-8mbps whereas O2 always stayed about 2-3mbps so they have that in their favour.

The conclusion I've come to is that no network is "Perfect" and you need to go with whichever network has coverage where you need it - home, work, friends houses etc.