T-Mobile coverage. Thought they share with EE.. not so?

Got T-Mobile SIM card few days ago. I was in assumption they share masts with EE and Orange so must be pretty good coverage.. Was working fine at home (same as my old O2)..

went to a movie at westfield - got my phone disconnected just outside my home (very good O2 reception though). had troubles to connect it while on A40, no signal in the cinema...

Am I being had? Shall I sell it on ebay (its 12 mo contract) and beg O2 to take me back?? Whats going on with T-Mob anyway?

In reply to a post by maxima120:

Got T-Mobile SIM card few days ago. I was in assumption they share masts with EE and Orange so must be pretty good coverage.. Was working fine at home (same as my old O2)..

EE *is* Orange and T-mobile, they're one company. Its quite likely the EE mast is nowhere near the O2 mast, so you get coverage holes in different places. Where O2 didn't have signal you quite likely will find EE has signal.

Have you used their coverage map (set to 3G or 2G modes, as T-Mobile doesn't have 4G) here to check:
https://explore.ee.co.uk/coverage-checker

Sorry but your guess is wrong. apparently it is known issue. I am an idiot I haven't looked on the google before I bought it..

I was talking London mate.. what holes?

EE is complete screw up.. obviously they stripped half of 3g masts to beef up the 4g coverage and claim it as the biggest network (on expense of 3g users),,,

I am going to try and rid off this contract! geez and ppl swearing at the bankers.. everyone tries to screw more money than they can chew..

here is one example (but I've seen more): http://www.postdesk.com/ee-signal-problems-iphone-5-...

I get literally full 4g signal around most of both westfield shopping centres.

The signal goes a little in the stratford westfield cinema agreed, that's just because the cinema is made from metalic materials, you're basically sat in a metal and concrete box. The O2 signals ok here as the mast is closer by probably. That said O2 often goes to gprs in London for me.

A40 I have no issues.

The frequency O2 use means their 3G can penetrate concrete better as it can travel further but EE have kind of counteracted this by having much more masts than O2.

Overall they're both very similar in my experience. Due to mast layout some areas have black spots where others don't.

Edit: can honestly say I only don't get signal in central in one or two locations. Often a switch of airplane mode off and on makes the phone switch from a weak t mobile signal to a very strong orange one. Once EE integrate everything into tmobile standards this will go away.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 02-Feb-14 15:37:54)

The problem is i have 3Gcard and apparently they sacrificed 3g for 4g. Thats the point..

I still disagree as to save battery I turn my LTE off and I have no issues. I do this most days. What I do see is that sometimes it goes to E signal in areas and enabling LTE gives me full 4G.
The reasoning for the E is that the 4g upgrades also have the old 2g equipment upgraded, so the signal goes from gprs to E on the 2G side and the output power is cranked up. So the basic 2g signal should go further once 4g is added. So yes people will suddenly start seeing E more but it's likely they would have seen gprs before. In some areas where upgrades happen clearly 3G has been affected but that's rectified in time & other networks have these issues too.

I sometimes find in Westfield shepherds bush when it's really busy I cannot make calls even with full service. That's literally due to the sheer amount of people there on one cell site. With t mobile orange and ee having the larger customer base. I also had this issue on 3 and vodafone though. It's only happened in westfield shepherds bush for me though ever.

I guess find what works for you but I drive along the a40 a fair amount and will literally stream radio along the journey without a buffer. iPhone 5 here.

EE have dismantled some old orange sites but that should only be in areas where t mobile coverage was already there.
The T mobile 3G service was chosen over the orange one as the orange masts often only maxed out at basic 3Mbps speeds whereas the T mobile ones had better speeds often upto 21 Mbps.

The tallest and best range orange sites were kept but their equipment was / is changed to meet t mobile standards.

Obviously whilst this work occurs there could be a black spot but it's temporary. I definitely think give it a better chance but you may just be unlucky in that the areas you go to are black spots although in central London I highly doubt that.

There's a lot of complaints that O2 signal suffers since the 4g upgrades too. Swings and roundabouts. I do agree though vue cinema westfield isn't great service. I usually get 1 or 2 bars of E and sometimes lose it all together. That said I don't make calls in the cinema so it's fine for me. As soon as I leave the building it's back to full service.

In reply to a post by maxima120:

The problem is i have 3Gcard and apparently they sacrificed 3g for 4g. Thats the point..

Not that simple, but all 4 main networks are making massive changes from 2013 through to 2016, and until the end of these big works, you could find coverage changing a lot. Even in London

O2 worked very well everythere

Yep all networks are having issues from the 4G rollouts as it often means equipment changes at the masts. To be frank EE are the furthest through so the disruptions likely to end soonest.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/dec/17/mobile-... gives a good idea of issues on all networks. Ultimately I think 4G will cause some issues.

Should really be noted that o2 is removing thousands of masts, the figures around 2560, this is exactly like EE has done with the orange t-mobile merger. There's around 10% of masts expected to go. So the effects should be pretty similar. o2 and vodafone are doing some mast-sharing type agreement. So it's one set of masts with 2 different operators... O2 are behind EE significantly with the overall plans for 4G (as are most networks) so EE really is the best idea we have right now of what's to come for the other networks engaging in similar work.

So the 4G works likely to cause issues on o2 / Voda, as is the cornerstone agreement (which is the dismantling of masts between o2 and vodafone so it's 1 network grid with 2 operators - as this happens expect downtime in some areas).

There were substantial issues with forums of 100s of pages long when o2 upgraded the Harrow area of London to 4G with people having no service for significant periods. Swings and roundabouts you've just been lucky but ultimately all are similar during this 4G transitional time and as sites are reduced.

http://www.o2.co.uk/network/future

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 02-Feb-14 18:27:34)

Agree EE 3G in and around London is [censored] poor. Drop outs, slow speeds and just patches of no signal.

It may be better on 4g but given the cost I never found out. Switched to three and am having a much better ride at present.

I'm reading forums and apparently EE4G uses a different APN and other things. I must say when I had T-mobile I was often seeing E and I think I barely ever see that now on actual EE. There's an implication that data is better on EE on the EE forums, even on 3G due to various technicalities.

Food for thought is that T-mobile contracts will automatically connect to T-mobile masts before falling back onto orange sites. The T-mobile ones are often weaker signal as the masts are often shorter. This is why so many orange sites have been kept and will be upgraded to 4GEE and T-mobile standard 3G... So right now Orange customers may get better experiences as they'll be defaulting to Orange sites and only falling back onto T-mobile. That said Orange masts often have slower speeds (albeit probably more reliable signal strength etc). No idea what actual EE chooses as a preference.

There seems some issues whereby customers on T-mobile often default to a T-mobile GPRS or Edge signal when there's a full strength Orange 3G signal in range too.

In time the Orange network wont even be there, just T-mobile. So orange sites will blast out T-mobile style signals. At this stage there wont be these issues as it'll all be one network.

Definitely some documentation of issues. That said on EE I don't see issues but I do have a 4G contract. I can genuinely say from as high as Barnet North London all the way into Central London and even as far out as Richmond I get 4G signal and it's usually almost full.

I think perhaps OP wants to go into the store and enquire regarding the APN settings.

I moved to Manchester a couple of months ago and live with another person on EE (Orange originally) and he suffers from terrible issues in the central manchester area. (Withington, Fallowfield etc) the city centre is good but where we live it is terrible. Nobody here has a EE (T-Mobile Originally) contract so I can't compare as to whether they have better signal around here.

The way they sell all their contracts on all their networks especially when in store is that you use the EE network and it's no different so if it is the case that the APN settings and the way you communicate with cell towers is different then there is clearly a problem here.

In reply to a post by maxima120:

O2 worked very well everythere

Not here

In reply to a post by brandscill:

I think perhaps OP wants to go into the store and enquire regarding the APN settings

All T-Mobile, Orange and EE customers now use the APN called everywhere

I thought that be the case but this was mentioned before me.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I'm reading forums and apparently EE4G uses a different APN and other things.

In reply to a post by brandscill:

I thought that be the case but this was mentioned before me.

My mate's T-mobile and my EE both use "everywhere" as the APN. but YMMV.

Apparently EE pushed out a carrier update making the APN 'everywhere'. Not every device has this carrier update, although virtually all do, so I doubt it's this... Some will still view going onto the other network as roaming if they are on old carrier settings. It's a very difficult process really to have seamless switching between two carriers, as an example switching from a T-mobile mast to an Orange mast mid call will result in the call dropping although the signal may still show as high. Ultimately until the network is solely T-Mobile / EE standards there's going to be discrepancies between signals in areas covered by both Orange and T-Mobile as clearly not everybody will just use the one mast.

I even think that with the everywhere APN, I still think it defaults to the home network as a priority (not entirely sure anymore though). If you scan for networks manually in an iPhone you will see EE mentioned twice... The top one is always the home carrier followed by the other one. Looking at my phone right now I'm defaulting to a 2 bar signal, whereas choosing the lower carrier gives me 4 bars in the same spot. So for whatever reason my phones choosing the worse signal, an iPhone 5... Both are showing as 3G. Now both work fine so I'm not worrying about it just an observation.

Interesting observation.

OP what are your APN settings?

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I can genuinely say from as high as Barnet North London all the way into Central London and even as far out as Richmond I get 4G signal and it's usually almost full.

thanks, this was helpful

seems very bad idea to pull masts down as it makes dead spots, 3G masts should be the last ones to be taken down

3 is best example of not having enough overlapping coverage, also does not help that data does not work when on roaming on orange

and not every one can set there phone to 2G only when they are in a weak 3g signal area, I leave my BB9900 phone on 2G only all the time, it lasts 3 days and i do not miss any calls, with 3G on i get 1 day maybe and 20% ish of my calls get diverted to my giffgaff/o2 phone (i set the no response to divert to my giffgaff phone so not to miss any calls, if my phone has no coverage or is stuck in phantom network{1-5 bars but no service)

Edited by leexgx (Fri 07-Feb-14 08:02:43)