In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

There's a tower block there. No other masts visable that I can recall.

Nice source of power the roof of a tower block - and probably easy planning permission

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

What I find odd is that he signal at the bus station is worse than it is at home - and the bus station is LOS to the tower and not far away.

Does the bus station have a metal roof by chance? Or perhaps its too close and the angle of the transmitter - or the antennas aren't set to radiate in a circular pattern but are biased in a specific direction.

What I find odd is that he signal at the bus station is worse than it is at home - and the bus station is LOS to the tower and not far away.

Masts that give maximum range don't really work like that. The signal is likely to be stronger a little further from the mast than right next to it or directly below. That's just down to the radius of the transmission. So in the pub, assuming it's straight below, that might be worse than say 50m down the road for example.
The higher a mast, the more this occurs. So these LTE masts will definitely experience this phenomena. I live 70- 100m from a mast and standing next to it I get -70 on my iPhone, whereas in my house upstairs I get -60 (so a stronger signal, yet further away, a couple of streets away actually).

Also bus stations will contain two materials 1) Metal and 2) Concrete
Both of which are basically the death of wireless and will severely severely hinder the signals.

Then there's 3 transmitters, so in some areas you're not going to have a directly straight line signal to the transmitter which can severely reduce performance.

It's difficult to know where the optimal point is however a good way to check is to go onto your iPhone, go to make a call and enter *3001#12345#* press call.
Your signal changes to a number. -55 to -60 is around maximum signal and -120 is very bad. It will often hold onto -130 but below -120 data is unlikely to work well (if at all) and calls will be all over the place.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 29-Aug-13 19:23:13)

That looks like a good culprit. If you look there's a fair few transmitters on top which are likely to be LTE as that'll give really decent range. It's likely that orange is on the same mast and it fits in with the image (as the 2nd lot of cells are just below). Whether they would upgrade both I'm not sure. I'm drawn to think they would just upgrade the T-mobile ones as they're higher but it depends if there's enough to give a clear range all around. They could even turn off the Orange signal as part of optimisation.

This is the kind of issue EE is having. They may decide to turn off the orange transmission as it's lower down and not worth the investment. The T-mobile ones on top should give better signal... When optimisation occurs and the orange sites turned off no doubt one or two people are going to lose signal at home, just because they're unlucky and for whatever reason that T-mobile site doesn't get to them whereas the orange one below was angled slightly different and made it to them. For the most of us though it goes smoothly & usually there's enough masts around to keep this to a minimum.

EDIT: In most cases where it shows multiple masts in a confined space, they're usually on the same mast.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 29-Aug-13 19:31:43)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

That looks like a good culprit. If you look there's a fair few transmitters on top which are likely to be LTE as that'll give really decent range. It's likely that orange is on the same mast and it fits in with the image (as the 2nd lot of cells are just below). Whether they would upgrade both I'm not sure. I'm drawn to think they would just upgrade the T-mobile ones as they're higher but it depends if there's enough to give a clear range all around. They could even turn off the Orange signal as part of optimisation.

That makes sense, thanks. PCPro magazine said eventually the former Orange network code would be turned off, leaving just the former T-Mobile code but as both are branded EE nobody should notice. I wonder what network code (234-33 or 234-30) the 4G is using?

This is the kind of issue EE is having. They may decide to turn off the orange transmission as it's lower down and not worth the investment. The T-mobile ones on top should give better signal... When optimisation occurs and the orange sites turned off no doubt one or two people are going to lose signal at home, just because they're unlucky and for whatever reason that T-mobile site doesn't get to them whereas the orange one below was angled slightly different and made it to them. For the most of us though it goes smoothly & usually there's enough masts around to keep this to a minimum.

EDIT: In most cases where it shows multiple masts in a confined space, they're usually on the same mast.

Interesting stuff, I know people on O and T plans in the same town (a long way from this mast) who are all upset that signal levels have changed (for the worse) - so I'm pretty sure that what you suggest is happening. It will take a few months to get close to the coverage we had of two networks :-/

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

Well I can't work out where it is. There are no masts anywhere near the pins on the map so they must be on that roof.

Interesting stuff, no idea what's going on there.

I've just bought from ebay a new unlocked Huawei E5776, so I'm thinking of going into my local EE shop to get a SIM card only PAYG mobile broadband tomorrow.... will let you know if I do any speed tests. (But then I'll be testing the WiFi reliability between my phone/laptop and the Mobile WiFi unit!).

Edited by deleted (Sat 31-Aug-13 15:41:18)