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In Rural UK, Old 2G Phones Beat 3G Smarphones For Connectivity
hypnosec writes "A new research has showed that smartphones are worse in connectivity than 2G enabled mobile phones in remote areas in the United Kingdom. The research conducted by telecom watchdog OfCom has revealed that users should invest in mobile phones different than latest Smartphones, if they prioritize best reception for calls. 'As would be expected, all the 2G operators have widespread coverage of the roads that were surveyed with relatively few not-spots. 3G coverage is much lower on the roads driven, likely reflecting the stage of network roll out in Devon at the time of the study,' the OfCom has reported."
Iphone is suprisingly fussy about mobile reception in a congested city. If you have 3g enabled and are in one of the many odd spots it just won't ring. Calls just fail to get to you even with a good signal. Its very odd an absolutly infuriating when you miss an important call. And with 3g turned off you wonder what your paying the high subscription for?
So there is more 2G coverage than 3G coverage? I am shocked. And can't many phones turn off 3G service and fall back to 2G?
Oh. I get it. It's like one of those, "in soviet Russia..." jokes, but instead, "In rural UK..." Brit humor. Never could wrap my head around it.
3G is actually far better than 2G, at least with the formerly government owned's network.
I think this is basic knowledge to anyone who has spent some time with mobile phones. Phones are getting nicer screens, better graphics etc. but the actual talk and call abilities were pretty much optimized a long time ago by companies like Nokia who were in the business when talk was all that mattered.
Nowadays some companies are even willing to cut on the call quality because customers are valuing other parts more highly.
If you want remote areas, look at some place like Australia or Alaska. That's remote!
Obviously, in areas with comparatively early cell build-outs, there are very likely going to be areas where less-than-bleeding edge is all you get. So, if you live in one of those, paying a premium for some zOMG 4G++!!! burn-through-your-monthly-data-cap-in-10-minutes device is not a good plan. Ok. So much is obvious.
The relevant question is, do recent devices fall back gracefully, and how do older or 2G only devices compare to their contemporaries in terms of things like antenna quality? Having a 3G device; but being limited to 2G capabilities in a 2G area is simply an inevitable inconvenience. If, however, 3G devices that just silently fail outside of 3G areas, or take excessively long times to fall back, or do some silly little dance where they switch between a hopelessly weak 3G signal and the available 2G tower every couple of seconds, or if contemporary RF design is based on the theory that all customers loath antennas and live 300 meters from a cell tower, then the fact that some areas are 2G only starts to factor into your buying decision...
There are still many places in the USA where there is no 3G, or limited 3G while 2G coverage is decent. As a result, turning off 3G is needed if you want reliable service.
Besides, the "late-night aggressive shopping" is better in Tottenham.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I live in the middle of a town in UK and I get not connection 90% of the time! No 2G, no 3G, not with older dumbphones nor newer smartphones. Instead of saying it's bad somewhere why not just say the truth - UK is light years behind Europe when it comes to things like broadband or network coverage. Ridiculous!
The 2G phones were designed at a time when the manufacturers still thought people gave a shit about coverage or battery life.
Apple has shown us all that they don't. Give 'em a slick user-interface and an App Store, and they'll just accept the poor coverage and the need to charge the phone every day.
The regulator went on to add that older phones passed the call testing with 97 percent success rate while latest Smartphones managed only 95 percent during the test.
It's just 2% difference (and we don't have any information about statistical population). So if they tested 100 2G phones and 100 smartphones, 3 2G phones and 5 3G phones where not suited for the given area. Wow, big deal...
In love, war and slashdot discussions, everything is allowed.
The article misrepresents the Ofcom report. Here's what the report actually said:
However, in the more rural areas that the phones were tested, the feature/entry-level phones generally returned somewhat better performance than smartphones for call completion and call setup. This may be due to the reduced complexity of antenna on these devices and 2G phones not having issues in switching between 2G and 3G networks. These performance differences are likely in practice to be modest, and not necessarily a factor that consumers should base their choice of phone on.
Source: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/telecoms-research/mobile-not-spots/mobile-coverage-for-consumers/
They go on to say that this may be in part due to the complexity of switching between 3G and 2G and that it can be mitigated by turning off 3G in your smartphone in rural areas...construing this as "users should invest in mobile phones different than latest Smartphones" is a bit of a leap.
In the US, particularly on slashdot, we are routinely told about the superior unlimited 100% 4G coverage in the UK, Europe, Asia that is provide for something like $5 a year. What's this 2G nonsense?
This is self explanatory if you stop to think about it..... 2g works on a lower frequency, which means they have a longer wave length. In the US and Canada for certain, they use the same tower to broadcast the 3g signal as well as the 2g signal, and they are not allowed to broadcast beyond a certain power level. When you are broadcasting from the same point, the 2g signal WILL travel farther than the 3g signal before the signal degrades beyond usable. This is only going to get worse when they introduce 4g, as it requires an even higher frequency. The cell companies either need to erect more towers, which is not cost effective for them since they are already dealing with a crumbling infrastructure, or they need to stop introducing technologies that require higher and higher frequencies, which they don't want to do, as the higher the frequency, the faster the data rate, and they need faster Internet for these so called 'smart phones'. It's a catch 22 for the companies, and either way, we the customers, seem to be getting the short end of the stick.
Most phone's and all smart phone's can switch settings and you can hard set the 2G if you like, so don't be silly and dumb down your device, just get smart and use the setting available to you,
I can verify the coverage is awful, but then not receiving any sort of reception at all is common. Making a phone call from some of the more rural locations is impossible.
big distance = big antenna
shit distance = 1" pcb printed circuit antenna in a metal box
maybe if phones had an external antenna capability it wouldnt be so much of problem, at least for cars
but this is simple physics, go ask a HAM radio guy/gal what the performance of a integrated PCB antenna is compared to an external single whip vs a yagi vs a dipole, protip: try not to get in the way of whatever they are drinking when they blow it in your face laughing.
So the solution is to buy out of date phones, and not build new/fix 3G networks? Why does that not surprise me?
Ooh, a smarfone!
(just pointing that out for any non-UK residents who won't know better)
to anyone who has ever ventured 50 miles form an urban centre. I have long observed that phone reception and battery life both shrink to zilch when you go "down the country". As I have rural relatives that I visit often I have developed my own routine for surviving this. Firstly switch off automatic carrier selection because the battery drains very quickly when the phone is hunting between carriers. Secondly switch off 3G mode if your phone allows it. Finally switch off Wifi unless you know the place you are staying supports it. On the bright side at least you can probably get a very good gps signal.
Mildly humorous anecdote: 10 years ago my farmer brother in law was an active member of a local anti-phone mast group who lobbied against a mast being erected on a local mountain citing both aesthetic and health reasons. He has spent most of the time since complaining about not being able to get a decent phone signal.
well doh 2g tech with it's bigger cells has more coverage and more penetration with it's wavelength, especially if they're talking about 900mhz 2g! but why do you have separate operators for tech that's shipped in devices that has handovers between the technologies? I mean, I'm writing this over an edge connection but should I take this outside of this cabin to a better spot I'd get switched to pretty decent 3g. but having separate operators for these two technologies is a total fail of grand scale.
I guess uk is special with it's crap "3", the licensing bodies seemed to really fuck the spectrum use up there.
btw. 900mhz 3g makes all the difference where it's available - and these proper 2.5g support and 3g switching are the things that separate crap phones with crap comm chips from decent phones which support the network like they're supposed to(why don't some 3g phones have edge support? well, that's actually partially again fault of the licensing bodies for the spectrums).
(actually the article seems to mention that it's just some crappily designed smartphones which have troubles with 2g to 3g switching, you see, money doesn't buy quality everytime, 100e phone might function better than a 600e showpiece)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Generally there are the good 2G networks that have rather lackluster 3G networks (O2, Vodafone)
And vice versa (The others)
But T-Mobile uses 3's 3G network (which I consider easily the best) and a combined T-Mobile+Orange 2G network (not as good as Vodafone's 2G coverage but really not bad at all). Seems a really good all-rounder. And they have nice modern Twitter based support where they actually answer you.
I found that out in the military. Navy, to be precise?
We were at sea on training exercises, and had been off Oahu all week long. It was Friday, and we were supposed to be coming back into port on Monday, but due to some of our gear going *BZORCH*, we wanted to come in early for repairs.
Naturally, we were down on CUDIXS, which meant no outgoing message traffic, which meant no talking to the port engineer in Pearl.
I was on the O2 level with my old, 1-penny analog brickphone, talking to friends and family while we were 12 miles off shore. The Ops officer was trying to use his small, expensive, shiny Motorola digital sport phone, and not getting anything. I knew if he couldn't get through, we were going to be spending the weekend at sea, so I offered him my phone.
"That thing won't get any signal out here," he sneered. "What's the number, sir?" He humored me and told me, so I dialed.
"Yes, this is petty officer "Ionotter", is the port engineer there? Yes, thank you. Hello, sir? Yes, this is (PO "I") with the Reuben James? My Ops officer wants to talk to you. Sure, here he is."
And we got to pull into port before 1630.
If you're line of sight, digital is fine. If you want OTH, stick with analog. (And for the record, the best I've done was 90 miles off the Na'Pali coast of Kaua'i, with three full bars.)
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I'm in the heart of the USA. And one of the things I noticed about my brother, daughters, my male friend, and others, is all of their $500 smart phones just wouldn't receive calls sometimes. The phone just wouldn't ring. Now finally I and two other people on my phone plan have gotten Android phones, leaving only my mother with a non-Smart, basic flip phone. Although my phone has been fairly reliable, nephew tried to call me once and my phone never rang. And this is in an area with good cell phone coverage. I even get 4G. So he had to call my mother on her flip phone and tell her to pass the message on to me. It's only happened to me once but still, as far as I know, my mother with her flip phone is the only person in the family who hasn't missed any calls due to the phone just not ringing.
And the "penetration" within buildings, and the battery life... it's something *known* in the design of the 3G systeme!
With micro USB as the standard mobile phone charger, every computer is effectively a mobile phone charger. If there are chargers everywhere, is battery life that big a deal?
In Australia the old CDMA band is being used for 850MHz UMTS, with very good coverage, in fact better than 2G, by Telstra. Optus & Vodafone use 900MHz UMTS in some of their GSM spectrum. This can be done because they have a spectrum licence. What they do with their chunk of spectrum is their business. All three carriers also operate 2100MHz UMTS, but Telstra is focusing its efforts on 850MHz. Voda & Optus are sticking to dual bands since 2100MHz gives more capacity (greater chunk of spectrum) for city use. Telstra's chunk of 850MHz is big enough for city use too. Europe is rolling out 900MHz UMTS and the US and Canada also have 850MHz UMTS.
Lower frequency UMTS can have better coverage than GSM for the same power level. GSM is a TDMA system and the normal timeslots limit subscribers to being within 35km of the base. This was a problem in Australia with the large wide open spaces with just enough hills for good cell sites. Telstra tweaked the standard to only use half the timeslots, letting subscribers be up to 70km away. The CDMA signalling used by UMTS doesn't have this problem, and just like CMDA2000 the limitation is based on signal strength.
I'm guessing that there would be very places in the UK that are more than 35km from a cell site. Are any carriers using 900MHz UMTS? I'd suspect too that the 2G signals giving better coverage are all 900MHz ones, as 1800MHz is quite similar in propagation to the standard 2100MHz frequency of 3G in Europe).
With micro USB as the standard mobile phone charger, every computer is effectively a mobile phone charger. If there are chargers everywhere, is battery life that big a deal?
Yes.
Next stupid quetion?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
"[DELETE]A[/] new research has showed that smartphones are worse in connectivity than 2G enabled mobile phones in remote areas in the United Kingdom. The research conducted by telecom watchdog OfCom has revealed that users should invest in mobile phones [DELETE]different[/] [INSERT]other[/] than [INSERT]the[/] latest Smartphones, if they prioritize [INSERT]getting the[/] best reception for calls. 'As would be expected, all the 2G operators have widespread coverage of the roads that were surveyed with relatively few [DELETE]not-spots[/][INSERT]dead areas[/]. 3G coverage is much lower on the roads driven, likely reflecting the stage of network roll out in Devon at the time of the study,' [DELETE]the[/] OfCom has reported."