3 (Network)

baz047

baz047

baz047

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14 Oct 2008
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173
Is anyone else with them? because I'm having a horrible time with my contract phone. It cuts out during calls, signal can be hard to find (even with about 7 masts less than a mile away) and the phones OS is shockingly unreliable.

Anyone else get this?
 
My anecdotal evidence is that the 3 Network is not as reliable as many of the other major networks. So, when you talk of cutting out and unreliability, I don't find it surprising.

Does anyone know if there's some technical reason why 3 should be worse than the others, e.g it's spectrum allocation??

Rgds
 
I can't complain at all about 3 but my housemate had problems with them with his 6500 Slide, now he has an LG Viewty and it's fine. What phone do you have? This may be the problem.
 
I would never use 3 again. I had a contract about 2 years after they started and it was the worst thing I have ever done. I did buy a 3 mobile ZTE broadband dongle for my laptop and even that is shockingly poor. Signal drops, random disconnections, incredibly poor customer services (And they are all liars to boot!). Never again!
 
radderfire said:
Does anyone know if there's some technical reason why 3 should be worse than the others, e.g it's spectrum allocation??
Click to expand...

From a theoretical point of view, Vodafone and 3 have the 'best' part of the spectrum. Vodafone got their good bit because they paid a lot of money for it. The government sold the other best chunks to 3 in order to maximise competition. O2 has the part that's most likely to see interference from other wireless technologies.

The problem with 3 is that they don't own a 2G network. Orange provide their 2G back-up. In areas of poor signal strength, the hand-off between 3's network and Orange's network is very complex. I also suspect that 3's base stations are a lot more reluctant to hand-over to 2G since going through Orange's network costs 3 a lot of money.

On a side note, I complained to 3 about poor reception recently. I used to get great 3 reception at home and now I'm lucky to get a couple of bars. They acknowledged that it was a technical fault with their network and they were looking to get it fixed.

However, they offered two pieces of advice in the meantime:

1) Reboot the phone in order to latch onto the best signal <--- makes some sense
2) Perform a factory reset of the phone <--- :confused: possibly the worst advice I've ever heard. 3 really expect me to lose all of my personal data on the off chance that it might improve signal strength slightly?
 
I am in the last couple of months into my contract with 3. At the beginning I had no end of issues with reception and dropped calls when switching from a 3g to 2g area. I resolved the issue by following the advice from Tunney (a few months ago) by setting my phone to 2G or GSM.
 
Pdog said:
I am in the last couple of months into my contract with 3. At the beginning I had no end of issues with reception and dropped calls when switching from a 3g to 2g area. I resolved the issue by following the advice from Tunney (a few months ago) by setting my phone to 2G or GSM.
Click to expand...

Which is definitely good advice, but Three branded phones all have the ability to select GSM only locked out. As such, you are forced onto their 3G network whenever the phones finds signal. I'm lucky in that I use sim free, unlocked phones, so I can select GSM only. However, when I leave it on dual-mode, I get soooo many dropped calls, poor quality calls, etc.
 
I was actually thinking of going with a 3 contract soon, i'm really not sure if i should bother now. Its between t-mobile, o2 or 3. T-moible i don't get signal in work, o2 i don't get signal at home, sounds like i won't get one anywhere with 3 :p Choices....
 
I am STUCK with 3 at the moment, even if you get decent service the customer services are terrible - anyone thinking of going with 3 don't bother - i'm tempted to pay the £200 odd just to get out of my contract early!!
 
Customer service isn't great, though I've never had to use it for anything important.

The signal issues have been solved with my new handset, going from a k770i to an E71 is night and day! The E71 allows switching between HSDPA and 3G and lower, whereas the k770 was stuck on the poor quality 3G the whole time.
 
I am on an 18 month contract, due to end in July, I have a 6500 classic.

Up until about 1 month ago, I had terrible signal at my house in Leeds, at home in Huddersfield it was fine, but in Leeds the signal would cut out ever 5-10 minutes, making phone calls absolutely useless.

The signal seems fine now although it's definitely been a lesson in making sure you have a good signal with a network before commiting to a contract with them.
 
I've just started my third 18 month term with "3".

First I had a K800i. Reception was awesome, everywhere I went. Especially secondary school as the mast was less than 50 metres away from it.

Second I upgraded to an N95, reception was great at school, but abysmal at home.

Just upgraded again to a Tocco Ultra and the reception is now excellent, at home as well.
 
I just paid 3 78 quid to **** off and i'm now on Vodafone and iv never been happier. They offered me an N95 8gb with unltd calls, unltd texts and unltd internet for £18 per month to stay and I still paid them off to release me from their horrible grasp. The customer services are easily the worst I have ever dealt with and yes, it's the switching between 2g and 3g/orange networks that causes the hideous signal problems. It's virtualy unusable wherever I go and i've tried several handsets.

The thing that really gets my goat (strange phrase that, what's the origin?) is that because they combine networks they can say they have the best coverage for 3g in the uk, but that aint much good if the way the phones manage the signal and the switching networks makes it ****. I rarely recieve a call if i'm in a building or even if the phone is in my jeans. + the phone would rather opt for half a bar of 3g signal than a full bar of 2g/gprs, so without the option of enabling 2g only you're screwed. Took me an hour to get the woman on the end of the phone to shut up about how great they are and how valued i was so i could cancel....................agony.

pain

anguish

3 customers....................."emergency calls only" ring a bell?

3, i bite my thumb in your general direction.......spit.

hate.

(i'm normally sane, but the three network have made me ill, really)
 
baz047 said:
Is anyone else with them? because I'm having a horrible time with my contract phone. It cuts out during calls, signal can be hard to find (even with about 7 masts less than a mile away) and the phones OS is shockingly unreliable.

Anyone else get this?
Click to expand...

Is it a C902 by any chance? I had the same problem. Found their customer service about as useful as my dogs tail when riding a bike. Im not with Orange and very happy.
 
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