Best mobile networks ?

The only bad point with three is the Customer Support, its mostly based in india and they rarely hear what your saying.
 
Get a payg sim and try a network before signing for two years or whatever. This assumes you have an unlocked phone. Round here all are fairly good for voice. For data Voda are good, O2 and Three reasonable and surprisingly to me EE are dire. My contract is up and looks like I'll be sticking with Vodafone on a 12 month sim only contract. There network is improving slowly. Depends where you live.

As to support then the two I've used are Three and Vodafone. Three were helpful though the operator I had was not easy to understand. Vodafone - useless. If you have an issue then hope it resolves itself or you can sort it yourself cos the ones I've dealt with were idiots.
 
2013 said:
The only bad point with three is the Customer Support, its mostly based in india and they rarely hear what your saying.
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because the uk based CS from the others is actually better?

granted the indians are horrible and make you feel like a monster for cancelling anything but they dont usually make me want to go burn down an EE or Voda store any time i ever have to interact with them
 
mark2410 said:
because the uk based CS from the others is actually better?

granted the indians are horrible and make you feel like a monster for cancelling anything but they dont usually make me want to go burn down an EE or Voda store any time i ever have to interact with them
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When I left Three they were very good. Asked for pac code and the Indian advisor couldn't have been more helpful. I'm on a business tariff with Vodafone and supposed to get a better support service. I dread to think what personal customers get with them. I've never really had to contact customer services until I joined Vodafone a year ago. Number wouldn't port, couldn't claim the included freebie and then a network fault soon after joining. On the upside I ended up with a year of Spotify and also 6 months of Netflix because their system was screwed up :D I said nothing after the hassle porting my number over. Porting problem was Vodafone end and not EE whom I was porting from.
 
My work phone is on Vodafone and personal phone on O2.

I have to say that Vodafone is terrible for me. I go round the UK in my job as a consultant and generally have nothing but frustration using Vodafone. Mainly Internet connection being poor with it dropping back GPRS or Edge and some time no data at all. I could understand this if I was out in the countryside but not when working at Canary Wharf or other parts of London. Vodafone is generally hated at the company I work at. Phone calls can drop out more as well.

I don't generally have these troubles with O2.
 
They are all generally as bad as each other on balance. (Except GiffGaff who are even worse and completely useless for data and just about tolerable for voice/texts).

Lucifurr said:
My work phone is on Vodafone and personal phone on O2.

I have to say that Vodafone is terrible for me. I go round the UK in my job as a consultant and generally have nothing but frustration using Vodafone. Mainly Internet connection being poor with it dropping back GPRS or Edge and some time no data at all. I could understand this if I was out in the countryside but not when working at Canary Wharf or other parts of London. Vodafone is generally hated at the company I work at. Phone calls can drop out more as well.

I don't generally have these troubles with O2.
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Voda have done a load of network upgrades in the last month or so - loads of places have gone from getting Edge at 80kbit/s to a fairly consistent 3G/HSDPA+ at just under 7.2Mbit down (I assume they are using whichever standard it is that is 7.2Mbit) and just under 2Mbit up.

EDIT: My general experience of voda is that I can usually get a signal on them better than any other network - loads of palces they are the only network I can get any signal at all but often the actual quality of the data/voice service is significantly below what the number of bars for reception would usually indicate - whereas when I'm in somewhere with good coverage of all the networks O2 is usually a lot more consistent than voda.
 
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Rroff said:
Voda have done a load of network upgrades in the last month or so - loads of places have gone from getting Edge at 80kbit/s to a fairly consistent 3G/HSDPA+ at just under 7.2Mbit down (I assume they are using whichever standard it is that is 7.2Mbit) and just under 2Mbit up.
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Yeah, one of my colleague who lives down in the south west, I am not sure where, was told that Vodafone were upgrading infrastructure in her area. After the upgrade its almost impossible for her to make calls and has to use a landline for voice calls.
 
Everyone has different experiences - depending largely on where they use their phone - so the information you get from a question like this is unlikely to be that useful.

You're much better off just getting some PAYG sims and/or asking friends what the coverage is like in your area.
 
It depends on where you live. I rate Three very highly as I get a good 3G signal just about everywhere I go. In one case I was in Brora (about 50 miles north of Inverness) and still had no problems. I was with O2 before and Three was just a revelation for me in terms of coverage and signal strength.
 
I did fairly comperhensive testing off all networks and all around London, but it was 3 and a bit years ago now (before 4G and I think before EE?). This is data and not cell based.

Vodafone - great speeds if you could get a connection, rather unreliable
O2 - Good speeds, good availability (better inside buildings than others)
Three - amazing speeds, very good availability
Orange & T-mobile - poor speeds, poor availability

So I switched to Three. Then Three gradually got slower, their 4G roll out took forever. As that 2 year contract came to an end, I tried an EE SIM and was amazed by their speeds and coverage, so made the switch to them. Haven't had any problems, generally very good speed and availability.
 
Coverage results will always be subjective, by their very nature.

Objectively, EE has the largest network subject statistically they are most likely to give you some kind of signal.

However, O2 and Vodafone will work better in buildings, because the frequencies they use are much lower than EE's. This again is subjective because EE might well work better ub I've building if an EE mast is very close to that building but the O2/VF one is further away.

Vodafone is working rapidly to improve its network and they have the ability to be the best. Their network team is excellent.

My feeling is EE are going to be run into the ground under BT, just like O2 was (it's one of the reasons why O2's network is so lousy, especially 3G).

Either way, an interesting two or three years are coming.
 
Been on 3 for 3 years. Got 4G almost as soon as it was available. Never had a problem with them, so far & I can use my package in Spain & France.

I have tried O2 - Garbage packages
Virgin - No 4G
Vodafone - Expensive
 
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