Question/rant!

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Soldato
Joined
24 Jul 2004
Posts
22,593
Location
Devon, UK
Why is it that, sometimes, I can have a full 3G signal on a phone and yet no webpages will load (they just time out)?

I always thought that if there was a poor signal and/or lots of interference, it would be reflected in the signal strength?
 
I don't think signal strength is a good indication of network capacity/speed of the local aerial.

Kinda like when everyone local jumps on the interwebz at night, I've still got a full connection but it's dog slow... Grrrr, I hate BT! :p
 
AndyCr15 said:
Agreed, cell strength is often not so good an indicator of what speed you'll get -

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18276841

I'm on Orange and have had enough of their terrible, unreliable data connections, T-Mobile look to be similar.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be because T-Mobile merged with Orange :confused: :rolleyes:

My GiffGaff/O2 3G/HSDPA connection is fine, quick loading pages, and YouTube videos load/buffer instantly with no stutter, same with iPlayer.
 
AndyCr15 said:
Nope, the only time you might switch from one to the other at the moment is if your phone is looking for a 2G connection. 3G is still seperate as far as I'm aware.
Click to expand...

yeap that is correct, being a t-mobile user, I've noticed that only 2G signal comes on, when switching to orange.
 
Sorry yeah, it's an iPhone4 on Orange/TMobile. Girlfriend has a 3GS and the same thing happens to her.

The reason I ask is that in my house you get normally 4-5 bars of 3G signal but it only seems to work about 50% of the time, the rest of the time it'll just time out.

I mean making calls and texts are absolutely fine, but what's the point in stepping up to 3G if it can't actually transfer data at all, let alone at that speed? Just seems bizarre. :/
 
Vodafone is terrible only realised since I started doing tests. However very few blank spots, always get some sort of signal.
Always good 3G signal and upload speed is nearly always high. But they must not have enough capacity as it's like 0.2-0.3 range most of the time.
So surly msut be their throughput, rather than signal strength.
 
most reliable 3G service I have had has been on vodafone. i have had the same thing with orange/tmobile where the signal shows but no connection on either 2g or 3g. vodafone would always give me something. my vodafone dongle would also pick up 3g where my phone with vodafone sim in wouldn't which is probably down to the phone.

i found 3 great but only if you were in the signal area. they also seemed to restict more services and content than vodafone.
 
mrk1@1 said:
most reliable 3G service I have had has been on vodafone. i have had the same thing with orange/tmobile where the signal shows but no connection on either 2g or 3g. vodafone would always give me something. my vodafone dongle would also pick up 3g where my phone with vodafone sim in wouldn't which is probably down to the phone.

i found 3 great but only if you were in the signal area. they also seemed to restict more services and content than vodafone.
Click to expand...
when did you experience that with 3? They used to have a walled garden back in the day but are as open as any other provider today with faster speeds (for me) almost anywhere in the UK.
 
Being on T-mobile Ive noticed something similar that Ill have full signal but the 3G just wont send anything, on gingerbread u can actual see when the data is working so I usually look at that to tell when its working, however this happens rarely and normally I got good 3g. However my friend is on Orange and he has such a bad experience with there 3g, they tell him he should get great signal in his house but its just useless cant even make phone calls properly. They then said something was wrong with the cell tower and it would be stored in 1 week. Been 1 months and still same problem. He moved a few days ago and now its even worse, in his room he get no 3g at all.

Give Orange a call and let them know about your problem and hopefully they can sort it out for u.
 
I think pretty much all networks are suffering this issue at the minute.

I can have full HSDPA signals on both my personal phone (orange) and my work phone (voda) and yet the simplest of web pages refuse to load.

I'd hazard a guess at over subscription being the cause but I doubt we'll ever get any definitive answer from the providers.
 
Tower failure does happen, everything from nicking wire to vandals and in general is repaired in under a month. Most networks SLA for a tower repair is a lot lower but the weirdest stuff happens (eg a recent one near me was that the landlord for the flat where the multi-network mast had failed, lost the keys to the roof door and had to get a locksmith in).

In general H will nearly always work due to how HSDPA works (a connection handshake and setup etc...) but a data request can timeout, a website might not respond, the network NAT might have failed, the DNS request might have got blocked, a bunch of things. A lot of it is down to the basics; LoS, type of mast, handset and the "true" signal value - not the bars as they lie. While demand is obviously at an all time high for data, I'd say roughly less than 10% of nodes are facing critical mass (and even then, the majority of these will be in extremely dense metro areas like London).

Overall the biggest problem is complexity. At home it's your Modem > internet provider > internet. Done. On a mobile it's User Equipment >Node B>RNC>SGSN>GGSN>Content Filter>NAT>Internets and this is assuming you "passed" all the checks to make sure you have credit or that you're allowed to go there. And in between the first and second pass there is a wireless standard from 20 years ago :)
 
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