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My personal bugbear is the network coverage. Context: London / UK (EE). Yes, I have 5G at home, but it's just one bar and sometimes even this one bar will disa

My personal bugbear is the network coverage. Context: London / UK (EE). Yes, I have 5G at home, but it's just one bar and sometimes even this one bar will disappear. Yes, there is 5G/4G all around the city, but you can't hold an uninterrupted conversation over FaceTime Audio while on the overground train or driving. I'll not even discuss the underground. However, uninterrupted, low-latency, average bandwidth is a hard market and even harder to design.

rsynnott 2y ago
My impression (from pretty limited recent experience) is that mobile networks in UK cities (at least London and Manchester) are _notably_ worse than in other European cities. I initially thought it was just a London thing, and, okay, London's very, very big, but was recently in Manchester, which has no such excuse, and it was also pretty terrible. Not sure what's going on there.
- Garvi 2y ago
  Most people are shunning the covid topic for various reasons, so no one is bringing up the fact that the British torched a lot of their 5G infrastructure to "stop the spread of covid". There were over 80 such arson incidents, but I'm sure this number will go down with time.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    I'm guessing that that was probably not in city centres, tho. (Also, where're you getting 'over 80'? From a quick search there seem to have been maybe 5 masts damaged/destroyed.)
    - Garvi 2y ago
      In your search results. It was well over 80 at the time. 80 is the number mostly cited nowadays. I see you're down to 5 damaged. Good for you. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/least-90-phone-masts-attacked-22086169 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/least-90-phone-masts-a... https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-90-attacks-on-phone-masts-reported-during-uks-lockdown-11994401 https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-90-attacks-on-phone-m... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-52164358 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-52164358 https://www.businessinsider.com/77-phone-masts-fire-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory-2020-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/77-phone-masts-fire-coronavi...
      - rsynnott 2y ago
        Vast majority of those were not destroyed or damaged. I think some of the tabloids may have conflated "any vandalism or attempted vandalism" with "actually damaged", but, well, that's tabloids for you. > I see you're down to 5 damaged. Good for you. Who's 'you' in this context?
        Garvi 2y ago
        That's not really ambiguous. So it didn't happen, because it was *obviously* made up? The problem with such reasoning is, it does not require substantiation. You should find 20 people that also believe it(shouldn't have a problem on this platform) and you can start a religion.
        rsynnott 2y ago
        I mean, I'm unsure why you're so excited about it. Whether it happened or not feels almost irrelevant to me (it'd be far from the worst behviour by loonies during the pandemic), but there seems to be very little evidence that it actually did happen in significant numbers. Like, even if it had been 80 masts destroyed, the ongoing impact would be nil; they'd just have been replaced and 80 masts is in any case a trivial number (it's difficult to get numbers on how many exist because the ONS data counts nano cells, but there seem to be over 60,000 'real' masts in the UK, anyway.)
zipy124 2y ago
Yup, I recently travelled to Hong-Kong from the the UK and noticed just how much better coverage was in the city. I expect poor coverage when I'm in Yorkshire, but there is no excuse for just how bad London's coverage is. A lot of it seems to come down to which carrier you are on, a quick look at coverage maps [1] and you can see what carrier you are on is really important in some parts of the country. [1]:https://www.nperf.com/en/map/GB/-/2012851.Three-Mobile/signal?ll=52.20760667286523&lg=-0.9777832031250001&zoom=7 https://www.nperf.com/en/map/GB/-/2012851.Three-Mobile/signa...

rsynnott 2y ago

My impression (from pretty limited recent experience) is that mobile networks in UK cities (at least London and Manchester) are _notably_ worse than in other European cities. I initially thought it was just a London thing, and, okay, London's very, very big, but was recently in Manchester, which has no such excuse, and it was also pretty terrible. Not sure what's going on there.

Garvi 2y ago
Most people are shunning the covid topic for various reasons, so no one is bringing up the fact that the British torched a lot of their 5G infrastructure to "stop the spread of covid". There were over 80 such arson incidents, but I'm sure this number will go down with time.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  I'm guessing that that was probably not in city centres, tho. (Also, where're you getting 'over 80'? From a quick search there seem to have been maybe 5 masts damaged/destroyed.)
  - Garvi 2y ago
    In your search results. It was well over 80 at the time. 80 is the number mostly cited nowadays. I see you're down to 5 damaged. Good for you. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/least-90-phone-masts-attacked-22086169 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/least-90-phone-masts-a... https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-90-attacks-on-phone-masts-reported-during-uks-lockdown-11994401 https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-90-attacks-on-phone-m... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-52164358 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-52164358 https://www.businessinsider.com/77-phone-masts-fire-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory-2020-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/77-phone-masts-fire-coronavi...
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      Vast majority of those were not destroyed or damaged. I think some of the tabloids may have conflated "any vandalism or attempted vandalism" with "actually damaged", but, well, that's tabloids for you. > I see you're down to 5 damaged. Good for you. Who's 'you' in this context?
      - Garvi 2y ago
        That's not really ambiguous. So it didn't happen, because it was *obviously* made up? The problem with such reasoning is, it does not require substantiation. You should find 20 people that also believe it(shouldn't have a problem on this platform) and you can start a religion.
        rsynnott 2y ago
        I mean, I'm unsure why you're so excited about it. Whether it happened or not feels almost irrelevant to me (it'd be far from the worst behviour by loonies during the pandemic), but there seems to be very little evidence that it actually did happen in significant numbers. Like, even if it had been 80 masts destroyed, the ongoing impact would be nil; they'd just have been replaced and 80 masts is in any case a trivial number (it's difficult to get numbers on how many exist because the ONS data counts nano cells, but there seem to be over 60,000 'real' masts in the UK, anyway.)

zipy124 2y ago

Yup, I recently travelled to Hong-Kong from the the UK and noticed just how much better coverage was in the city. I expect poor coverage when I'm in Yorkshire, but there is no excuse for just how bad London's coverage is. A lot of it seems to come down to which carrier you are on, a quick look at coverage maps [1] and you can see what carrier you are on is really important in some parts of the country. [1]:https://www.nperf.com/en/map/GB/-/2012851.Three-Mobile/signal?ll=52.20760667286523&lg=-0.9777832031250001&zoom=7 https://www.nperf.com/en/map/GB/-/2012851.Three-Mobile/signa...