Good evening, I read the email yesterday but I was outside, and I hate writing emails on my phone, forgot to respond when I got back so here you go, one day late :P
> Slightly off topic I've been based overseas for most of the past > several years, and whenever I'm back in the UK, I find the mobile > signal quality surprisingly poor Well some countries in the world have over a gigabit as the norm for mobile data, so this is subjective. UK speeds on average aren't the best, but the signal usually is not an issue. > Interestingly, I have no trouble making high-quality calls to the UK > from abroad This contrast makes it increasingly unattractive to > conduct business in the UK. Is this a common experience? Never had any issues myself, although I had many people complain (my own family). I think the issue may actually be down to specific phone models, my family have like iphone 14's I think, and they were using the vodafone network in the same pub I was, yet I had flawless signal and they had nothing at all. I see you might be at the meetup in a few weeks, I will be there, more than happy to discuss my setup when it comes to on the move connectivity, but for the email I will keep it short. I have two sims, one physical and one esim on a google pixel 6 pro, the physical is a £5 plan from Lebara for £5/month for 5GB of data, this is on the vodafone network. Vodafone is great for call quality, never had an issue getting calls, however its data is slowwwwwww, I am talking about an average of 5-7mbps (although I haven't tested it in a year or two). the esim is from spusu which only came to the UK from Austria a year ago (Happy Birthday Spusu!), I use a £9.90 plan and get 30GB of data on the EE network, unrestricted speed. I wireguard tunnel to a network which has a max throughput of 20mbps so I do not need fast speeds, but I have tested it and in London you can often get 100-300mbps on EE. EE also has the best coverage when it comes to unique areas such as London Underground, you can use EE data within the tunnels of quite a few stations in Central London now, vodafone doesn't support it. My usual setup is calls/sms via Lebara (vodafone) and then use the data from the spusu sim, the 5GB lebara data I use as a backup in areas with poor EE coverage, as vodafone *usually* has better coverage. So as for the two other providers, Three/O2, I would advice against them entirely. Three has just merged with vodafone, which is worrying as three is totally unusable in London, last I tried them it was 20% packet loss and my internet speed was measured in kbps, not mbps! Three is a waste of money, I heard in places which have their new 5G masts they are much better, but their average performance when going through London is unusable. O2 used to be better, but has a lot of drawbacks now, the coverage isn't great, the speed isn't great, the price is cheaper though, they are handing out massive data bundles and trying to get you to sign a long contract, with all their bolt on rubbish like free netflix. O2 seem desperate to claw back some market share, but in reality only vodafone and EE are worth using in my experience, and the merger with Three/Vodafone to "combine their skills" is likely going to form a O2-like service, more reliable than Three, but far less reliable than vodafone is, faster than vodafone is right now, but not as fast as Threes new masts. I do not like to support EE as they are the only phone company, which I am aware of, which locks the bootloaders on phones to prevent people flashing them, and you can't unlock them after your contact or with a sim unlock, the bootloader is still locked, exactly like verizon does in the US. They are very expensive, if you want the full speed you got to pay an eye watering amount now, they are a pain when it comes to credit checks, however when it comes to reliability and quality, they are the best on average. I do recommend giving spusu [1] a shot, its 30 day contract and if you phone has esim support it takes minutes to give it a go. No credit check either, and its on the EE network. (I am not affiliated with spusu, I just find their pricing to performance a bargain, albeit the support can be slow... really slow...) Hope this helps, if you come to the meetup feel free to ask me more about it. > Yes, even in London. You say even in London, but London has the most congestion. It makes sense for London to struggle more. The times I am without service is when I am hiking in a rural area (especially in valleys as the masts cant reach over the hills), or when I am on a train, apart from that I always have some signal, even if the data is slow it works well enough. Calls always connect for me using vodafones network, although I have realised recently SMS have taken a few mins to go through and sometimes need to be retried. Shouldn't be using SMS anyways, its insecure, but some people I know insist on being insecure and refuse to adopt secure open solutions. Also I highly recommend getting friends and family (or anyone important) on E2EE VoIP anyways, then any public WiFi can be used to contact them, which is more reliable if you aren't on the move at that moment in time. Take care, -- Polarian Jabber/XMPP: [email protected] [1] https://www.spusu.co.uk/ -- GLLUG mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug
