topic Re: Network upgrade to take 5 days in Skelmersdale? in Mobile Network discussions

Network upgrade to take 5 days in Skelmersdale?

carguy143 — Mon, 20 May 2024 18:38:22 GMT

I was using my phone today away from home and my stream stopped and wouldn't recover. I got home and received a text advising the network is being upgraded and it's going to take 5 days. I can see the base station from a field next to my house and there were clearly engineers going up there in a cherrypicker or whatever you call it.

Out on a walk tonight and i pass the base station to find the cherrypicker neatly stowed and nobody working. The base station is on top of an office block called Whelmar House which recently rebranded as The Approach. It's right in the middle of the town.

Is it normal for you to just switch off the network with no sort of backup being implemented, especially when you consider that Skelmersdale has around 40,000 here, it just seems poor to potentially leave your customers without service for potentially upto 5 working days?

I work for an ISP and we have people working 24/7 for outages like this.

Re: Network upgrade to take 5 days in Skelmersdale?

Chris_B — Mon, 20 May 2024 19:07:08 GMT

@carguy143 40,000 customers are not contented to that one mast and there are more than one mast for that area. not that all 40,000 are EE customers.
WiFi calling will still work and yes WiFi calling doesn’t help when you’re popping out or out out.

Re: Network upgrade to take 5 days in Skelmersdale?

carguy143 — Mon, 20 May 2024 19:10:57 GMT

They certainly aren't all connected to the one base station but I have tested several postcodes across the town and they all show the stame network status. It seems far bigger than just one base station.

Re: Network upgrade to take 5 days in Skelmersdale?

bristolian — Mon, 20 May 2024 21:41:40 GMT

There's a few angles to this.

The length & extent of outage required when upgrade works are undertaken depends on the nature of the tech or carrier-add, and individual site config. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but wherever existing techs can be left on-air or restored sooner than new ones are brought live, they will be. It's just not always possible. If a cherrypicker is being used, that suggests that some alterations or equipment swaps are being carried out at height.

In the same way, the coverage footprint of each site differs. There are multiple sites serving the town, and quite often in urban areas there is some degree of overlap between sites, such that an outage on one (planned or unplanned) won't necessarily cause any loss-of-service. But it varies, and sometimes some loss-of-service is unavoidable. It's certainly not done with any vindictive intent.

Whilst the core network has some similarities with an ISP, the radio network is somewhat different.

Re: Network upgrade to take 5 days in Skelmersdale?

carguy143 — Sat, 25 May 2024 16:12:28 GMT

Good news. I got services back yesterday afternoon and with 5G added, too. It's been pretty stable but the upload speeds aren't all that great, at about 4 Mbps. Hopefully things improve soon.

Re: Network upgrade to take 5 days in Skelmersdale?

bristolian — Sat, 25 May 2024 16:59:12 GMT

Download speeds may be limited if the additional techs/carriers are low-band.