Coverage in Clapham

[racho_]

Wanted to raise a discussion topic for those who live in and around Clapham Common, mainly the West side in the Broomwood and Northcote Road areas.

In such a built-up area, it’s understandable that coverage may be patchy given the lack of space to build phone masts. Both 5G and 4G are satisfactory outdoors around the common perimeter but as soon as you turn a corner into any of the residential streets, your phone will drop to 1-2 bars. As soon as you step indoors coverage is almost non-existent.

I have WiFi calling enabled but if my broadband goes down, it’s a struggle for me to get anything done. It makes me wonder why I’m paying so much for a phone plan if I get such poor reception. Does anyone else in the area have this problem?

Is there any way to put forward a request to EE to add small-cell sites along the Broomwood Road & Northcote Road areas?

[Christopher_G]

Hi @racho_ 

Welcome to the community.

What is the estimated coverage like for your postcode? How long have you had these problems for?

Chris

[racho_]

Hi Chris,

I’ve had these problems since I moved here a few months ago.

Coverage checker says I should have full bars of signal - excellent indoors and outdoors for 4G.

5G says I should get good coverage outdoors.

There’s no 4G or 5G indoors and it’s poor outdoors.

How can we request a small cell site along the road or in the area?

[bristolian]

I can see there are microcells at the north end of Northcote Road, and also close to Bennerley Road. The nearest macro-site is also B20-equipped.

[racho_]

Unfortunately, the north end of Northcote Road is near Clapham Junction Station which is completed the other side of the residential area between Wandsworth Common and Clapham Common. It’s such a strange black-spot here.

Wondering if there’s any other steps I can take to get this looked into by engineers? 

[racho_]

For reference, I get a useless 0.9 Mbps download on 5G and a very poor 4.2 Mbps download on 4G so this is essentially completely unusable 

[bristolian]

Those speeds are slightly suggestive (although not conclusively) of your indoor coverage coming from the B20 service.

VoWiFi should kick in when coverage quality drops below a certain criteria, it sounds like you're potentially above that level.

The MyEE app has the option to log poor coverage areas, it's under the permissions settings menu.

[racho_]

Very strange, I have tried to log an issue a few times but nothing comes of it. It's such a strange area for a dead-zone when either side of this neighbourhood seems to have decent coverage.

Unsure how else to flag this to EE and considering leaving the network

[Christopher_G]

Hi @racho_ 

It may be worth getting in contact with our technical support team. They'll be able to look into this in more detail to check the performance of the network in your area.

Chris

[Dwardo92]

I have the same issue; I live in Clapham South and can't use my data at all when I leave the tube. I go to the gym on the high street, and it doesn't work that end either. 

Nut's to be in a relatively central part of London, paying close to £70 a month for a phone I can't use.

 It also says I have a full signal which is absolute cap.