Poor mobile signal in St Albans

[Tonttig72]

Good morning, why is there suddenly such a poor mobile signal in the AL3 area of St Albans since the beginning of September?  Was previously getting between 2-3 bars, but this week, it’s fluctuating between 1 bar and ‘No service’. Have tried the signal checker, which mentions ‘network problems in your area’, but twice now I’ve received a text stating ‘we have fixed the network issue, please restart your phone’, but there has been no change with the signal remaining very poor to non-existent! Please would you let me know what on Earth is going on? I can see our local mobile mast at the top of the hill from my front bedroom window! Thank you in anticipation of a real fix for this issue.

[Chris_B]

@Tonttig72  Once a mast cones back online it takes a little while before it’s outputting at full strength.    Also when a mast goes off line you’ll use a different mast but that also means everyone else is using a different mast so the mast is put under strain because of that he amount of connected devices so everyone gets a reduced connection.  

[bristolian]

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@Chris_B wrote:

@Tonttig72  Once a mast cones back online it takes a little while before it’s outputting at full strength

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The comment in quotes is a popular misconception and not correct, unless there is specific optimisation activity being undertaken - or another fault.

It's fair to say that in urban areas there is often overlap between sites, and this usually means that an outage on one won't cause a complete loss of service within its coverage area. Phones will often connect to alternative sites, but this can mean a reduction in perceived coverage and/or slower data as the traffic is spread out.

I'd recommend reporting an issue on the status checker if problems are persisting - there may yet be another, as yet unidentified, issue.

[Tonttig72]

Thank you for your rapid responses. Guess I’ll just have to be a bit more patient for a few more days and then report the issue if not improving. I know that it’s a problem locally as when I was on the Commercial Rd last night near Aldgate station, I had 4 bars of 4G and now I’m currently staring at a ‘No service’ message on my iPhone, again!!

[bristolian]

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@Tonttig72 wrote:

I had 4 bars of 4G and now I’m currently staring at a ‘No service’ message on my iPhone, again!!

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This seems a contradiction.

If you have 4G coverage shown, this is fundamentally not "no service". Not having service means not having coverage.

[Tonttig72]

Hi @bristolian , no contradiction; 4 days ago I had 3 bars of service, yesterday it was 1 bar, today, it’s ’No Service’

[bristolian]

Thanks for the clarification - you can rarely give too much info on a support forum when seeking assistance!

I rather suspect there is either ongoing work in your locality or one of the serving sites still has an issue.

[Tonttig72]

Yes, indeed you’re right about that; I’ve since spoken to a very knowledgeable chap at EE by phone who confirmed that our local mast has undergone  extensive, planned upgrade work all week since 2nd Sept, which is due to conclude tomorrow evening! Apparently, they don’t advertise this work in advance as many ‘won’t notice the drop in signal coverage’, and they rather await phone calls from any disgruntled customers who have perpetually experience ‘No service’ for several days consecutively! But thank you for your advice which was completely accurate.

[bristolian]

Good that you've got an outcome from CS.

I suppose the definition of "advertised" is open for debate here. If you register your location on the "My places" facility of the status tool, you should always get proactive updates of outages, whatever their reason. Equally, the status tool's "check service status" option should always report on the same.

[Tonttig72]

No, unfortunately, despite registering me location as you have described, the message which I received multiple times were very generic ‘the network issue is now fixed’ type affairs, with no explanation of what the cause of the ‘issue’ might have been, and then, in any case, the issue clearly hadn’t been fixed, as there was still only between 0 and 1 bar of service, pretty much continuously for 6 days. By the way, all is good now, with the signal having returned back to normal by Sunday afternoon, as promised by the friendly customer advisor at EE.