Worsening 5G signal - a pattern emerging?

[Liamski1]

Hi,

I've been experiencing issues specifically in my workplace for the last few months on EE whereby I get practically no signal throughout the day within the building I work. This is in an area that apparently should receive good 5G indoors and out. Now I know that EE do not guarantee any signal within a building but my fall back was always that it used to work perfectly until approximately the beginning of this year. Then I started getting a lack of signal in 5G, or just a dead one or two bars on my iphone 15. If you put it into airplane mode and back, it would pop back up with some usable 4G for a matter of minutes before the dead 5G returned. I did have some phone calls with someone particularly condescending at a high tech tier who did not want to listen to a word I was saying and refused to acknowledge that I and other people in the building were having issues, whilst continually pointing out that nothing had changed from EE's end even though he could see that my phone was suddenly repeatedly disconnecting and reconnecting.  It matters not that people on far lesser network suppliers for far far less money with their little sims piggy backing off o2 and 3 network, sat next to me, smugly pointing at their lovely fast internet speeds.

Coincidentally, my other half was and is still experiencing exactly the same issues in a totally different part of the country.

Moving forward more recently, my hours of work have changed and I'm arriving in work at 6am. Lovely signal at 6am, right up until 8am when other people arrive at the various commercial premises in the area.

Its pretty clear what is going on here. EE, being the countries no.1 network, have become oversubscribed and are not backing that up by upgrading and increasing capacity for all the people paying what is a premium fee for what should be the UK's premium network supplier, because why would they...Looking at thread after thread after thread on these boards with people explaining exactly the same symptoms you'd imagine that they would do something but sadly nothing has changed, but hurrah! Light is at the end of the tunnel as the end of my sim only contract like a sunrise on the horizon is appearing in February and I will be ready and waiting to scarper from what has become a bit of scam network. I'd suggest you do the same.  

[bristolian]

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@Liamski1 wrote:

Its pretty clear what is going on here. EE, being the countries no.1 network, have become oversubscribed

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What you describe seems to be 4G/5G interworking issues. That's not oversubscription.

Adding new carriers, both on 4G & 5G, is the exact opposite of "not upgrading and increasing capacity"

[Liamski1]

Hi,

I did not mention that the switching to 4G stopped working as an option to get a minutes internet about 4 months ago. 4G does not work either now and neither do i see my phone switch to it. 

If it is not over subscription, can you explain how the signal disappears as more people arrive at work and then reappears as people go home at the end of the day?

Thanks. 

[Liamski1]

Same here. Was a number of months ago no but deny deny deny. We don’t guarantee 5g indoors etc etc. But it was fine before. Nothing has changed so why doesn’t it work now? Nothing has changed since. I am paying £30 a month for a sim that is useless for the 45-50 hours a week I spend at work and finally that 2 year contract is coming to an end. And like I said, my partner, has also had the same deterioration in service over a very similar timeframe whilst with EE. Both indoor service has gone. 

[bristolian]

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@Liamski1 wrote:

I did not mention that the switching to 4G stopped working as an option to get a minutes internet about 4 months ago. 4G does not work either now and neither do i see my phone switch to it. 

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In your first post, you mentioned that your phone was flipping between "usable 4G" & (perceivably) poor 5G - this is the sort of behaviour I'd expect in a 5G fringe location.

You're now reporting different behaviour, and a complete loss of coverage? It would be interesting to see which frequency bands are in use in your locations.

[Liamski1]

Hi,

I'm not reporting anything different now. I'd simply forgot to mention that at the time I was finding that toggling airplane mode gave me some 4g for a minute before it went again. I did try to edit it at some point later but the time of which you can edit a post had timed out. Even so, it is an irrelevance because that stopped working as a workaround months ago.

According to the EE coverage map for my location, I am well inside the area for 5G coverage indoors and outdoors but this is clearly not the case but as I'm indoors, it doesn't matter to EE tech support even though it had previously been great for the first 12 months of my 2 year contract with EE. 

I do find that if I go into the settings and toggle 5G SA and then airplane mode I sometimes get a restored service that runs anything up to 40meg for a short period of time and then dies again but I am paying a lot of money and shouldn't have to mess around in this way and just for clarity, I am not the only one in my office on EE that has exactly the same issues so we can rule out handset issues, even though, at request of the tech support we reset both my network settings on my phone and then the entire phone with no effect.

If I am to understand 5G standalone correctly, I shouldn't be able to use it as my contract was taken out in Feb '23 so my service will just be normal 5G. I don't even know if SA 5G is available in this area but toggling the switch on my phone does change something that just toggling Airplane mode doesn't. I have no understanding of why that is though. 

I'd love to understand some of the frequencies involved here. I have a basic understanding but the tech support wasn't very helpful in that regard, although I did manage to establish that the antenna was approx. half a mile as the crow flies with no majorly big buildings between us to block a signal other than the one I am sat it... but again, it is the same building and the identical seat I am sat in now that was working perfectly a year ago. 

Just for the record, non of the workarounds are working today. I just have no internet on my phone. Showing 2 bars on 5G, although as I understand it, the bars have no real relevance. 

[bristolian]

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@Liamski1 wrote:

I'd love to understand some of the frequencies involved here. I have a basic understanding but the tech support wasn't very helpful in that regard

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Tech Support are not customer-facing, and very few CS agents would need to understand radio network architecture.

In broad terms, low-frequencies are better at providing wide-area & in-building coverage, whilst high-frequencies are better at supporting dense areas of high-traffic. A combination of the two provides solid service.

EE operate across 700Mhz, 800Mhz, 1800Mhz, 2100Mhz, 2600Mhz & 3500Mhz. Some bands are primarily 4G, some 5G, others a mixture. 5G SA/NSA, and natural 4G/5G selection - all add some complexity.

[Liamski1]

I can see that the EE SA 5G has or is being rolled out in this area (Wolverhampton) as we speak.

Would you expect that the SA 5G would come with non of the problems I currently have or would this specific location still make connection problematic on EE? 

[Leanne_T]

Hi there @Liamski1 

Thanks for coming to the community, I am sorry you and your partner are experiencing signal issues in different locations. 

If you could both report the problems you are having on the Service Status Checker the report will go to the network team to be investigated. Once the areas have been looked into, the team will text or email you with an update. 

Thanks.

Leanne.

[bristolian]

Both NSA/SA| & the frequencies in your specific location, would both impact expected behaviours.

As an extreme example, if 4G was available on low & high-bands, but 5G only on high-bands, then you'd reasonably expect 4G to be the dominant bearer indoors. Although usually NR700 is deployed alongside L800.

There's too many variables here, without knowing your specific area.