All ready to join and.......oh dear, coverage still naff

[pctechbloke]

I've lived where I do for nearly 25 years and over the years I've heard a number of unrepeatable things from trade professionals complaining about not being able to make or receive calls or getting bad reception while working at the house.

However, a few years ago a couple of masts went up on roundabouts just outside the area and while sitefinder was maintained I found out one was Vodafone's.

I am currently on an O2 based provider but I looked at your PAYG plans after seeing the ads about coverage (the scenario depicted in this was a little overoptimistic) and the PAYG one plan as well as reading about Project Spring.

I had hoped to be able to get some better indoor coverage at home so ordered a SIM.

Before handing over my hard earned I popped the SIM into the phone (A Samsung J3 2016 with the latest version of the vanilla firmware) and booted up.

I found that 3G/4G coverage was almost non existent (according to the coverage maps I should have no issue with indoor and outdoor coverage) and to get a signal the phone had to be forced onto 2G (managed to get 2/3 bars)

I know the coverage maps are largely computer projection and you cannot account for concrete obstructions  but just wondered if any drive testing goes on to refine them as there's a lot of trees round here.

Don't really want to put my post code on an open forum but happy to provide more detail to the forum team if required via PM as am afraid I'll not be signing up because of this.

[John]

@pctechbloke So we can take a closer look into the signal in your area, please complete the steps on our Network troubleshooting guide and post the results down below 
Once we have this information, we'll be able to investigate further.

[daleski75]

I have always found coverage checkers to be very optimistic about what you can get, I remember 3 saying I have blanket 4g coverage in my area when I got zero 4g coverage and no amount of calls to 3 could get the problem resolved as they kept on referring to the coverage checker and to restart my phone each and everytime.

You definitely did the right thing by getting a PAYG sim card as it's a lot easier to lose a fiver or tenner than enter a contract which you cannot get out of.