IV30 - Moray

[Nabs]

Post Title: 'First half of post code - Area' e.g. ST1 – Stoke-on-Trent

1) Does the issue happen in just one location? If so, how far do you have to travel to regain service?
The issue happens in various locations around Moray

2) What is the full postcode (e.g. ST1 1AA) of where the issue occurs? If you don't want this showing on the Community, add it to your profile here.
All locations below show on the NSC that they should have Good 4G indoors & outdoor
IV30 5QD
IV30 4EE
IV30 5SG
IV31 6DJ
There are many more, these are just the examples from the past few days.

3) Does the issue occur if you try your SIM card in a different phone?
Don't have a different phone to try but I don't imagine the coverage is much different with different devices. 
I'm using a Pixel 8 Pro.

 4) What errors are seen or heard when the issue occurs?
 Phone revert to 2G, data is unusable

5) Does this happen on 2G, 3G, 4G or all?
N/A

6) When did you first notice this issue?
When Vodafone turned off 3G. 
Before this, I never had an issue using mobile data in any of the listed locations 

7) Is the issue permanent or intermittent? If intermittent, are there certain times of the day when it occurs?
Sometimes restarting the device will connect to 4G however most (~80%) of the time it remains on 2G

[Effie]

Hey @Nabs I hope you're doing well! Thanks for filling out the template for us. I've run some detailed network checks on each of the postcodes and I've found the following:

For IV30 5QD, the postcode sits in an area of very poor, rural coverage for 4G. The mast servicing the area (site 12312) sits a significant distance away which will have an impact on the quality of the connection in the area.

For IV30 4EE, the postcode sits in an area of better coverage for 4G so we would expect a stronger connection in this area. The site for the area (site 14259) is not the closest mast to the postcode so this again, may have some impact on the service that can be achieved here, particularly during periods of increased traffic and during peak times.

For IV30 5SG, the postcode falls into an area of good 4G coverage, so like the 4EE area, we would expect customers to have a better connection here. The site for the area (site 8098) is one of only two masts that are local to the postcode so they may be impacted by traffic and congestion during busy periods and peak times.

For IV31 6DJ, the postcode sits in an area of similar coverage to IV30 4EE and there are only 2 masts (Sites 15355 and 6909) servicing a very large area, so congestion and peak times will impact the service in this area.

All of the masts mentioned have been checked and they are all fully operational and working as we would expect them to, with no downtime, outages or maintenance offline time reported.

So we can get this process started, could you please reach out to the Social Media Team for me? 

[Nabs]

Thanks for the detailed response @Effie 

I think, as you suggest congestion may well be the issue for not receiving a 4G connection in most of these locations.
I can only assume, since I never had an issue previously, that my phone would have fallen back to 3G when the 4G connection was too congested, with this no longer being an option my phone is being forced onto 2G which sadly is unusable for any data application. 

I'm not sure that engineer visits will really identify anything beyond what's already been uncovered to be honest. It sounds like the answer is more capacity, which means more masts, which Vodafone isn't likely to do for such small, rural, areas.

It's just frustrating that we used to have a solid and reliable Vodafone network in the local area which, since the 3G switch off, has become unpredictable and unreliable. 

[Janey]

Thanks for getting back to us @Nabs.

Looking at Effie's s findings, for the 5QD & 6DJ postcodes, your phone switching down to 2G does appear to be the expected coverage for those areas so there isn't anything we really review in those locations.

For the 4EE postcode, we would expect a better connection so it would be worth you dropping us a message so our Network Engineers can look into it. For the 5SG postcode, we can review any issues and examples you're facing there too. We'll take a look at each postcode individually and go through what examples we need.
 

We would like our Network Engineers to review some examples from you, so we can double check if there's anything that can be done to help to improve your connection to 4G.  I appreciate that potentially the engineers may not be able to bring any improvements in the short term, but we'll only know this if ew raise it to them. By bringing it to their attention, we can hopefully get some better long term solutions.

Please do drop us a message, we'd love to help you with this.

[Nabs]

Hi @Janey 

I will be travelling away for the next couple of weeks so I'll drop you guys a message when I'm back and we can arrange to carry out the required tests to provide feedback for the engineers.

Does that work?

Thanks
N

[Janey]

Absolutely @Nabs Just drop the social team message when you're ready 👍

[japitts]

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@Nabs wrote:

It sounds like the answer is more capacity, which means more masts, which Vodafone isn't likely to do for such small, rural, areas.

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Additional capacity doesn't necessarily need more sites, it can also be resolved by additional frequency bands being added to existing sites.

As to how well networks prioritise particular areas - there is a wide gulf between the 4 leading networks in the UK.