Terrible signal at STANSTED AIRPORT

[Rye1]

Can anyone shed any light on the absolutely awful signal for both data and calls at Stansted Airport?

H and 4G signal shows up, as do 3 bars in the phone reception, but calls are almost impossible, and any data usage is either non-existant (usually the case) or so bad that you just have to give up.

I'm especially griped as I tested the signal last year before going full time Vodafone (using my 1 month trial period) the signal worked fine so I signed up on a contract. I also got my other half to change from EE only to find that now the signal(s) are so atrocious as to be worthless. I had been on Three with similar problems (signal showing as available but unusable data) and really liked the Vod package, but I may have to go back to EE as it is so bad and I use the airport frequently.. 

Any ideas if this is temporary (going on for 6 months now) or simply lack of bandwidth/EU travelers roaming/network blocking?

The Stansted official wifi (run by Virgin) is hellish too as browsers won't allow connection and email servers simply block everything...

Thanks if anyone has any insights as it's a massive pain!

[Combo]

Was told by enterprise that they switched providers for all their services at the airport due to having issues for years with the signal

[marynilochlainn]

Any idea which provider they switched to?

[vinod]

spent nearly 3 hrs recently  at STN terminal and lounge.

More or less the same situation  as it was reported 6 years ago. I don’t think it is just Vodafone it is EE as well since I had both phones struggling to latch on to the network 99% of the time. So I think there is a fundamental infrastructure issue that allows providers to connect to their L3/L4 backbones.

Interestingly stansted airport has a free wifi option as well as premium option for £3 - so am not sure whether there is a commercial motive by the airport operator by not allowing mobile operators a better service since the airport is in the middle of nowhere.

[Mark]

I'm sorry to see you're struggling to connect whilst in the airport @vinod. I've taken a closer look at our service in this area. While we currently don't offer a 5G service surrounding and at the airport, we do offer a strong reliable 2G and 4G service.  The mast serving you at the airport (14695) is on the other side of the runways to the terminal and lounge. The building materials and infrastructure may be causing some interference to the coverage. This along with the amount of traffic being used by people travelling through the airport, could be the reason for the issues you're experiencing. As this is being experienced by other providers, there may also be a lack of space to increase the coverage.
As there is a free WiFi service available, I'd suggest adding WiFi Calling to your plan. This is a free of charge service that will allow you to stay connected whenever you're connect to WiFi. For more about this, please 👉 https://vodafone.uk/3Dje0gY Apologies for any inconvenience this caused.

[japitts]

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@Mark wrote:

The mast serving you at the airport (14695) is on the other side of the runways to the terminal and lounge. ...there may also be a lack of space to increase the coverage.

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VF have 2 macros serving Stansted, both on the SE side of the airport, both carry primarily low-band 800Mhz & 900MHz service with a limited 15Mhz deployment of 4G-2100Mhz. O2 is similar but with an additional 5Mhz of B3-1800Mhz.

The previous comment about EE is interesting - they have a standard low-band deployment here but 75Mhz of external high-band deployment from (what I suspect is) the same shared macro-site. In addition they use an in-building DAS with 40Mhz of high-band capacity,

[vinod]

From my experience of 3 hours both vodafone and EE phones at STN felt like they are in the dial up internet era of 90’s i.e a 28Kbps struggling on a baud rate of 2100

I really hope Vodafone network optimisation team will take a note of this and commission a DAS optimisation study in the area. I would say a a decent 4G service giving 20-30Mbps is more than enough for an average customer like me, who is not always hooked on netflix UHD video downloads.

I also have a theory that the roof design structure of the STN airport is not signal penetration friendly 

[tom5333]

Just so you know, I did publish the "form" that Mark recommended as a new topic title that started with "CM24......"

But since this has been removed, I can only surmise that it was considered a "double post."

I eagerly await your response when it comes time. Clearly, I'm not the only one having this problem.

[Gemma]

Hi @tom5333 - I've not been able to locate the post you're referring to and this isn't in our 'spam' folder. For signal issues at Stanstead Airport, please see the post by Mark. If you've any queries over this, then so we can go through some further checks and tests while you're there, then please message us on Social Media.