Connection dropoff in Kingsclere

[Naidvar]

Alright, let's begin with some context: When I signed my 3 contract back in 2023, connection speeds where I lived were decent for a countryside village that relies on one local transmitter for most of its networking needs. Prices were cheap (and still are by today's standards) and everything was well. For the past year and a quarter, I've been able to take calls, send texts, even browse the internet fine with download speeds of 15mbps and upload speeds of 3mbps - Not great, not terrible and most of the time these speeds were achieved on 3G.

Cut to the recent 3 outage involving calls taking place, obviously that was an inconvenience but it wasn't catastrophic personally. Yet, ever since they resolved those issues, my download speeds have dropped to 2mbps and my upload speeds to 1mbps. Whenever looking up my postcode to check 3s network status, I just get a notice saying that this area can be busy and therefore fluctuations can happen.

Now, I've got fibre internet and so this isn't an inconvenience... Until the speeds are so terrible and my signal is so poor (about -110 to -120dbm) that it can't hand off my calls to my WiFi like I used to rely on, therefore rendering 3s service completely unusable at home.

When I'm travelling, it's fine and it's actually the reason I've yet to terminate my contract because the 5G in nearby towns is incredible, it's just home usage that's become a pain in my behind because I can't even receive verification codes for services that I use half the time, which has resulted in me taking out another contract with EE and using that phone number to receive all of my important calls and texts.

I've also made the curious observation of not being able to use 3G anymore in my area, despite it still being active in my part of the country, which is partially responsible for my speed reduction as I used to be reliant on H+ for everything, at least until they seemingly shut it off or cut off the data part and it no longer works for internet access whenever I force my phone to use 3G.

I'm not here to beg 3 for a contract price reduction or an early termination, I'm just here to see if anyone else has experienced similar issues as of late and to see if I can get any form of closure in regards to why this is happening.

My only solid guess is the fact I might be in one of those areas where 3s 4G coverage sucks but I don't see how that could impact my 2G coverage and the ability to receive text messages or calls. Either way, it's quite strange and hopefully an answer comes my way in due time.

[PeteG]

Hi there. 

I'm wondering if you can provide a bit of clarification for me so that I know I've understood correctly. You mentioned having fibre, and it sounds like that would be a solution, but instead it's having issues also? 

Pete.

[Naidvar]

Hi Pete, thanks for your reply!

For clarification, my fibre internet is fine and handles the handing off of calls to WiFi excellently in regards to another rival such as EE. However, with 3, the transfering of my call from using 2G/4G (unsure how exactly it works) and to using voice over WiFi either fails or completely silences the call. Many people who I have called in the past month have often complained about having moments where they're unable to hear me properly despite their connection to their carrier being fine.

I'm unsure of what's causing this, I've restarted my phone, even tried different devices and those have had issues, too. I even tried using our old WiFi which is still active but that also fails.

All of this has popped up ever since 3 began having issues with calls and I'm wondering whether or not they may have silently shut off the 3G coverage that comes from the nearby tower recently, as my aforementioned speeds and connection quality standards have gotten worse.

I've tried moving outside to take calls and even going to another street to take them, but the issues only disappear whenever I'm in another town or when I'm connected to another transmitter that has a sufficient 4G and even 5G connection.

At this rate, I may have to ask 3 support directly to take a look into it or maybe try to contact my ISP because this sounds like some form of coverage issue. I hope my clarification helps!

[PeteG · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure a coverage issue would fit based on the issue you've described. Wifi calling pushes the call over Wifi and doesn't require any network whatsoever to be able to do that. Something you can do to test the calling is to put the phone into airplane mode, then make sure the Wifi is turned back on while still in airplane mode, and make a phone call. If you're having the same issue, it would point to something else. 

It would be good to know how you get on if you try that. 

Pete. 

[Naidvar]

Alright so this is a bit of a hacky work around but this has successfully worked for me so far, seems like it might've been a conflict of interest of my phone (Nothing 2a) picking between WiFi calling or using 2G.

However, whilst this solves my calling dilemma, it still doesn't explain why half of the verification codes that I use to log into various platforms arrive comically late, nor does it explain why some people calling me end up straight on voicemail despite the fact I am actively connected to 3s network & my WiFi.

I still think coverage (or lack thereof) could be partially responsible for some of the issues I'm encountering, especially the drop-off in speed I've faced ever since mid-late January.

It doesn't seem like 3 is doing any maintenance on any nearby transmitters, but data is less of a concern. As for now, I'm going to mark this as solved as I can now make WiFi calls and that addresses most of my issues, I'm just going to swap out my verification code number to the other one I'm using in the meantime in the hopes that these patchy text messages resolve themselves in due time. (They're being sent by SMS, sending via RCS instead should fix my issue, it's receiving inbound SMS' that's been a bit of an issue as of late.)

Thanks for your time, Pete! If this ever becomes an issue again though, I'll go straight to 3 and see if I can get this sorted without poking around on the forums first.