Mobile connectivity at stations

Abpj17 · 15 Oct 2014

http://www.itv.com/news/london/2014-10-14/top-10-worst-phone-signal-spots-for-london-commuters/

London's most reliable mobile networks have been revealed in a new study by Global Wireless Solutions (GWS).
Three was crowned the best network for commuters who like to talk, securing joint-first most reliable for voice calls, and becoming the clear winner with highest quality calls.
.
Hot spots of areas with most voice call failures. Credit: GlobalWirelessSolutions
Vodafone was titled the best network for standard internet access (3G), followed by 02, Three and EE.

The study found 82.0% of Vodafone users had access to 3G throughout the commute, receiving the fastest download speeds and most reliable internet.
GWS' engineers found that EE users were offered the best fastest internet (4G), followed by Vodafone, O2 and Three.

EE users could download music, pictures and videos the fastest.
Hot spots of areas with most 3G data failures.
Hot spots of areas with most 3G data failures. Credit: GlobalWirelessSolutions
GWS engineers carried out high-level tests while travelling back and forth on the ten most popular commuting routes into and out of London.
The top 10 worst-connected commuter stations based on the number of voice and data failures are:
10. Ockenden station- 26 failures
9. Kidbrooke station- 27 failures
8. Cricklewood station- 27.5 failures
7. St. Alban's City station- 33 failures
6. Hendon station- 33.5 failures
5. Elstree and Borehamwood station- 36 failures
4. Upminster station- 42 failures
3. Kentish Town station- 43 failures
2. Radlett station- 53 failures
1. St. Pancras station- 99 failures

*sighs* as a North of London Thameslink commuter...simply could not make this up

RailUK Forums

JaJaWa · 15 Oct 2014

Found Vodafone absolutely terrible on Thameslink North - moved to 3 and get internet the whole way. Perhaps the failures are based on Vodafone?

jon0844 · 15 Oct 2014

Three is usually fine. A lot of 4G now (at no extra cost) too. Not so good south of the river though, even on EE.

Vodafone and O2 data speeds are always poor and O2s voice quality is extremely lacking. Half rate codec? Seriously? Why not invest in more capacity. EE, Three and now Vodafone has HD Voice.

yorksrob · 15 Oct 2014

What amused me when I read about this in the Times yesterday, was that the author was suggesting Network Rail should pay to upgrade mobile phone capacity at stations. Given that all the mobile networks that I've used, seem to have generally abysmal reception over vast swathes of the country, perhaps the mobile networks ought to get their house in order, rather than spending all their money on gimmicks.

Aictos · 15 Oct 2014

yorksrob said:
What amused me when I read about this in the Times yesterday, was that the author was suggesting Network Rail should pay to upgrade mobile phone capacity at stations. Given that all the mobile networks that I've used, seem to have generally abysmal reception over vast swathes of the country, perhaps the mobile networks ought to get their house in order, rather than spending all their money on gimmicks.

Indeed, where I work Three has said that I get a poor signal because their mast is so far from where I work and because so many users are connecting to it so why they don't install a mast closer and more powerful with the older mast acting as a support I don't know.

That said, I have found a issue with the O2 WiFi there too because on laptop devices once you "sign in" you stay logged in but with mobile devices it's hit and miss as it likes to keeps having you log in....

I know Three are slowly (keyword there) rolling out 4G and it's quite good but there's places where you expect a signal and it's a blackspot ie pretty much the WCML between Euston and Crewe for one, you are quite right though i wish the mobile operators would stop spending money on flashy gimmicks and start getting their network in order with more masts in order to improve reception across the entire UK.

asylumxl · 15 Oct 2014

The test found one in seven voice calls attempted on the routes failed. Credit: PA

I too often experience call failures when I am randomly transported to Germany from TL North.

CyrusWuff · 15 Oct 2014

Amazing! Routes with numerous tunnels fared worse than those with none. In other news, the Pope is still Catholic.

For those who are interested, GWS have got a GMaps overlay and link to their Press Release here.

HSTEd · 15 Oct 2014

Having multiple operators with independent infrastructure was always going to lead to this.

jon0844 · 15 Oct 2014

asylumxl said:
I too often experience call failures when I am randomly transported to Germany from TL North.

I am in Germany now (well Belgium very soon) and having been to Cologne and Hamburg by train can say phone signal has been mostly terrible and I have the benefit of being able to choose multiple networks to roam on.

I think we do pretty well actually.

Bantamzen · 15 Oct 2014

Never mind North London, the wife & I have just come back from Kos. In Kos Town the network can switch from street to street between the Greek carrier that O2 have a deal with which costs the standard EU rates, and the Turkish carrier that O2 have a deal with which costs the Earth. I received half a dozen welcome to Greece / Turkey texts as we wandered around the town the day that we were there. If I hadn't been aware that this happens and left my data on it would have cost a small fortune (it think it's something like £0.40 per Mb on the Turkish network as opposed to something like £0.06 on the Greek network). So we are pretty lucky over here really.

(Sorry for going off-topic there!)

jrhilton · 15 Oct 2014

I'm surprised Vodafone did so well, in my experience of commuting in SWT land they are awful. Sure you may have 3G "coverage" but capacity is so poor there might as well not be 3G!

I've recently changed to O2 and they are so much better and I'm using the same handset.

The issue is how these things are measured, coverage vs capacity.

Saint66 · 15 Oct 2014

No doubt someone will attempt to use this to bash FCC/GoVia :lol:

As others have said, this is all down to the numerous mobile networks.

stut · 15 Oct 2014

I find Vodafone poor on the GN route.

Part of it - the tunnel-laden section from Knebworth to central London - is inevitable. However, there's many, many occasions where I've had failures to connect in King's Cross and Hitchin despite full signal. Areas north of Hitchin are patchy to say the last.

southern442 · 15 Oct 2014

What a shame!

People can no longer superglue their eyes to their phone all day and now have to embrace the terror of the real world! Noooooo! How will humankind ever cope?:roll::roll::roll:

455driver · 15 Oct 2014

Who commissioned the survey?

swt_passenger · 15 Oct 2014

455driver said:
Who commissioned the survey?

I doubt anyone commissioned it. Seems to be a classic example of a random firm, in this case GWS, trying to drum up business by presenting a so called survey.

It isn't the railway's problem, that's for sure.

jon0844 · 15 Oct 2014

southern442 said:
What a shame!

People can no longer superglue their eyes to their phone all day and now have to embrace the terror of the real world! Noooooo! How will humankind ever cope?:roll::roll::roll:

I won't. Next you'll be saying I have to talk to other human beings, rather than IM them.

swt_passenger said:
I doubt anyone commissioned it. Seems to be a classic example of a random firm, in this case GWS, trying to drum up business by presenting a so called survey.

It isn't the railway's problem, that's for sure.

I am not sure who they are either. Some other forums are reporting them as a 'competitor' to RootMetrics that do a lot of network testing around the world, including a great deal of crowd sourced data (i.e. people running an app on their device that reports back network quality, data speeds etc).

This company presumably 'wants in' and came up with what appears to be a pretty small survey, in order to get some media coverage. And it seems to have worked.

Abpj17 · 15 Oct 2014

CyrusWuff said:
Amazing! Routes with numerous tunnels fared worse than those with none. In other news, the Pope is still Catholic.

For those who are interested, GWS have got a GMaps overlay and link to their Press Release here.

The stations aren't in tunnels... what is it about TL stations that makes them so much worse than stations on the nine other lines observed?

jon0844 · 15 Oct 2014

It can take a while for a phone to reconnect to a network, so if there are a lot of tunnels then it could still mean some phones are hunting for a cell/connection when reaching a station.

Certainly, I find it can take a while after going through three consecutive tunnels from Potters Bar to New Barnet.

Coming from Potters Bar, I'll lose signal at the first (long) tunnel. If the train doesn't stop, it will be after New Barnet that I usually get back on.

If it stops at New Barnet, I'll get it then. If it stops at Hadley Wood, I'll get it there and might just hold it through to New Barnet.

I suspect these tests are not perfect by any means. If people ran an app on their phone (like RootMetrics) then chances are they did the tests on the move, and some tests would have been at speed on non-stopping services. Thus, my theory that various tunnels and cuttings will hit the results.

Mind you, if you lose signal for ages at speed then I guess that's still relevant for commuters. The answer is; until coverage improves, get a slower train that stops all stations! You'll take longer to get where you're going, but likely have a better signal for longer!

FWIW, 4G might allow faster re-connections, as well as better in tunnel penetration at 800MHz.

fusionblue · 16 Oct 2014

HLE 13 said:
That said, I have found a issue with the O2 WiFi there too because on laptop devices once you "sign in" you stay logged in but with mobile devices it's hit and miss as it likes to keeps having you log in....

I ran into this issue - the best way to fix this is to delete the device from your account (either via the app or website) and then re-add the device when at a O2 Wifi hotspot only. Do it any other way and you're stuck in this loop repeatedly having to sign in, getting nowhere.

edwin_m · 16 Oct 2014

asylumxl said:
I too often experience call failures when I am randomly transported to Germany from TL North.

At first glance I thought that was Intercity Swallow livery - transported back in time to when phones were the size of housebricks?

hassaanhc · 17 Oct 2014

I've managed to briefly get signal on two separate occasions on the deep level Jubilee line when stopped at stations

Both times were in the 5th car of an Eastbound train, first was at Canada Water (which sent a text earlier than I'd wanted :P) and the second was at Canary Wharf. This is using Vodafone.
The stretch of line between Clapham Junction and Richmond is notorious for no signal and annoys me a lot. Recall Piccadilly line between Acton Town and Hammersmith is also pretty bad.

JaJaWa · 17 Oct 2014

Bantamzen said:
Never mind North London, the wife & I have just come back from Kos. In Kos Town the network can switch from street to street between the Greek carrier that O2 have a deal with which costs the standard EU rates, and the Turkish carrier that O2 have a deal with which costs the Earth. I received half a dozen welcome to Greece / Turkey texts as we wandered around the town the day that we were there. If I hadn't been aware that this happens and left my data on it would have cost a small fortune (it think it's something like £0.40 per Mb on the Turkish network as opposed to something like £0.06 on the Greek network). So we are pretty lucky over here really.

(Sorry for going off-topic there!)

You can just go into your phone settings and force it to only use one carrier - had this issue when I was in Corfu with my phone roaming to Albania.

infobleep · 22 Oct 2014

fusionblue said:
I ran into this issue - the best way to fix this is to delete the device from your account (either via the app or website) and then re-add the device when at a O2 Wifi hotspot only. Do it any other way and you're stuck in this loop repeatedly having to sign in, getting nowhere.

I bad a problem with my O2 account where my phone said my device was registered but at O2's end it wasn't. Spent an hour on the phone resolving it. Eventually got resolved in one of their shops.

Some of O2's software at their customer services uses sounds shocking. The customer support accidentally removed a device that was registered. The software didn't ask him if he wanted to do this.

You can only register a device up to 5 times in one day, which is something O2 keep secret, unless your talking to their customer representative. There technical support staff cannot override this either! Thus I was one registration away from not being able to resolve the problem that day.

Saying that I imagine the other firms are just as bad and when O2 works, I like them.

The reception around Surbiton station and Clapham Junction is variable. Better than it use to be, after I raised the issue via Twitter but still not what one would expect for such populous areas.

infobleep · 22 Oct 2014

Why isn't the South West Trains mainline included in the study, along with Reading to Paddington?

The study seems flawed if it doesn't include all commuter routes into London.

Emyr · 22 Oct 2014

infobleep said:
Why isn't the South West Trains mainline included in the study, along with Reading to Paddington?

The study seems flawed if it doesn't include all commuter routes into London.

Not enough data on that line probably, due to being a "market research" company nobody's heard of. :roll:

infobleep · 22 Oct 2014

Well I like the comment Nick Abbot on LBC says when reading out the latest market research, 'from a company who dearly love me to name them for publicity so I won't'. Something along those lines (no pun intended).

swt_passenger · 22 Oct 2014

infobleep said:
The study seems flawed if it doesn't include all commuter routes into London.

The fact that the firm think that 'stationmasters' should be sorting out the problem already told us it was not that clever. It's just a publicity stunt.

yorksrob · 22 Oct 2014

swt_passenger said:
The fact that the firm think that 'stationmasters' should be sorting out the problem already told us it was not that clever.

Perhaps they could install some sort of transmitter under their top hats :idea:

infobleep · 23 Oct 2014

swt_passenger said:
The fact that the firm think that 'stationmasters' should be sorting out the problem already told us it was not that clever. It's just a publicity stunt.

If they don't know much with regards to station masters, how much do they know in their own field? Of course newspapers don't care about publicity stunts. They will all it up as if it's a great study.

Mobile connectivity at stations

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