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O2 (UK) - Do they even transmit 3G anymore??

S

ss957916

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 17, 2009
861
0
I upgraded to the 3GS when it came out and enjoyed the increased speeds. However, sometime in early December, I couldn't get online at all for a few days which, after calling O2, turned out to be problems with their network.

Since then, although I can now get online, I don't think I've seen the '3G' symbol since before that time - getting on for two months now. It's painfully slow and, most of the time, I've just got the GPRS circle or, sometimes, Edge.

I'm in SW London - is anyone else getting any 3G reception?
 
SW London here too and no problems here - 3G both at home and through to work using WunderRadio all of the way. No 3G in my office, but there never has been.
There was a widely reported outage in December which meant we'd lost data services for about 3 days, but other than that my 3GS reports 3G when it should...
 
Ah, O2. How I miss you. Not.

You definitely need to keep an eye on the handset when you're travelling to different areas as, surely even on O2, you should get 3G somewhere close by if you're in London. If you can verify that you're in an O2 3G area, i.e. by looking at someone else's phone, but you don't see the 3G icon and your handset has 3G enabled then I'd advise doing a restore via iTunes.

Otherwise, if it's just O2 being rubbish, it's time to get your official unlock from O2 and bide your time until your commitment ends and you can, you know, move to a real network. ;)
 
They turn off your 3g service if you miss your bill at all. Log on and check for blocks in the bolt on section. Otherwise call hem and kick up they do refund ;)
 
If you get a 3G outage you can always change your settings to another data network:
Settings...General...Network...Cellular Data Network
Change idata.o2.co.uk to mobile.o2.co.uk

Mines been set to that since before Christmas actually and I just changed it back to idata.
 
ss957916 said:
What a **** I am! I can't remember ever turning it off.

Perhaps someone might like to just delete this whole thread...
Click to expand...

I noticed the other day I wasn't picking up any 3G signals, even at work where it's pretty reliable. I checked my settings and 3G was turned off even though I know I hadn't altered this setting. :confused:
 
Interestingly enough, I find I have one bar of 3G if I use the idata.o2.co.uk network and 5 bars of 3G if I use the mobile.o2.co.uk setting.

O2 have recently admitted in the press that they are struggling to cope with the iPhone data usage and it looks like they put the iPhones on a separate network to the other mobiles.

I won't post this on the o2 forum in case O2 get wind of it and force us to use the iPhone network instead!
Worth a try...post your results if you're in the UK on O2
 
davehutch said:
If you get a 3G outage you can always change your settings to another data network:
Settings...General...Network...Cellular Data Network
Change idata.o2.co.uk to mobile.o2.co.uk
Click to expand...

Oh - so what's the difference between the two URLs? I got surprisingly good 3g coverage in London over Xmas, but at home in the Midlands the 3G signal is shockingly bad. Better at work, but not indoors...
 
JonLa said:
Oh - so what's the difference between the two URLs? I got surprisingly good 3g coverage in London over Xmas, but at home in the Midlands the 3G signal is shockingly bad. Better at work, but not indoors...
Click to expand...

I really don't know. Maybe when idata is being used heavily in a particular area, traffic would run faster or there would be more "space" on the other one?
Maybe someone more knowledgeable about it can chip in?
 
The difference is one is for iPhone users and the other is for people with web dongles.
 
davehutch said:
So if you change your APN to mobile.o2.co.uk and then set up tethering, will o2 know you're tethering or will they think your using a dongle?
Click to expand...

Honestly don't know. All I do know is that my o2dongle uses the other settings and if u read though all the garbage on the o2site you'll find 3 lots of settings. One for the dongle. One for the iPhone and one for pay as you go
 
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