Data over mobile network

assume the weather.

what is a "radial path to the transmitter"

The service has been good for 10 years or more. Why now?

I don't think we have any local 5g arsonists.

Vodafone coverage chart has us in a (good reception indoors and out) zone about 1500m from the mast.

Why intermittent? Surely an aerial/weather fault would be permanent.

'Line of sight'? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

I think he means that the new family are in-between Tim and the mast, and he wonders if they're "sucking up" all the signal, leaving none for him?

In message snipped-for-privacy@candehope.me.uk>, charles snipped-for-privacy@candehope.me.uk> writes

Sorry to be unclear. We are on the same radial path to the transmitter. I know nothing about the propagation characteristics of mobile phone masts but assume it is zoned.

Not that I know of, as each person has a unique ID so two at once is not really possible as far as I know. Brian

The weather, almost certainly but not the others. Also of course it could be just like in the old days of TV, somebody has installed a large metal structure, like a crane and this has made it prone to reflections from your usual mast. I believe there are solutions where you can pay, in effect to have your own mini cell, but don't know how its done or how expensive it might be. Brian

There are methods of "bonding" individual links to make them appear as one larger one but requires the right kit at both ends of those links.

Keep banging the table, remember that even if you have a contract with Vodafone for service that is with a different part of Vodafone than provides the physical network...

Presuambly Tim, neighbours and Tx form a straight line possibly with the neighbours between Tim and Tx. I don't think this would have any effect on data rates as the TDM shares out the available time slots across all users. Ther could be capacity issues on that cell sector but Tim's rural so not likely.

Biggest clue may be signal strength, has that fallen through the floor as the local cell has died or got a fault (wind blow an aerial down, water got into feeder?).

On Android it might be worth getting one of the apps that tells you everything your wanted to know about the cell you are connected to and it's neighbours. If you are normally connected to cell X with Y bars, but know connected to cell J with K bars and no sign of cell X it would be reasonable to assume that cell X has died. How you tell a Customer Services droid this information and get them to pass it on to some one who understands it is another matter...

Not always, Rain showers can cause very short lived and intermittent attenuation effects. Brian

You could use multiple mobile phones (or other devices which support hotspots) and connect, say, one PC to each hotspot.

Get 5G - it is, as we all know, the answer to everything.

No idea, but if you can see the mast it should work. Best thing is to first of all find another vodafone user and run a test against your phone. It could be your phone is a little deaf or has a dodgy aerial.

Most are inside the case these days, a ploy to make them look good but is hardly ideal. Brian

That would b e unlikely. Far more likely is the phone is knackered. Brian

Its multiplexed so in theory it should not matter how many people are using their phones next door at the same time, there are likely so many users in your area, a few more should not make much difference. Of course the system may be overloaded from some other major source, you have no real way of knowing. Go close to another mast and see if its specific to yours. Brian

Vodafone (in common with other networks) have re-farmed some of their

All paths to a transmitter are radial.

I always get bad HF from tank sensors and wifi when branches are waving about

Actually during half term with kids streaming endless stuff on their mobiles (not just the family along the line of sight) it is quite possible that a rural node backhaul could be saturated.

One of the apps that shows cellular signal quality and error rates might shed some more light. I'd bet on bandwidth contention problems on the backhaul caused by half term though. Sometimes see that happen in the evenings on our rural exchange now that some places have FTTC. QD TV uses a fair chunk of bandwidth and with people watching different programmes on demand it adds up to a lot of peak bandwidth.

Most are divided into 120 degree sectors that work vaguely independantly but probably synchonised so one sector isn't trying to hear a mobile ten miles away when another is trying to shout a one of it's mobiles. B-)