Terrible data speeds and connection on O2 - Anyone else?

[WyrleyD]

I have a secondary O2 sim that I rarely use (got it mainly to use for data when in France, i put the sim in my router there), I checked it yesterday and there was no service, looked on the website and they said that they are having trouble with the local mast and engineers were due to fix the problem soon, also, they will be replacing the mast towards the end of July. Before going away last month I popped into town to visit the O2 shop as I had a few things I wanted to ask but shop is gone, there was a notice saying this shop had closed and the nearest one is in the next town so I went there, nope, shop gone and notice saying the nearest shop is in a town 7 miles away so gave up at that point.

My esim is with EE and have never had a problem, I would have got another physical sim from them but I wouldn't get free roaming in France which is why I need the physical sim. The other odd thing is that I wanted to up the data on my wife's EE sim (it's a joint deal) but they said I would lose the free roaming as it would be a change to the contract and only old existing contracts get free roaming.

I did try a Lebara sim some time ago that gave free roaming but had a lot of trouble setting it up in the router by comparison the O2 sim was very easy.

[ToNyC1]

I had the same issues, Blackpool town centre has no o2 signal for a good 2 years now! I reported it and they gave up giving me updates!

I recently moved to coop mobile that piggy backs on EE, I’m paying £11 for 10gb of data. Is a bit basic but does the job and signal is so much better! My wife is on o2 is often teathering to my mobile when we are out and about!

[miniman]

I found that the EE resellers (e.g. Lyca) don't offer basics like WiFi calling so although the EE network is theoretically excellent, it's no use to me as no signal at home and without paying the full-monty EE rates (which are very high in my view) it was no use.

[wyson]

bristolracer said:

I made the mistake of moving from EE to O2

EE is a far better service but you do pay.
My sim only with them was £24 per month, the same on O2 was £8.

Trouble is that EE know they are a superior service and charge accordingly. The fact they are owned by BT also gives them the advantage of getting infrastructure work done quickly.

I also have a work supplied mobile on Vodafone. Reception is almost similar to O2 but on a poor signal it will still transfer data.

Quite few MVNO’s, that piggyback off EE’s network, offer good deals, that people here have had success with. 2p mobile was one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_virtu...

If you sort the above list using the clicky arrows in the headers, you can see the full list with a table of supported / unsupported features. I think EE reserve the full set of features for themselves, but if you don’t need wifi calling, or visual voicemail etc. these are worth a shot and can be far cheaper.

Edited by wyson on Friday 7th June 09:20

[mikey_b]

I had exactly the same experience after moving from an expensive Vodafone contract to Virgin Mobile. The signal strength was fine but the performance was absolutely abysmal - it was entirely normal to have full strength signal and be unable to do something as simple as use RingGo to pay for parking.

Moved back to Vodafone's network via a Talkmobile SIM, paying £7.95 for 30GB of 5G data - and it actually works properly.

[bloomen]

miniman said:

I found that the EE resellers (e.g. Lyca) don't offer basics like WiFi calling so although the EE network is theoretically excellent, it's no use to me as no signal at home and without paying the full-monty EE rates (which are very high in my view) it was no use.

1p mobile does.

I just switched to them from O2. O2 signal did indeed suck the big one so I was pleased to leave.

I'm getting more coverage with quasi EE, but it's not really quality signal much of the time. However I spend most of my time in obscure locations.

Yet again 5G is proving to be utterly useless so I've permanently switched it off. I'm genuinely not sure I've ever had 5G that actually worked.

[Chuffedmonkey]

hellorent said:

I have similar problem's with Sky who piggy back on the o2 network.

They dont. Not sure who SKY use but its not O2.

[colin79666]

Chuffedmonkey said:

They dont. Not sure who SKY use but its not O2.

O2. https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/guides/mvnos-a-gui...

[phil-sti]

Yep I moved from EE to O2 as they had cheap deals, Awful. I was going to move 4 lines but once I tried it on my phone we kept them with EE

[Philplop]

I’m with giffgaff that uses the o2 network. I think this thread has convinced me to finally leave. I thought it was just me too, changed phones and it’s still crap. I’m sitting in my garden and when I clicked to open this thread it couldn’t do it. And like you say, sometimes I can’t even use google maps.

But saying all that, my whole family uses giffgaff and they don’t seem to have a problem. My girlfriend’s giffgaff phone is always usable when mine is useless.

[BishBosh]

Damn!!
I just switched from Vodafone to O2 as I thought Vod were rubbish….popped a £10 one month Tesco sim into the phone to test and it seems very good.
Any one else have a positive O2 experience? I have 14 days to cool off.

[onetwothreefour]

EE's network is no doubt significantly helped by the fact it has received >£600m from the government to enhance its 4G network to support the new emergency services network to replace Airwave. However, since there are no handsets that provide the functionality the emergency services need, that £600m effectively subsidises EE's consumer infrastructure.

https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/... paragraph 13

[leef44]

Just seen this thread, interesting. Last year, I switched from terrible Three network to Tesco mobile and my phone has an O2 sim contract. Previously it has been better than my son and OH's phone who are still on Three.

Yesterday I was in Harrogate and it was fine using google map going into the centre. As soon as we were there, I could not get any mobile data even though it said 4g available. I WhatsApp my son to ask him what he wanted to eat in the evening - it took half hour for the message to get to him.

I've been having these kind of issues only in the last month or so.

I must switch contract when this expires.

[jurbie]

BishBosh said:

Damn!!
I just switched from Vodafone to O2 as I thought Vod were rubbish….popped a £10 one month Tesco sim into the phone to test and it seems very good.
Any one else have a positive O2 experience? I have 14 days to cool off.

You'll probably be okay, I'll take a punt that you live somewhere in the east of the country? O2 and Voda had an infrastructure sharing agreement where they split the country in half. The result was that Voda were strong in the west whilst O2 was relatively poor and then vice versa. They are unwinding this but how quickly they'll build new sites is anyone's guess.

It is correct that the network is horribly over subscribed especially since the merger with Virgin and all the Virgin Mobile customers came over however I have seen some improvements. Most obviously at Oulton Park over British GT weekend where for a long time the network was fine but then for two years it became unuseable. This year it was fine again so something has changed.

On the other hand I travel a lot and try to avoid hotel wifi whenever possible so will always tether to my phone and I generally don't have a problem with O2. I have a backup Three sim and my work phone is on EE so I'm well covered but rarely need to stray from O2.

O2 will also be the last to turn off their 3g network, sometime in 2025, Vodafone and EE and have already switched their networks off and I did hear that Vodafone in particular discovered some major blackspots where all they had was 3g and now nothing. I think this is why O2 are taking their time because they know unless they do some big infrastructure improvements then their network would collapse completely without being able to fallback to 3g from time to time.

Of course the other argument is because they have so many customers they don't really care because people just put up with a crappy network so why bother spending money making it better when the bare minimum will suffice.

[BishBosh]

jurbie said:

You'll probably be okay, I'll take a punt that you live somewhere in the east of the country? O2 and Voda had an infrastructure sharing agreement where they split the country in half. The result was that Voda were strong in the west whilst O2 was relatively poor and then vice versa. They are unwinding this but how quickly they'll build new sites is anyone's guess.

It is correct that the network is horribly over subscribed especially since the merger with Virgin and all the Virgin Mobile customers came over however I have seen some improvements. Most obviously at Oulton Park over British GT weekend where for a long time the network was fine but then for two years it became unuseable. This year it was fine again so something has changed.

On the other hand I travel a lot and try to avoid hotel wifi whenever possible so will always tether to my phone and I generally don't have a problem with O2. I have a backup Three sim and my work phone is on EE so I'm well covered but rarely need to stray from O2.

O2 will also be the last to turn off their 3g network, sometime in 2025, Vodafone and EE and have already switched their networks off and I did hear that Vodafone in particular discovered some major blackspots where all they had was 3g and now nothing. I think this is why O2 are taking their time because they know unless they do some big infrastructure improvements then their network would collapse completely without being able to fallback to 3g from time to time.

Of course the other argument is because they have so many customers they don't really care because people just put up with a crappy network so why bother spending money making it better when the bare minimum will suffice.

Thanks for that, very informative and yes, you’re spot on with my location so does make sense.

[hellorent]

Chuffedmonkey said:

They dont. Not sure who SKY use but its not O2.

In that case who do they piggy back off ??

[casbar]

Thought it was just me, I live in Salisbury, so not exactly a huge city. O2 4g data is nearly unusable in the city centre.

[mikey_b]

jurbie said:

O2 will also be the last to turn off their 3g network, sometime in 2025, Vodafone and EE and have already switched their networks off and I did hear that Vodafone in particular discovered some major blackspots where all they had was 3g and now nothing. I think this is why O2 are taking their time because they know unless they do some big infrastructure improvements then their network would collapse completely without being able to fallback to 3g from time to time.

The 3G switch off is being done to boost capacity on 4 and 5G. There are very big overlaps in the frequency bands used by each generation of mobile technology, indeed the major difference is compression algorithms rather than frequency. Switching off transmitters occupying spectrum that could be used by a much more efficient technologies means better service for everyone. However, there will obviously be a period of time between 3G switch-off and new base stations being installed to replace the coverage with 5G - which is what we’re in now.

If O2 are indeed delaying (or just slow-walking) the 3G switch-off, you can guess what that means for their 5G rollout schedule.

[119]

I’ve noticed this over the last few months.

I can have full bars of 4g but it’s unusable and yet one or two and it works perfectly.

I like the thought of EE but even their sim only deals look jolly expensive.

[mikey_b]

119 said:

I’ve noticed this over the last few months.

I can have full bars of 4g but it’s unusable and yet one or two and it works perfectly.

I like the thought of EE but even their sim only deals look jolly expensive.

This is the difference between signal and capacity. A bit like living near a motorway that’s almost permanently gridlocked. In principle the ‘excellent transport link’ is nearby and available, but it doesn’t really work because there are too many others trying to use it at the same time. Meanwhile, elsewhere there are smaller roads, but you travel faster because there is much less traffic.