Deteriorating Telstra mobile coverage

Having just left Vodafail after 2 years of dropped calls, missed calls, poor data etc, I invested in a 4G Galaxy S3 with Telstra.

Wow-eeee. I feel liberated. This is what a phone should do.

Glad I have put some monitoring software on it, as I could go through 1GB of data in a day if I put my mind to it!

c_c™ said :

thatsnotme said :

If the issue for the OP is just congestion, then it shouldn’t matter where in the house they are.!

Not correct.

How so? Congestion is the inability for your connection to carry data, because there are too many other people competing for a limited resource (ie, the data that can be carried over the medium). How does moving from one room to another affect the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other people who are accessing data from your tower?

mossrocket said :

Al – you’re a smart fellow (whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with) but your line of argument here is flawed – not only is it a straw man argument (which falsely assumes the NBN will improve wireless internet speeds even though it is definitely wired internet, when the Coalition plan will definitely improve wireless speeds), but it also goes to prove why the Greens were decimated in the last ACT election – cheerleading…

If only you’d run as an Independent…

Huh? How is the Coalition plan going to improve wireless speeds?

Throughout all of their various attempts to come up with an alternative policy, the Coalition have eventually decided on FTTN (Fibre to the Node) as their offering. This is a wired connection technology – the only difference between the Coalition policy, and the NBN, is how far the fibre runs – either to a local pillar box, or right up to your house.

I have seen nothing in the Coalition policy to indicate that they are going to do anything to improve wireless speed, and I can’t imagine why they’d ever propose such a thing. If the Coalition are all about private sector investment looking after this type of thing, they’d never consider putting into public hands one of the technologies where the private sector actually already invests money, and where there actually exists competition!

Mossrocket, I got faster broadband for the same cost (ie, better product, no increase in price) both times. If they were trying to ‘up sell’, it didn’t work on me and I got a good deal!

Telstra has a Network Coverage Feedback form that actually goes to the engineers responsible. I guess reporting your blackspot won’t guarantee it’ll be fixed, but it can’t hurt.

thatsnotme said :

If the issue for the OP is just congestion, then it shouldn’t matter where in the house they are.!

Not correct.

Ok folks, let’s get some things sorted out.

Firstly, coverage vs network load. Very unlikely around Canberra that on Telstra you’re having coverage issues. Much more likely to be load on the network. There’s only so much wireless spectrum available and only so many cell towers to service the available spectrum in each area.

It’s something Optus and Vodafone have had issues with for a long time, mainly because they sold their networks and wholesale network access very cheaply and widely.

Telstra has until recently kept their network exclusive (save for some sharing with Three until they joined VHA). But as demand has grown and they have opened up to wholesale buyers, Telstra too is suffering.

Second, 4G is an alternative though what they currently call 4G is really a evolved version of 3G data. It’s faster, and it uses a different part of the spectrum so for a time it will offer some respite.

Third, this is going to be an ongoing issue for sometime until the digital dividend is sold and developed. That will open up the very large and in terms of signal, very robust 700mhz spectrum once used for analogue television, something that will likely be developed into true 4G.

mossrocket said :

Al – you’re a smart fellow (whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with) but your line of argument here is flawed – not only is it a straw man argument (which falsely assumes the NBN will improve wireless internet speeds even though it is definitely wired internet, when the Coalition plan will definitely improve wireless speeds), but it also goes to prove why the Greens were decimated in the last ACT election – cheerleading…

If only you’d run as an Independent…

Mossrocket, as others have said here, congestion is at the root of the issue. The more of the core traffic that is carried on a strong backbone network, the more manageable wireless congestion is. I would have thought…

qbninthecity said :

no wonder it “disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave” cos Ainslie doesn’t exist on Northbourne you twat

Yet you knew exactly where I was talking about didn’t you? Yes that Wakefield/Visitors Centre/flats area, which is at the respective ends of Dickson and Braddon, but just two blocks from the centre of Ainslie.

Yes Grail – that would likely have a lot to do with it. Probably exacerbated a bit by my phone being an older iPhone 4, but not that badly. Cheers others.

Chop71 said :

He may be green but he isn’t a twat.

Ease up on the name calling

that would be your opinion, not mine

Let’s get our terms straight here. Coverage is the ability for you to pick up a signal from a tower at all. Capacity will dictate whether having coverage is actually worth anything, or if there’s so much congestion that you’re not getting any data through anyway. A heavily congested tower won’t stop you getting decent coverage though – the signal is still being broadcast, you just can’t talk properly over it.

If the issue for the OP is just congestion, then it shouldn’t matter where in the house they are. If it’s signal, then only being able to get coverage in certain places makes some sense. Signal issues would affect the ability to make and receive phone calls / SMS too though, so if they’re all working, you’re likely looking at congestion.

Honestly? You could change providers, and try to find one with a more reliable coverage, but eventually you’ll probably run into the same issue again. If you can get ADSL, that’s the way I’d go, and then rely on wireless at home. Far more reliable and consistent, and you may be able to move to lower data plans on your mobile devices given you’re not consuming any mobile data at home, which may help to offset the costs of paying for a landline and ADSL.

This problem won’t get better any time soon – more and more mobile devices are coming online all the time, and the telcos can’t keep up with them. Not many people enjoy having a new mobile tower erected in their neighbourhood either!

Chop71 said :

He may be green but he isn’t a twat.

Ease up on the name calling

? I hope you didn’t mean me…

qbninthecity said :

Gungahlin Al said :

Telstra 3G is woeful in areas of Downer and Dickson, and completely disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave. It’s also frequently incapable of handling anything more than a tweet in City Walk during weekday lunchtimes.

But hey, Tony Abbott and Malcom Turnbull reckon wireless is all we need for all our internet, so why bother with this NBN nonsense right? Right?

no wonder it “disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave” cos Ainslie doesn’t exist on Northbourne you twat

Jeez, it’s about 300m off Northbourne, I think most people knew the area he was talking about.

Do you pull people up for errant apostrophe’s in their comments as well?

He may be green but he isn’t a twat.

Ease up on the name calling

The “Ainslie bit” of Northbourne Avenue is probably the bit of Northbourne where all the high rise apartments are located: Dickson and Braddon. There are apartments on Lowanna Street, Dooring Street, Majura Avenue, etc. No doubt most of those have at leat two devices trying to use 3G at any time of day leading to several hundred customers hanging off one tower.

Between the cars with their always on handsets, the folks in the bus and the kids at school (Daramalan, Dickson College, etc) it is surprising that there is any service at all.

Gungahlin Al said :

Telstra 3G is woeful in areas of Downer and Dickson, and completely disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave. It’s also frequently incapable of handling anything more than a tweet in City Walk during weekday lunchtimes.

But hey, Tony Abbott and Malcom Turnbull reckon wireless is all we need for all our internet, so why bother with this NBN nonsense right? Right?

no wonder it “disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave” cos Ainslie doesn’t exist on Northbourne you twat

NellyBean said :

…I’m on Telstra 3G, with an Iphone 3GS, I live in Dickson and work in Tuggeranong and regularly take bus trips down Northbourne…

I think the trick to experiencing the drop outs on Northbourne is to find the bit that goes through Ainslie. You might need to try platform 9¾.

😉

justsomeaussie said :

If you dial *3001#12345#* on your iphone it will convert the reception bars to a decibel level. Much easier to understand if its better or worse.

Dialing it again it make it refer back to normal.

At least my issue is not one of signal strength, but of capacity. I routinely have 4 iPhone bars, but cannot get a single byte of mobile data out of the link. Text messages seem to work.

miz said :

Telstra still gets my vote. Re mobiles, two of my teens who know their stuff have both switched back to Telstra – one from Vodafone and one from Optus (after a brief flirtation with Virgin, which was assessed as even more hopeless than the other two). Their reasoning: all telcos are happy to flog stuff to you, but only Telstra actually offers what could reasonably be called ‘after sales service’. The Optus shop in Tuggers is particularly woeful.
That said, one of my daughters has been experiencing difficulties of late in the early-mid evening (she rang me to find out if I was experiencing the same problem, but as I was agog watching Supernatural on the telly at the time, I wasn’t experiencing any problems whatsoever!).
Re internet, Telstra has actually called me twice in the last couple of years to check if I am happy and whether my plan is meeting my needs. Definitely thumbs up to Telstra.

lol – maybe they don’t really ‘know their stuff’ – and the proof in that pudding is switching back to Telstra…
btw – beware the calls from sales staff asking if you are happy with your plan – not only are they not really telstra (insert any telco here) staff, their only concern is upselling…

Gungahlin Al said :

Chop71 said :

The new Al, I love this sort of banter.
Improved wireless would be great and much cheaper (and with a quicker roll out) than the NBN or we could go back to the green policy of smoke signals. Right?

Appreciate the sentiment Chop, but pretty sure I’ve said much the same things, in much the same way, throughout my years on RA. 🙂

Al – you’re a smart fellow (whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with) but your line of argument here is flawed – not only is it a straw man argument (which falsely assumes the NBN will improve wireless internet speeds even though it is definitely wired internet, when the Coalition plan will definitely improve wireless speeds), but it also goes to prove why the Greens were decimated in the last ACT election – cheerleading…

If only you’d run as an Independent…

If you dial *3001#12345#* on your iphone it will convert the reception bars to a decibel level. Much easier to understand if its better or worse.

Dialing it again it make it refer back to normal.

Gungahlin Al said :

Telstra 3G is woeful in areas of Downer and Dickson, and completely disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave. It’s also frequently incapable of handling anything more than a tweet in City Walk during weekday lunchtimes.

I’m on Telstra 3G, with an Iphone 3GS, I live in Dickson and work in Tuggeranong and regularly take bus trips down Northbourne.

I have never had an issue in any of those places you have mentioned.

Full signal strength everywhere in Canberra for me. I’m regularly tethering it to the work laptop and get a decent speed for 3G (between 1.1 and 2.3Mb/s download).

maybe I’m just lucky

Telstra still gets my vote. Re mobiles, two of my teens who know their stuff have both switched back to Telstra – one from Vodafone and one from Optus (after a brief flirtation with Virgin, which was assessed as even more hopeless than the other two). Their reasoning: all telcos are happy to flog stuff to you, but only Telstra actually offers what could reasonably be called ‘after sales service’. The Optus shop in Tuggers is particularly woeful.
That said, one of my daughters has been experiencing difficulties of late in the early-mid evening (she rang me to find out if I was experiencing the same problem, but as I was agog watching Supernatural on the telly at the time, I wasn’t experiencing any problems whatsoever!).
Re internet, Telstra has actually called me twice in the last couple of years to check if I am happy and whether my plan is meeting my needs. Definitely thumbs up to Telstra.

Grail said :

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

People who have no idea about this sort of thing are the only ones harping on about wireless.
The tech is just not ready yet.

When will wireless ever be ready for mainstream broadband? It has its uses for mobile users or sparse population where running cables to every house will be prohibitively expensive.

4g sounds promising but the problem here is, as far as I know, Telstra is only selling fake 4g.

Chop71 said :

Gungahlin Al said :

Telstra 3G is woeful in areas of Downer and Dickson, and completely disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave. It’s also frequently incapable of handling anything more than a tweet in City Walk during weekday lunchtimes.

But hey, Tony Abbott and Malcom Turnbull reckon wireless is all we need for all our internet, so why bother with this NBN nonsense right? Right?

The new Al, I love this sort of banter.
Improved wireless would be great and much cheaper (and with a quicker roll out) than the NBN or we could go back to the green policy of smoke signals. Right?

Can’t use smoke signals, far too much pollution. Maybe we should use carrier pigeons?

Funky1 said :

I’m about to come off contract with Vodafail and will be looking at all my options.

Can anyone recommend either of the other providers with regards to coverage? Sounds like Telstra aren’t that much better.

Sadly Telstra is your only option. I had one vodaphone at start of the year and changed to Telstra, while occasionally Telstra is bad, it’s still far better than vodaphone.

Telstra 4G services are also saturated in Civic during office hours. So, 4G is not a miracle cure. I’ve gone through the issue in initial stages with Telstra phone support who have walked me through the process of ‘clearing cookies’ which is nonsensical to anybody with knowledge of network services.

Some people on Whirlpool are reporting similar things in other cities, but Canberra seems to have been hit harder than most.

What’s worse is that the competition isn’t much better. I was let out of my Optus contract due to a huge blackspot covering most of Canberra – including Kingston where I was living. I can’t still figure how this sort of thing isn’t picked up and hyped by the MSM. If half of Sydney was living in a mobile blackspot it would be news across the country. Here we’re just expected to live with it. Just like the 2nd rate terrestrial broadband we also have.

Chop71 said :

The new Al, I love this sort of banter.
Improved wireless would be great and much cheaper (and with a quicker roll out) than the NBN or we could go back to the green policy of smoke signals. Right?

Appreciate the sentiment Chop, but pretty sure I’ve said much the same things, in much the same way, throughout my years on RA. 🙂

I had to get a new ADSL2 wireless modem (technicolorTG797nV3) and unfortunately I chose a Telstra supplied one. All the product information on the web for this model said it had VOIP capability but when I connected it to my voice box it wouldn’t deliver. After a lot of frustration with the VOIP service provider trying to get it to work I find out that Telstra have blocked the VOIP function because “we are not in the business of giving free phone calls”. After a lot of complaining (the modem I had to replace was supplied by Telstra and it was unblocked) Telsra agreed to unblock the modem for $100. You can guess what I told them.
Anyone know how to unblock this modem or should I just give Telstra the flick and go wireless with someone else?

Chop71 said :

Improved wireless would be great and much cheaper (and with a quicker roll out) than the NBN…

You don’t know anything about physics, do you.

Re Telstra, the cynical amongst us may suggest that they’re letting the 3G network deteriorate to attract people to their “4G” product.

In the past 9 months, I’ve done a full swing of telco providers.

From Telstra to Optus (2 months) and then to Vodafail…

Telstra – Good service (was in May 2012), but paid through the nose (my bills were $250plus for two mobile services)

Optus – through exetel, great value for $60 for two services, huge data allowance and great cap $, but non-existant service in Gungahlin, Barton and Fyshwick.

Vodafone – on a 12mth plan, good cap value, ok data allowance but patchy in service. I’ve got great screen shots on my Galaxy S3 showing d/l speeds of 50kpps and even the voda guys in Woden were impressed at the lack of speed, numerous call drop outs along most thoroughfares of Canberra too.
Paying approx $100 per month for 2 services.

Don’t let them fool you when they show you the speeds in any of the stores, as most (if not all) shopping centres have repeaters or whatever that boosts the signal in shopping centres.

Best bet, buy a pre-paid simcard from all three (may cost $50 all up with some credit) and test them out in your normal areas of use.

It will cost you in the short term, but better than being locked in a 24 month contract with a provider and having shite service.

Yes, i’ve done that much research into telcos… I use my phone heaps so it annoys me that all telco carriers can get away with dodgy services as in reality compared to other countries, we’re very very expensive for all things mobile.

Mighty Joe.

Funky1 said :

I’m about to come off contract with Vodafail and will be looking at all my options.

Can anyone recommend either of the other providers with regards to coverage? Sounds like Telstra aren’t that much better.

I’m about to come off contract with Vodafail and will be looking at all my options.

Can anyone recommend either of the other providers with regards to coverage? Sounds like Telstra aren’t that much better.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

People who have no idea about this sort of thing are the only ones harping on about wireless.
The tech is just not ready yet.

When will wireless ever be ready for mainstream broadband? It has its uses for mobile users or sparse population where running cables to every house will be prohibitively expensive.

My coverage for mobile phone is poor in my office civic, but the data service ranges from excellent to non-existent. Based on my recent issues with network at home, I’m not impressed with Telstra, but am now stuck with them for the foreseeable future.

People who have no idea about this sort of thing are the only ones harping on about wireless.
The tech is just not ready yet.

Tommy is correct

Telstra has heavily oversold its data services, going too cheap and now it has too many subscribers.

4G will improve this, though right now 4G provisions are extremely limited . This will be improved in Q1 2013.

This happened to Optus and Vodafone years ago (maybe still does) and now telstra has decided it only has to be ‘better’ than the others, not ‘fantastic’.

Holden Caulfield said :

Gungahlin Al said :

…disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave…

I’m not surprised!

It’s hopeless in Macgregor on the I pad and I phone but fine on a s***ty old Nokia

Gungahlin Al said :

…disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave…

I’m not surprised!

Yep, same for me.

You can pretty much pick the peak use periods at certain times of day because of the severe slow down in service.

At my house, around 5pm-9pm are nearly total no go times.

Gungahlin Al said :

Telstra 3G is woeful in areas of Downer and Dickson, and completely disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave. It’s also frequently incapable of handling anything more than a tweet in City Walk during weekday lunchtimes.

But hey, Tony Abbott and Malcom Turnbull reckon wireless is all we need for all our internet, so why bother with this NBN nonsense right? Right?

The new Al, I love this sort of banter.
Improved wireless would be great and much cheaper (and with a quicker roll out) than the NBN or we could go back to the green policy of smoke signals. Right?

Congestion. And this is why the coalitions wireless internet plan makes no sense.

Telstra 3G is woeful in areas of Downer and Dickson, and completely disappears during the Ainslie bit of the bus ride along Northbourne Ave. It’s also frequently incapable of handling anything more than a tweet in City Walk during weekday lunchtimes.

But hey, Tony Abbott and Malcom Turnbull reckon wireless is all we need for all our internet, so why bother with this NBN nonsense right? Right?

The Telstra 3G network is getting congested. One option (albeit spensive) is to see if your area has 4G coverage and if it does change your devices over to 4G.

Chews thru battery however.