Problems with phone reception in Kaleen?

You will find with ALL carriers that the Coverage Maps are for “ON STREET COVERAGE”… not in building coverage. This is because things like roofs, insulation, window tinting, curtains, etc will affect the coverage you experience (not to mention the device you use).

Consequently, even if all three carriers say that they give you excellent coverage in your area you can still find that you have a bad experience.

The two solutions to this:

1. Stand outside (preferrably in sight of the tower); or
2. Install a personal mobile booster, such as a femtocell, though you can only get these from Vodafone or Optus… Telstra believes their network is perfect and consequently seems them as unnecessary.

Have a look at http://maps.spench.net/rf/ – you can then search for the mobile providers around your area.

Telstra has many different frequencies (~850MHz is NextG – best, ~2.1GHz is their soon-to-be-obsolete network) – there is a NextG tower just off Birie Place

Note that if you want to test how good telstra reception is, just plonking a sim card in your phone will probably only give you an indication of how good the 2.1GHz network is – most phones (unless quadband) don’t operate on the UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA 850Mhz band.

If you have a friend on telstra, invite them (and their phone) around and give the web a whirl.

RedDogInCan said :

Why don’t you just visit each carrier’s website and look at their quite detailed coverage maps. There are only three of them and you have already ruled out one.

Because most of the time that is a theoretical coverage map or a massive interpolation on a few measurements. Such is the nature of radiofrequency propagation that if a new structure goes in nearby, it could blow your reception out of the water by providing a diffraction shadow or a source for multipath for example.

RedDogInCan said :

Why don’t you just visit each carrier’s website and look at their quite detailed coverage maps.

Because they are nowhere near that detailed. The Optus map shows full 3G single band cover right across Giralang and Kaleen. The reality is very different.

If u get a telstra next G mobile that has both 850 and 2100Mhz band gives you two networks to roam onto. Pay more for better coverage though!

We’re almost in the same place, and Telstra NextG is fine – in an expensive sort of way.

Firstly, does it have to be 3G? You only talk about phone. How’s Optus 2G there?

You can make all the assumptions about Telstra being better – and Voda being worse – but there’s only one way to find out who has a tower providing you with good coverage: Beg, borrow or steal a phone/sim from someone on one of the other providers. Or you could buy one and see – Next G pre-paid mobiles can be had for $69 .. perhaps cheaper.

You could always get a phone/dongle with an antenna socket, and put an antenna on your roof. Or use a passive antenna repeater setup with your existing phone/dongle if it doesn’t have a socket..

creative_canberran said :

Simply punch your address into the coverage check functions on the various carriers sites. Safe to say though that given only Telstra gas better coverage than Optus, you may only have one option.

RedDogInCan said :

Why don’t you just visit each carrier’s website and look at their quite detailed coverage maps. There are only three of them and you have already ruled out one.

They are actually not quite that detailed and do not show small localised blackspots. Recently I have started to have issues with Optus in Dunlop, having been living here for over 10 years, first of all they said it was a black-spot, which is bullocks as it has worked well for years, then they said it was a capacity issue due to many new users in West Macgregor. They then advised that they have plans for a new base station but it wasn’t on the schedule yet. They then had the hide to suggest I change phone companies and come back in 18 months to see if it was any better.

Suffice to say I took their advice and am now with Telstra. Took all of 1 hour to get new SIM and have my Optus number ported over and now I have great coverage but won’t being going back in 18 months. Think Optus has really started to loose the plot, wheras in the 90’s and early 2000’s they were leaders in mobile and customer service… Well better than Telstra. But seems things have changed at Telstra and they are now more customer focused and don’t just assume customers will be loyal.

I’ve had bad reception for a few years with my vodaphone 3g data dongle. Telstra deals are getting less extortionate.

The easiest way to test what reception works would be to grab the cheapest pre-paid sim from each of the providers (Vodafail, Telstra and Optus) and verify that they function correctly on your phone, then go back on contract if that suits you. If I remember the cheapest telstra pre-paid was $7, at the time I couldn’t care less about the other providers as I was trying to get out of contract with one (congestion issues on the towers at work and home), and knew the other was not so good where I wanted to use it due to an on call phone using that provider.