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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

Do Facebookers never venture outside of cities? Because maybe the UK is weird, but getting 2G even in developed areas isn't that uncommon for me. Sure there's 4G in cities and 3G in many places, but there's plenty of places with poor signal or outdated transmitters (like the town I live in).

(This is especially noticeable if you're in a train or a bus where you're frequently changing cells.)

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I have to say, when I visited the UK from the US last fall, for the first time with a smartphone, I was amazed at how atrocious the mobile coverage was. I did my research beforehand and went with Vodafone as I expected the best coverage. From the time I activated my phone in Bath, through 3 days driving through Wales, and then up the motorway towards Edinburgh, I got GPRS and EDGE if I was lucky. I think I only occasionally saw 3G and never saw 4G or LTE. I was very convinced that my unlocked iPhone 5s was somehow not able to use Vodafone's faster bands in the UK. It was simply unusable for navigation or even the most basic tasks, and I was very happy with my choice to bring a standalone satnav device as well as the phone.

Then I arrived in Edinburgh, and, bam, 4G -- which persisted back to Newbury and London.

In the US, particularly last decade, we felt that we had been left so far behind in mobile technology compared to Europe, but my coverage woes this last trip made me feel somewhat better-- as did the realization that roaming charges were still a thing in the EU (having assumed they must have gone away ages ago).

The best coverage I experienced was in Iceland, where even the most remote-seeming canyon had top-notch data service, and our apartment for the week had 50Mbps FTTH service.

On a slightly more recent trip to New Zealand, I went with Vodafone again, and had much better luck with coverage-- I only lost coverage on the west coast of the south island which did not surprise me given the remoteness.

I think that was merely an incorrect perception. The US had substantial 4G coverage long before Europe did. As a whole Europe has been far behind on 4G adoption until recently.

The same is true about broadband speeds. It's widely believed, incorrectly so, that the US lags massively behind Europe on broadband. It's not true however, it's little more than a bogus bashing point spread around online. The US has comparable average broadband speeds to the UK and Denmark, and is faster than Germany, and far faster than France, Italy or Spain. [1]

[1] https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/resources-connectivity-20...

Which is, btw, really surprising because the US had a avg. speed of 6.0 in 2013 and 11.5 in 2014, while Germany only improved from 7.7 to 8.7.

IMHO that's really strange...

Did something major happen between 2013 and 2014? Because otherwise I can't think of any reason that would double the average speed of a whole country with a population of over 300 million.

Yeah; as I mentioned, my impression was from the previous decade. Quite a bit has changed since then.

I don't know why you had problems in towns, that seems strange. I did a trip to Wales and the English Midlands, and had no problems with O2, or my friend with Vodafone — I have photo check-ins from mountains and valleys in Wales to show for it.

Having said that, Vodafone has a reputation for good 2G coverage, but I don't think that holds for 3G or 4G. It could also be a bit out of date.

https://www.vodafone.co.uk/explore/network/uk-coverage-map/

I think it's telling that Vodafone's 2G map shows the whole country, but the 3G and 4G maps are limited to a high zoom, so you don't get an overview.

The government regulator has a map which gives a fair comparison: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/mobile-coverage.

For anyone else doing something similar, EE would be the best choice.

This comment thread makes me feel spoiled - I used to live in Sweden where my operator (Three) didn't have a 2G network, now I live in Japan where all the 2G networks are long-gone. Right now I'm visiting Australia where by far the best coverage is on Telstra's NextG 3G network (I'm 80 km away from the nearest supermarket yet am getting 6 MBit down on NextG with an antenna on the roof).

I haven't seen 2G in a LONG time

New Zealand is similar, one carrier is 3G/4G only, one of them is 2G/3G/4G, and the newest one only operates their own network in major cities on 2G/3G/4G and roams onto the second largest outside of it. I frequently get 3G in very rural areas and I haven't been in a 2G only area for months.

Three in the UK is 3G/4G only - but is noticeably patchier than other providers, since if you 'go rural' it will just drop out rather than fall back on GSM.

Three in Sweden got a big boost in coverage after the original legacy GSM licenses ran out and the frequencies got redistributed so that they got a slice of low-frequency spectrum to put 3G on.

Minor point but I'm fairly certain Telstra NextG is a 4G network.

NextG is their 850 MHz 3G HSDPA network. Their 4G network is just branded "Telstra 4G" and "Telstra 4GX" for 700 MHz.

I thought it was kinda funny when telstra had "NextG" in their marketing, because now it's essentially "PreviousG"

Same with how the Hutchinson networks around the world (UK, Hong Kong, Sweden, etc) are branded "Three" even now that they have 4G networks running.

Probably not at the same time as they're trying to build the products they do at work?

I find taking the overground in London quite good for testing real download speed for mobile web applications, rapidly switching cell towers with some of them not even running gprs

In Vietnam, there are more and more buses have 3G router w/ AP to supply internet to their customers on road trips. Even the remote mountains now have stable 3G network.

Yes, we visited Vietnam last year (beautiful country by the way, well worth a visit) and were surprised to get solid 3G coverage even out in the middle of Ha Long Bay!

I'm American, and I took a road trip last month from Dallas to NYC and back (going through Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and tiny bits of a few other states).

Unless I was in a city, I only had 2G signal, and in a few places I didn't even have that (but those were rare).

Edit: for reference, my carrier at the time was Simple Mobile, an MVNO of T-Mobile (I'm no longer with them anymore: I just activated Project Fi today).

Every time I've taken a train in the UK (between Aberdeen and Edinburgh or Glasgow, or from Edinburgh to Manchester) this has been my experience. When you're sat in the station in a city you get 4G, it rapidly deteriorates to 3G after you set off, then 2G, and then it just alternates between 2G and nothing.

Verizon and AT&T have vastly better coverage.

And this is the exact reason I left T-Mobile. AT&T have 4G coverage on pretty much the entire interstate system. When I had T-Mobile I'd drive from NYC to Columbus, OH and have no signal for the 8+ hours between the two cities.

With Band 12 LTE, this is changing rapidly on TMO.

Upgrading to a Nexus 6 made vast improvements to my T-Mobile coverage as it supported the new bands.

Project Fi rides on T-mobile and Sprint (T-mobile having the better network of the two).

In my experiences, T-Mobile is much better to have when you have both. If you're somewhere where you're just hoping for anything at all, Sprint wins. T-Mobile has fast data, but falls off quickly outside dense areas. I find the two complementary in a way that gives Fi a powerful synergy.

My reference areas are Maryland,DC,VA (through NOVA and down to farming areas around Charlottesville); a weeklong road trip from Phoenix to Los Angeles with Las Vegas and Grand Canyon stops; and a month-long road trip going through VA-MD-PA-NY-NY-OH-IN-IL-WI-MN-SD-WY-MT-ID-WA-OR-CA.

I am in Chicago, and it is not uncommon to see the connection (AT&T in this case) drop all the way to Edge inside buildings.

For ages I thought 'E' meant emergency, like it was some sort of backup connection for emergencies that didn't really work at all... this was back in 2008.

Uh, I thought it meant 'error'.. Only now I realize that it's referring to connection type.

There's plenty of people who commute towns and cities to Facebook London :)

It's really bad for satnav apps. If you try to plan a route in Waze with a 2G connection, the app will give a timeout error and become unusable.

Huh. Google Maps handles it really well, I frequently use it for bus times.

Germany and Portugal also have the same situation.

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