Forum Discussion
I'm with Smarty, hubby is with 3. I have consistently poor signal, he has consistently good signal.
Seems you are right and your post has given me answers of many questions. The only option is to use 2 phones at same time to check coverage and signals. I am facing much problem with signals on motorway. Smarty uses 3 network but I believe, wavelength or strength is different. I have checked Vodafone website, even they sell different strengths of signals at different prices it means service providers have options to change quality of signals. Indeed if we are paying less we are not getting good quality.
Some of Vodafone's unlimited tariffs are speed capped but Smarty/Three do not offer this.
Smarty have access to Three's entire range of spectrum (Band 1, 3, 20, 28, 32 for 4G and N78 for 5G). There is no spectrum that is only available to Three customers so the 'wavelengths' used are identical.
Also worth mentioning that the bars on screen are only a very crude indicator of signal strength and do not indicate the signal quality or speed in any way. A phone connected to Band 20 (800MHz) may show 4 or 5 bars but have very poor data speeds due to the limited bandwidth available on Band 20, whereas a phone connected to Band 1 in the same location may only show 1-2 bars but be much faster as more bandwidth is available.
