Virgin Media Community

[Thedog29]

Hi folks, hopefully someone can help. Basically I have two sims on my contract. My son uses one of them and it works fine when he's at home in Belfast, however when he goes to university in Durham he cannot get a service in his accommodation and its not that much better in the Durham City itself. I've been on several times with customer services and have went through the usual refresh then take the sim out and put it in again. This has had no impact. The postcode in question is DH1 3DE. Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks

[enlli · Accepted solution]

I've checked the postcode you have given on a couple of independent sights and they are all returning weak 4G and 3G. 

The signal for your Son's phone will likely be supplied by EE. The 4G mast appears to indicate it is 800MHz 4G a frequency denied to Virgin.

I would have thought the town centre would be better served though.

There is little to be done for poor network coverage.

Virgin are in the process of moving over to using Vodafone, but there is no timescale as to the date that will happen, except this year.

[japitts]

For what it's worth, there's 2 EE sites pretty closeby this location. One has Band 3 (1800Mhz), the other has Band 3 (1800Mhz) & Band 20 (800Mhz)

One other checker that I use (it breaks coverage down into separate layers), reports ~80% strength on both 2G & 4G800, perhaps a little weaker on 4G1800 but should be fine outdoors.

[Thedog29]

Thanks for the info - it's a shame as i have a very good deal with the Virgin SIM (100gb of data for £10) but i guess that isn't any use if he can't access the data while in UNI.

If i was to go for another provider, who would have the best signal for that area? I wouldn't want to switch if all the providers suffered from poor reception.

[enlli]

Best way is to ask student friends in the same locality what network they use and what reception is like.

[Thedog29]

So after several phone calls to the 789 number I finally got them to put me through to the faults department (level 2) as they where unable to do anything to help my case. The guy I was talking to was very helpful and after I explained my problem (my son unable to get a network signal while in his accommodation) he did a bit of checking on the mast signals etc in the area. Unfortunately the issue is that the sim my son is using is still piggy backing on the EE network and apparently EE only let Virgin sims use 4g for data for calls & texts they can only use 2g or 3g which is terrible for indoor reception. He told me that Virgin are in the process of transferring all it's EE sim customers to Vodafone but that they where unable to give me a time when my son's Sim would be moved across and that in the meantime there was nothing they could about not getting a network signal. I asked could they not just move that SIM over to the new network and was told that they cannot "force" through the change as it causes problems. So basically he put me through to mobile care for them to issue me with a PAC code. The more i think about this the more upset i get - If i was to order a new SIM from Virgin it would be 5g ready and on the Vodafone network however the SIM only plans are nowhere near what i get at the minute (£10 a month for 100GB of data) so I'm thinking is this a ploy for Virgin to get rid of me and my current deal, hoping that I will go for one of their less attractive SIM contracts. i think they could easily have sent me a new SIM that would have been connected to Vodafone 😞  I'm starting to rant a bit now so i'll just end things here.  

[japitts]

Just by means of info for anyone else reading this...

The bit in bold, i.e. that EE only offer 4G-calling to their own pay-monthly customers, is entirely correct. But there's nothing inherently bad about 2G or 3G for indoor use at all. What is probably being alluded to, is that EE offer additional 4G coverage on 800Mhz frequencies that is particularly good at "extending range" indoors and in rural areas. The valid technical reasons why EE do this, don't apply to VF or O2. As per post-3, there is 800Mhz coverage in this location.

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@Thedog29 wrote:

EE only let Virgin sims use 4g for data for calls & texts they can only use 2g or 3g which is terrible for indoor reception.

[Thedog29]

Sorry, the text that you quote relates to my sons reception specifically. I should have made that clear. I was told by the level 2 technician that there was some sort of block between the mast and his phone while in his accommodation which as it was 2g or 3g it could not get through. Something for people to bear in mind if they are having difficulties. 

[japitts]

Without having been on that call it's hard to comment further, but...

There is no such block that is technically possible. It sounds like this is just a local coverage hole, or area of poor indoor coverage. Nothing more than that.