Virgin Mobile poor coverage

[Ballsmedia75]

I mean it's garbage, I live in London and there are so so many areas that get E or H come up with speed. This isn't some Mickey mouse SIM company is it? Jesus I've used O2, Vodafone, EE and others over the years and never had such crap mobile coverage, it's so bad that pictures in Twitter don't even load, websites don't load. Their coverage checker doesn't add up. Anyone explain why it's so rubbish. It's not my phone.

[enlli]

Well they use Vodafone for coverage but a lot of the complaints recently don't tie in with what Vodafone users (I'm one) experience.

[Beth_G]

Hi there,

I am sorry to hear you've been facing mobile signal issues, I appreciate this must be frustrating. We use both EE's and Vodafone's network - most customers are now under the Vodafone network, however some are still under EE. If you are struggling with the signal on your device and it is not a device issue, sadly there isn't too much we can do to improve this for you as it depends on the distance of masts to your location amongst other things.

I'll pop you over a PM now so I can raise a complaint for you

[justinrd]

I’ve been a customer for several years and never had a single issue whilst Virgin Mobile were piggybacking on EE. 

It seems I’ve been moved to Vodafone as my internet access pretty much turned awful overnight. Black spots in parts of my area (in Westcliff, Essex) that I often visit, hours without coverage whilst working from the office in central London (resulting in missed messages plus a massive hit to my phone’s battery life) and internet slowed to a crawl during my commute. None of these locations previously had an issue.

I know for a fact it is not my handset (an iPhone 13 Pro) as when I tried using it with my work SIM (which is EE) I’m back to the same service I previously enjoyed. 

No idea what’s going on but it wouldn’t surprise me if Vodafone are quietly throttling Virgin Mobile customers. I initially put it down to teething problems, but it’s been the case for weeks now. I will probably give it one more week before switching networks (which is now easier than ever before).

[Paul_DN]

Hi justinrd,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome, sorry to hear you are facing connection issues on your Mobile since your Sim was switched to the Vodafone network, have you had a look to see if there are any known issues in the areas where the connection suffers, you can check this here  .

Please let us know how things go.

Regards

Paul.

[Ballsmedia75]

I was in Barnet yesterday and I lost connection no 2g, 3g, 4g and forget about 5g, when it did return the odd moment it showed as H. Yet your link you have provided shows great coverage upto 5g. Something is blatantly wrong. Not the first time I've lost connection in London either. I've been a Vodafone customer in the past and had a better connection than what I get now. This is London not the middle of nowhere.

[Paul_DN]

Hi Ballsmedia75,

Are you able to try your SIM in a different handset to see if the same issue occurs?

Regards

Paul.

[Ballsmedia75]

I don't have another phone, I'm currently in Enfield which the network checker for my post code shows great coverage/full bars, my phone shows 1 bar and 4G+, I know a mile up the road different post code where network checker shows great coverage (meaning everything is good 2G-5G), I get full bars and H. Someone somewhere is being conned over what customers should be getting.

[justinrd]

Thanks for replying. Yes, similar to the original poster, according to the coverage checker connection should be full strength. Not for 5G, but certainly for everything else.

It sounds like Vodafone might be restricting certain bands to their own customers, which is what EE do for PlusNet. More info in this thread:

https://community.plus.net/t5/Mobile/Plusnet-Mobile-reception-not-as-good-as-EE/td-p/1587172

[enlli]

 @justinrd Vodafone don't restrict bands  EE no longer do apart from Plusnet. My 1p Mobile SIM acesses 800Mhz,  has full VoLTE and WiFi Calling and 5G

@Ballsmedia75 Might be silly but has 4G (LTE) been turned off in Network Types. Happened to me with 5G and I'd never touched it