I been trialling a Vodafone sim around Wrexham. Speeds pretty good everywhere except in my top floor flat in line of sight of the mast.
There is a bus station between us, but I’m above that as is the mast (rooftop site).
Three is hit and miss here, EE is great but expensive (perfect for my home broadband though).
Hope voda or O2 bring 5G here soon.
How have you been trialing? Thinking of leaving EE for Voxi just down to price.
I had a dormant Voxi sim, which easily converted to esim via iPhone settings (was done in less than 2 minutes), and stuck the £10 bundle on it.
So far so good, great signal at work (literally other side of the mast to my apartment). O2 always works but can be slow at school run time (I refuse to use work WiFi not that I’ve anything to hide, just gov WiFi don’t tick a box).
The Vodafone coverage map has a planned coverage option, my limited experience with it is if it shows improvements coming they will come but if it’s not showing any improvements they may still upgrade, I think they use it just for generational upgrades like 5G SA rollout for example.
You can get a VF eSIM from esim.net and cancel recurring payments immediately and try for a month.
Am I right thinking there must be a mast there somewhere that has 5G on it?
The nearest otherwise is Ellesmere Port and that’s quite the distance to have solid 5G in this area.
My mum lives local to some of it and I’m gonna pop over tonight so will see.
The map area basically covers land, not housing.
I’m thinking Ellesmere port, if you look on this map history you can see the week after the port got coverage the map shows some good signal in that area, if it rural on a hill it could have line of site to the mast especially if it’s not a street pole but a proper tower, similar with Nantwich showing some coverage the same time as Frodsham gets upgraded.
I think there should be coverage in a rough circle if there was a mast there but there’s no location that makes sense.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking, I’ll go check out the landscape after work, I’m sure it’s hills blocking that side but I might be wrong.
Strange to reach that distance yet Chester gets none.
The O2 / Vodafone country divide is cray.
Then you see EE 5G 
The site has this cool comparison tool so you can see coverage at once, EE have the emergency services contract so maybe that’s why they have the best coverage.
I was thinking maybe Vodafone and O2 decided to decouple their street poles and Vodafone took existing sites in the West and O2 taking East. That’s definitely what’s happening in my area of Manchester all the joint poles have gone to Vodafone and O2 have been rolling out new 5G poles near the old joint location.
Some of the maps are still 2023 I think so small disadvantage.
With the Three/voda potential merger, that could change things a fair bit for the two.
Ah I missed the dates, but even if you change the dates to match the east west split is evident.
I think I’m against the merge because in areas with a 3 and EE share it’s leaving just 2 carriers’ physical infrastructure and that’s assuming O2 even has coverage there. Although I’m sure there’s areas with just 3/EE and Vod/O2 shares, more importantly the lack of battery backup on phone masts is a bigger issue for resiliency.
Does no one else think network-wise a VF/O2 merger would make so much more sense? If Three were happy to pour a few more billions into the market they could become a real competitor
I’m not sure I’d support any at least without having all the infrastructure details.
Maybe O2/VF makes the most sense, 3 seems to have pumped a lot into their future already or maybe just their comms are better.
I just had an active card check on my Perks card which is relatively new.
No idea where it’s come from but it’s definitely not by me.
Whilst this is unrelated to Lyca (I haven’t used them in a while) I’ve just had to explain to Monzo Support why I’m concerned about an active card check from a retailer who I don’t recognise… Surely this should be pretty straightforward when I say I don’t recognise a retailer they should block my card straight away? Instead they just explained to me how an active card check works…
Turns out it’s on my Flex card so more likely to be Lyca actually!
It’s pretty hilarious how they tell you “Don’t worry about this random small American company checking your card is active” but are so freeze trigger happy in other cases
Hi all,
Looking for some advice! I am with ID mobile for my SIM only plan, but I want to (try) get back into my running! so would like to get a cellular plan for my Apple Watch so I don’t take my phone out with me.
Do any of you know the cheapest plan, and if any networks offer one where I won’t need my iPhone and Watch with the same company ?
Thanks
This is the response I just had from the borrowing team. Can’t say I’m too pleased about how casual they are being with this!
Yeah, an active card check from a company you’ve never heard of… sounds legit
