I am at Waihi Beach, 2 bars of 3g on Spark, and 1 bar 4g on Vodafone - We are leeching off Spark WiFi from a PayPhone which reaches here just fine

nzpilot1181: Did a network reset on the handset and well I am not sure if its my imagine but i think it is slightly better. Looking on gis geek i have noticed that Spark had more 4G bands on most of the cell sites compared to Voda. Seems to be the case alot of around Auckland anyway? See posted pic as an example. Maybe this is contributing?

You can't use this to really compare things because you have no idea how much spectrum is allocated to 4G and how many carriers are being used within a particular band simply by looking at the RSM licence.

The RSM licence (and gis.geek.nz site) also doesn't reflect the fact Vodafone have 900MHz 4G across a large number of sites.

deadlyllama:

sbiddle:

 

Where exactly there? Last time I was at Waiterere a year or so ago the VF coverage was fine. Up until a few years ago it was terrible and Spark were the only provider with good coverage, but VF and 2D have built sites there now. Looking at the gis.geek.nz map they're all pretty close to each other so you'd expect all three networks to have pretty similar coverage that will only vary slightly depending on what 4G bands your phone wants to camp onto.

 

Park Avenue campground.

Makes no sense to me either, as you say all the cell sites are right beside each other. Nonetheless, the same handset got great 4G on Skinny.

And of course while writing this dropped back to no reception at all... Wish I hadn't bought a year Kogan pack.

Could just be significant overloading.

I know Vodafone was totally unusable in the Lower Hutt CBD earlier today and has been for weeks. Data throughput is often non existent regardless of the 4G band you're connected to.

The minute you leave the CBD area and hand over to another site things work flawlessly again.

I think something might be a miss here.

I intentionally locked my phone today on just LTE whilst driving from Kirwee back to Christchurch.

Normally by the prisons it would drop to 3G and nothing would work. Absolutely nothing. Locking the phone to LTE only? Yeah I still had a working service on B28 but no device would actually swap to B28 unless you absolutely make it.

Locking the phones bands isn't really the solution in my opinion. It's obvious that phones can pick up B28 between these two areas so why is it not swapping? I've noticed this exact issue on an S20+(again locking bands fixed this but this isn't the solution) on a OnePlus 8 and on a iPhone 12 and again on my current phone Poco F3.

I want to say it's almost there's a fault within the VF network but again there's so many variables at play.

Even Vodafone's map says that I should get 4G/LTE here.

But nope. Phones will always lock to 3G and then nothing will work.

I can even replicate this issue by simply just going into my elevator at my apartment block and despite there being in range of 3 B28 towers(where there's every other frequency under the sun that VF operates) I will still get swapped to 3G and there's a chance that I might have service but most of the time I just don't, but if you lock it to LTE only, you'll get service regardless.

@MaxineN the prisons were operating cellphone jammers. Old link but could the issue. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/16897/phone-jamming-in-prisons-almost-complete

RunningMan:

 

@MaxineN the prisons were operating cellphone jammers. Old link but could the issue. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/16897/phone-jamming-in-prisons-almost-complete

 

That would make sense but that's very old so who knows if this is still in affect but if they were still running cell phone jammers you'd think they'd be updated to match LTE spec and also they would have properly configured the jammers to maybe ya know not extend well over a few KM on the road?

Linux: This is really annoying about NZ carriers they Steer connections towards 3G instead of 4G

I wonder if this is region specific.

I certainty don't observe this these days on all 3 networks within Auckland.

Vodafone and Spark used to be really bad at dropping down to 3G even in places where 4G was perfectly fine--but this behaviour is long gone now. Previously it would drop to 3G at the very slightest drop in 4G signal levels and stay on 3G for a good 5-10 minutes even when it had returned back into excellent 4G coverage. I used to live directly across from a 4G tower yet after a trip home (as there was a spot where my phone would 50:50 fall back to 3G) my phone would be 3G for some time needing either patience or a phone reboot to return back to 4G. Possibly the reason for that practice was when they just had a single L1800 carrier they needed to balance traffic between L1800 vs U850/900+U2100 when the latter had relatively more capacity. 2degrees have always been decent preferring 4G, although after the L900/700 roll-out (plus introduction of L2100 in some areas) it's improved heaps as well.

Nowadays, only times I see 3G on any network is usually when its actually needed (e.g. rural parts of Greater Auckland or other areas e.g. underground etc at edge of 4G coverage where U850/900 still has some advantage) and even then my phone usually return over back to L700/900 (or even L18/21/23/2600) as soon as its in range of a usable 4G signal. I suspect the higher preference of 4G nowadays is due two general factors: increase in L700/900 coverage naturally attracting more UEs onto 4G and (possibly) also the decrease in UMTS capacity (e.g. removal of U2100 and reduction of U900 carriers for L900 re-farm) leading carriers to tweak their settings to discourage UE fallback to UMTS and programming a preference for LTE more than perviously. (Just my hearsay however...)

I was surprised last year when I travelled to Christchurch to find the behaviour there was pretty much what I saw in Auckland say 5 years ago. Frequent drops to 3G (often unnecessary IMHO) and longer stays on 3G before returning back to 4G. Hence my wonder whether different regions have different settings pushed out depending on the LA etc.

OP - Suggest checking other phones to see if the same experience is replicated. If it is may be worth reporting to Kogan/VF.

sbiddle:

 

nzpilot1181: Did a network reset on the handset and well I am not sure if its my imagine but i think it is slightly better. Looking on gis geek i have noticed that Spark had more 4G bands on most of the cell sites compared to Voda. Seems to be the case alot of around Auckland anyway? See posted pic as an example. Maybe this is contributing?

 

You can't use this to really compare things because you have no idea how much spectrum is allocated to 4G and how many carriers are being used within a particular band simply by looking at the RSM licence.

 

The RSM licence (and gis.geek.nz site) also doesn't reflect the fact Vodafone have 900MHz 4G across a large number of sites.

 

Agreed. The screenshot IMHO is a poor example. VF has a site on the west side of town (which has been there for years) which has much more capacity while the eastern site (in the screenshot) is actually a more recent co-location with Spark to improve service on the other side of town with minimal levels of capacity (basically just what they need to operate a minimal 2G/3G/4G service). For Spark the situation is the other way around -- the eastern end site is their original/main site next door to the exchange (which is a fair hint that this is a more 'important' site) and has more capacity. Funnily enough they co-locate with Vodafone on the western site and that one has less capacity. It all balances out at the end of the day--it doesn't make sense for both networks to have two "full" service sites so they run one "full" service and the other just enough to relieve whatever coverage/capacity issues they needed to address.

KiwiSurfer:

 

I was surprised last year when I travelled to Christchurch to find the behaviour there was pretty much what I saw in Auckland say 5 years ago. Frequent drops to 3G (often unnecessary IMHO) and longer stays on 3G before returning back to 4G. Hence my wonder whether different regions have different settings pushed out depending on the LA etc.

 

So we're not crazy yeah? Like we're not losing our minds over why our devices are switching to 3G for literally no reason at all?