How good is your cellphone network?

How would you describe the network quality of your cellular provider?

  • Excellent

    Votes: 4 3.9%

  • Good

    Votes: 17 16.7%

  • Average

    Votes: 37 36.3%

  • Poor

    Votes: 28 27.5%

  • Pathetic

    Votes: 16 15.7%
  • Total voters
    102
ICASA need to get their act together.Surely there must be an acknowledged standard used worldwide to measure cell networks??I mean really how hard can it be.
 
My cellc phone frequently jump to almost no signal to full signal within one step on my galaxy s3. In areas with full signal the call quality is good, but calls become broken up when signal is below half. Areas I'm having trouble include:

Woodmead
Kempton Park
Midrand (halfway house has no 3g. Halfway gardens has poor voice quality)

My mtn phone. An old Nokia backup. Is far better when signal is low. However, MTN has some serious signal issues in bedfordview, I hardly get signal that's usable (appears over half but never a good quality call)

Now. Honestly. Is it not better for them to just release a proper report then let us continue this thread and seriously tarnished their name?
 
Cell C full signal strength but 50% of the time there's no data throughput, that's on EDGE on 3G Cell C is doing okay not impressive just okay.

On calls, I don't do much calling but the odd call I make I get "connection error" at times. Havn't experienced droped calls yet, overall voice quality is okay
 
Previously I did not have any problems with dropped calls with Vodacom but lately I'm getting a lot of dropped calls.
 
I concur with those results, Cell C has an appalling network footprint, especially in the far east of Pretoria - it really is shocking. Throughout the day, my S3 will have signal, maybe 30% of the time, no matter if I'm at work, on the road, or at home.
 
Vodacom - Killarney and Randburg Area

I have an almost 100% call drop rate for any calls longer than 20 seconds.
 
Where I live MTN's signal has been horrendous for the last few weeks.

I can't take any calls as the voice breaks away the whole time.
 
On cell C but so weak at my home in Brackendowns that I stay roaming on vodacom but that is also weak but slightly better than Cell c. Calls drop a lot of the time so I tend to try and find a spot in the home that does not continuously drop the call. I am not bothered about data as I am on my wireless network while at home. Roaming on vodacom only allows edge data though, which for whatsapp, GPS is good enough when travelling. (Galaxy S2).
 
Vodacom's performance has declined On the Atlantic Seaboard - more dropped data signals during peak hours of commutes or when the beaches are full (guaranteed drops) and 8ta coverage remains spotty to none existant in many parts of Camps Bay and Telkom's excuse is they don't have anywhere to place their towers. Already the Shell petroL station on the drive is steathly hosting towers for MTN, and Cell C and a residential petition drive is now underway to have these 3 towers removed.
 
Where I work, 8ta is great. Where I stay, 8ta can't hold any signal and jumps between EDGE and No Signal.

My MTN SIM works great everywhere, porting over to Cell C in a week or two.
 
ajules said:
ICASA need to get their act together.Surely there must be an acknowledged standard used worldwide to measure cell networks??I mean really how hard can it be.
Click to expand...

Comparable measurements are not easy...especially when all the operators are expanding all the time.
 
This is a more complex problem than the operators simply being lax.

Each sector on each tower has a certain fixed capacity divided by the area it must cover and multiplied by the available spectrum.

Either the area can be decreased by installing additional hardware or the spectrum increased by assigning more spectrum and then new hardware to utilize it.

LTE and future technologies aim to optimize spectrum usage but we will still have GSM and the HSPA varieties all operating in their own spectrum allocations until such devices are no longer in use.

To make the operation of the network economically viable the network usage should be as close to 100% usage as possible without exceeding a predetermined acceptable call blocking rate and call dropping failure rate.

I highly doubt that there is any network in the world that has a zero percent call blocking rate, but it is never the less something that should be monitored, although receiving a true value from the networks is not in their interest.
 
kwaggawerner said:
I concur with those results, Cell C has an appalling network footprint, especially in the far east of Pretoria - it really is shocking. Throughout the day, my S3 will have signal, maybe 30% of the time, no matter if I'm at work, on the road, or at home.
Click to expand...
Cell C advertised last year that by the end of that year they'd be covering something like 93/97% of the country. Whatever happened to that claim, maybe myBB can do an article on that. I know in my area Cell C have about 3 towers and these towers are for some reason all located in the middle of nowhere (bush-land) making only about 40% of usable signal to fall within residential/occupied areas.
 
So glad there has been an article written on this!

Cell C is pefect at work (highfeld centurion) calls and data. At home I can not comment on the data as on wifi but calls are dropped often and I tend to speak to myself quite alot. At CBCOB club data does not work and calls again get dropped often, most of the time I can not even make a call.

Cell C network quality is nowhere near as good as Vodacom in the one year since I changed over to them. Something I will be considering when my contarct comes to an end.
 
Cell C and Vodacom (havent tried MtN and 8ta ) is really bad in the northen part on the town (Paarl). No 3G from both and i have lots of call breakups but not really drop calls.

I know Cell C's tower is in the southern part of town but i cant believe 15km can make a signal almost unuseable.
 
Vodacom in Wonderboom. Call quality is really bad, signal strength seems to jump rapidly and on many occasions calls break up and even sometimes drop.
 
My Cell C is OFF and ON with SOS in red for the LAST two months.Cell C has promissed to come and test the NETWORK where I am situated within 7DAYS, it is now the Third day and have not heard from them!!!!

My other Mobile is MTN and am average happy with the NETWORK.
 
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