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Full Version: Vodafone announces 3G switch off in 2G/3G only area
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I mainly use my phone between Carrick and Kilcar where Vodafone has 2G/3G only masts and received this message while in Kilcar, which I thought was unusual with no 4G coverage:  

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I wonder what will happen first - Vodafone upgrades its masts here to 4G by November or they switch off 3G, leaving its customers here with texts and calls only.  Their Carrick 3G has been so congested that data is practically unusable in the evening even for basic WhatsApp use according to those I know there with Vodafone.  TestMy is one of the few speed tests that can test such slow connections and even then it took a few minutes for the test to run.  Ookla just fails with an error.  Then again, still better than Three which does not even have any coverage in Carrick!

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(05/08/2023, 11:36 AM)Seán Wrote: [ -> ]I mainly use my phone between Carrick and Kilcar where Vodafone has 2G/3G only masts and received this message while in Kilcar, which I thought was unusual with no 4G coverage:  



I wonder what will happen first - Vodafone upgrades its masts here to 4G by November or they switch off 3G, leaving its customers here with texts and calls only.  Their Carrick 3G has been so congested that data is practically unusable in the evening even for basic WhatsApp use according to those I know there with Vodafone.  TestMy is one of the few speed tests that can test such slow connections and even then it took a few minutes for the test to run.  Ookla just fails with an error.  Then again, still better than Three which does not even have any coverage in Carrick!

I’d be really surprised if they were to switch off 3G without upgrading the mast to 4G/5G.

Vodafone notified us that Cork City was the next phase and due to be switched off in September.


Vodafone, well obelisk are full steam ahead in Cork City the last few weeks. They’ve pretty much upgraded every Vodafone site to either 5G DSS or NR at this stage. Though the 5G DSS site that was upgraded in my area last week is giving terrible performance since the upgrade, hoping they have some plan to fine tune the config.

What does the Eir site in Carrick look like ? Does it have space for Vodafone equipment or is it a single monopole ? 
I think the Vodafone site in Carrick is a single antenna on the side of a building ?

Eir seem to have sites pretty much everywhere now but whatever radio config they have they fall back to 3G very quickly and are very strict on CA requirements.

Just had a look on street view, looks like the eir site is one of those dual sector alpha wireless small cell antennas on a wooden pole ? It would make sense for Vodafone to move to that eir site and leverage fibre backhaul from openeir. I think it’s possible to stack two small cell antennas on those wooden poles but don’t think I’ve seen it done yet.
The Eir site in Carrick is indeed the small white 3 sector antenna on top of the wooden pole behind the electric bicycle rentals store.  It operates both 4G band 20 and 28 along with 2G and 3G on 900MHz.  Eir also has a steel pole outside its telephone exchange in Kilcar, but with a single sector panel antenna that just operates on 4G band 20 and the 2G 900MHz band. 

Vodafone's 2G/3G mast in Carrick is a just a CB-like omni-directional antenna on the Wild Atlantic Indian restaurant building.  Vodafone operates 3G on 900MHz and I think 2G is on 1800MHz as I remember when only those with dual band 900/1800MHz GSM phones could get a signal in Carrick. I was under the large tree between the parking lot and the shop when I ran the above speed tests.

From another look at the Eir pole in Kilcar (picture added below), it turns out it is a steel pole with space for another antenna on the spike on top. 

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The small microwave antenna is aimed at their 4G mast outside the village which has 3 separate white panel sector antennas and operates on both bands 20 and 28 as well as the 900MHz 3G band.  The wooden pole next to this has its antenna has its antenna aimed at the Tetra mast on Muckross Head.  In Carrick, Eir placed their Alpha tubular shape antenna on the spike on top of the pole.
Did you get any update on this Seán? They can hardly turn off 3G and lower everybody in the area to 2G? Essentially disabling whatever data there was in the area after congestion.. do you know if they will be upgrading you to 4G or 5G? Surely the support team would know, I find it hard to believe they’d be going backwards?
That’s a fairly unusual site, looks like a single sector panel ?

Good video here on some of the eir sites in Donegal

https://youtu.be/lzTVBkPirBg
(16/08/2023, 03:16 PM)fullofquestions Wrote: [ -> ]Did you get any update on this Seán?
So far no change with their service either in Kilcar or Carrick. I don't think it's worth me asking them especially with how terrible their customer support has been with someone I know someone in Carrick that has complained about their speed and dropped calls in recent months. Their support team just keep having him change settings on the phone, remove/reinsert the SIM card, etc. I also recently tried speaking to Vodafone on his behalf after he answered the security questions and the person talked me through resetting the phone's network settings (which also wipes its Wi-Fi passwords, Bluetooth pairings, etc.) and then had me set the phone to 3G only! The support person insisted this change is necessary to improve his coverage and that 4G was causing dropped calls. So basically this support agent was obviously not aware of the upcoming 3G switch-off.

I usually keep a Vodafone SIM as the second SIM in my phone, so whenever Vodafone upgrades to 4G in our area (e.g. shows Vodafone 4G in Net Monster), I will to a test run to see what the speed is like and report back here.
I was under the assumption that Vodafone would upgrade sites to 4G before switching off 3G but it doesn’t look like that’s the case.


“The 3G switch off programme will be completed nationally by December 2023.”

And 

“Our next 3G switch off is planned for Cork and Galway on 12th
September 2023, followed by all remaining counties in October, November and December 2023.”
It looks like Vodafone will be using the freed up 900MHz 3G spectrum for 4G based on coming across the following entry in my NetMonster log - 4G Band 8, EARFCN 3725 (5MHz): 

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I don't recall travelling beyond Killybegs that bank holiday, so possibly picked it up across Donegal bay.  I didn't top-up my Vodafone SIM recently, so did not use it on my last trip to Dublin.  I heard from a friend that Vodafone recently applied for planning permission for a new mast in Kilcar, so assuming there's no objection it looks like they finally will have 4G here soon.
For curiosity, I tried my Vodafone SIM again with the Poynting LPDA-92 pair of antennas on our gable (currently unused) to see if Vodafone has anything new across Donegal bay, but picked up a long list of weak Vodafone band 20 masts in the distance like before (below -110dBm RSRP) and a few very weak band 28 masts (below -120dBm).  Nothing on band 1 or 3.  For curiosity I locked it to band 8 and it listed the cell I got above on my mobile, however it could not connect due to the much stronger nearby 3G mast in Kilcar which has a 79dBm reading. 

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Any sign of your local Vodafone 3G masts getting an upgrade Sean ?

It’s appears that Vodafone have put the breaks on the 3G switch off.

They even removed the mention of switching off 3G in Cork and Galway.

They also undone a change here in Cork that had me falling back to E instead of 3G even though 3G was still available if forced.
No sign of any Vodafone upgrade in the local villages Kilcar or Carrick with these screenshots taken on the 3rd and 5th in each town, respectively:

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The Three mast I'm connected to for my home Internet also seems to have switched off its band 1 for good as I have not seen band 1 come online in about two months.  However, they did appear to do some backhaul improvement as I only had one day that I can recall where I had issues streaming in the evening.  Then again, I do miss the 150+Mbps speeds I used to get throughout the day when our mast was still operating band 1.
Did you try out Eir yet ? They appear to fibre backhaul to many rural sites built near exchanges and even used the FTTH rollout to bring fibre to my local mast. I haven’t seen any sign of 2300mhz from Eir yet though and the 15mhz B3 is poor compared to Vodafone and Three.
I haven't tried Eir here in a few months so may give them a try again soon if Vodafone doesn't upgrade our local mast. One major issue I had is with their strict RSRP based primary band selection with carrier aggregation. When the RSRP of band 1 or 3 is strong enough for CA (i.e. 103dBm or better), it immediately tries handing my router over to that band as the primary band. The problem is that I am outside the range limit for it to synchronise as the upload band, so my router goes in a loop of connecting on band 20 or 28, handing over to band 1 or 3, connection drops, reconnects on band 20 or 28 and the loop cycles. Unlike Three, cell lock does stop this cycle as it just goes in a connection up/down cycle loop. Disabling bands 1 and 3 makes the connection stable, but only get about 30 to 40Mbps with CA between bands 20 and 28 in the evening from the distant mast.

The local Kilcar mast (operates bands 20 and 28) is behind a hill, so is difficult to try isolating it from the distant mast across Donegal bay that I have clear line of sight of. However, I will have another go some time we have a good calm clear spell of weather. I have manged to get about 160Mbps before in a speed test just outside Kilcar with my router in the car on battery power connected in 2CA on its bands 20 + 28.

That person I mentioned above in Carrick has become really frustrated now over how poor Vodafone's mobile service has got and recently got a cordless phone for his landline that he hadn't used in over 10 years! (Had it for DSL only.) He is looking forward to moving network after his contract ends in January, assuming Vodafone doesn't upgrade the local masts by then. Just a year ago, he was regularly praising how good Vodafone's coverage was and was surprised I wasn't on Vodafone back then. How quickly things change!
(07/11/2023, 08:09 PM)Corklad Wrote: [ -> ]Any sign of your local Vodafone 3G masts getting an upgrade Sean ?

It’s appears that Vodafone have put the breaks on the 3G switch off.

They even removed the mention of switching off 3G in Cork and Galway.

They also undone a change here in Cork that had me falling back to E instead of 3G even though 3G was still available if forced.

Out of curiosity are you down the Ringaskiddy direction?

Vodafone shutdown 3G there but it knocked out three of our repeaters that we use for cellular service in the factory. They re-enabled 3G again and pushed out their shutdown date to allow us time to upgrade.
(13/11/2023, 05:54 PM)elbob Wrote: [ -> ]Out of curiosity are you down the Ringaskiddy direction?

Vodafone shutdown 3G there but it knocked out three of our repeaters that we use for cellular service in the factory. They re-enabled 3G again and pushed out their shutdown date to allow us time to upgrade.


I’m on west side of the City by Tower/Blarney. They must have re-enabled 3G around the whole City as I can pretty pick it up everywhere I’ve tried.

Did they give a new date for the switch off ?
(14/11/2023, 09:09 PM)Corklad Wrote: [ -> ]I’m on west side of the City by Tower/Blarney. They must have re-enabled 3G around the whole City as I can pretty pick it up everywhere I’ve tried.

Did they give a new date for the switch off ?

We've been given the end of December as the date for switchoff.
Regarding Vodafone's 2G+3G "CB-like omni-directional antenna" setups - I have been surprised how common these are in rural areas.

The ones I have field tested are 2G (GSM) and 3G (UMTS) 900MHz but one, in Muff, I have noted has Eir 3G and 4G (LTE) 900MHz also.

Upgrading omni 900MHz 2G+3G installations on a wider scale to be 2G+4G 900MHz in general should not necessarily be too difficult - radio swap, backhaul upgrade if necessary +/- MHA. However...

Operators are highly focused on experience versus (operator perceived) public expectations. It would be unsurprising for some/many of the legacy technology omni sites to be on E1 backhaul with subsequent witnessed limited data performance on 3G.

The operator perception tends to be that the public will expect, or at least tolerate, low data performance on 3G - but, crucially, not on 4G or 5G.

As a result, it is entirely possible that there may already be 4G capable infrastructure at the sites currently 2G+3G only but until backhaul is sorted, 4G activation may well be delayed.

The aforementioned operator viewpoint regarding public expectations also has been an important consideration in inter- radio access technology parameter setup - the parameters that define how devices utilise the different radio access technologies available.
Have they announced anywhere else to be shut down or is it just in limerick so far?
Do we possibly know when they would be finishing the shutdown around the whole country?
Just to update as we are now in December after supposed 3G switch off in my area - Vodafone is still operating 3G in both local villages Kilcar and Carrick and no sign of any 4G upgrade works, at least not yet in Carrick as I drive past the building with the CB style antenna daily on my way to work. 

One thing I have noticed the last few times in Carrick is my phone seems to stay in 2G mode on Vodafone until I turn on aeroplane mode for a few seconds.  For example, the screenshot on the left was after waiting about 5 minutes in a queue at the post office which is in clear line of sight of the antenna across the car park.  The second screenshot is after I toggled aeroplane mode on for a few seconds.  I forgot to check before leaving Carrick to see whether it held the 3G connection. 

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Any updates for us Sean? Vodafone removed some things on their 3G shutdown page.
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