Vodafone announces 3G switch off in 2G/3G only area

[Seán]

I noticed that Vodafone's band 8 carrier appears to be gone or switched off on their Kilcar site as I can longer connect with my router locked to 4G band 8. 

At first I thought they may have reverted the 900MHz band back to 3G, however, while in Kilcar this morning my phone just showed no signal when I set the network mode to WCDMA (3G) only.  2G no problem.

From running a few speed tests while in Kilcar, the speed was quite erratic, averaging around 30Mbps like I was getting from home.  Just to rule out TestMy.net, I got a similar 30Mbps result on the Ookla Speedtest App.  Unlike my router, I'm unable to force network bands on my phone and it just kept using band 28 after toggling airplane mode on/off multiple times.  Either way it's still much faster than when Vodafone was only operating the reprovisioned 5MHz band 8 carrier for 4G earlier in the year.

   

   

[Seán]

I rechecked Vodafone in Carrick village and there is no change in the 4G service there, still 4G on band B8 only and somewhat usable speed.  Still better than Three which still does not have any signal as shown with the "No signal" icon for SIM 2.  As mentioned earlier, I'm currently using BNESim which gives me data access on the Eir network whenever I'm in Carrick or other Three signal blackspots. 

       

At home, I swapped the MikroTik Chateau 5G router in my outdoor antenna set up for the Chateau LTE12.  This router supports 4x4 MIMO on band 3 in 2CA, so performs similar to the Chateau 5G without band 1, which Three seems to only enable on Bank Holidays or whenever SpaceX Starlink runs a promotion.

One nice feature with the RG502Q-EA modem in the Chateau 5G is that it supports band 20+28 CA.  From testing my Vodafone SIM, their Kilcar 4G mast supports Band 20+28 CA with either band 20 or 28 as the primary carrier:

Band 20 as primary + Band 28 as secondary:
   

Band 28 as primary + Band 20 as secondary:
   

With the main Three mast I connect to across Donegal Bay, it will only aggregate both bands with band 20 as the primary band.  From what I recall, Eir also supports B20+B28 CA with either Band 20 or 28 as the primary.

At just before 8pm, Vodafone was getting close to 100Mbps, faster than my Three connection down, but half the upload speed:

       

Around 10:15pm, the speed difference widened:

       

Finally a TestMy.net comparison about 10:40pm to get the sustained speed of a simulated file download. 



I plan buying a 28 day unlimited plan to give this a proper test running our whole home on it. 

As I had 1 cent of credit on the Vodafone SIM, I tested the hs.vodafone.ie APN once more for curiosity.  Connection dropped out and credit balance dropped to zero.  So definitely make sure you use the correct APN with Vodafone.

[Seán]

It turns out my testing of Vodafone came coincidentally right after they replaced their mast in Kilcar.  My brother asked me what is that new mast outside Kilcar breaking the skyline that went up about 2 weeks ago. 

   

[fullofquestions]

It turns out my testing of Vodafone came coincidentally right after they replaced their mast in Kilcar.  My brother asked me what is that new mast outside Kilcar breaking the skyline that went up about 2 weeks ago. 

Nice! How's performance with the new mast?

[Seán]

In my few days of using Vodafone 4G as my main Internet connection to my desktop PC it is performing very well.  While the day time speeds are comparable to what I typically get on Three, they barely dip in the evening, unlike Three.  With Vodafone having a barely usable 3G connection up until early 2024 in Kilcar, I reckon there are very few premises in range of the mast using it as their home broadband connection.  This is very different to the Three 4G mast in Kilcar, which has been active since early 2018 and only operates 4G on band 20.

I ran a speed test on Vodafone roughly every 10 minutes between 9:30pm and 10:30pm on Saturday evening, the period when my Three 4G connection sometimes drops to a crawl.  For daytime comparison, I ran some tests randomly during the day (Sunday).

Daytime vs Evening speed tests on Vodafone 4G Kilcar:

         

The only time I get 80+ Mbps on Three in the evening is the rare time band 1 comes online.  The last day I saw the band 1 carrier active on the Three mast that serves me was on the 2nd June, i.e. 2 weeks before this time of post. 

Another big improvement is the latency, very obvious when browsing image heavy websites such as Amazon and seeing everything load up quickly like it is still early in the day.  Basically I don't get the Bufferbloat issue that occurs on Three during downloads or streaming.  If I move to Vodafone, I may be able to do away with the separate 4G connection I have for our VoIP landline using a legacy €7.99 48 SIM. 

As an experiment, I tried the Video Speed Controller plug-in on an Iceland volcano live stream to see how fast I could play YouTube at 10pm on Saturday evening.  I use this plug-in to watch or capture a time lapse of lava break-outs (for Bob Nation on Discord).  With Three, I can usually speed up the video to between 4x and 8x most evenings before it continuously  buffer cycles.  With Vodafone, it buffered just briefly twice playing forced 1080p at 16x speed for 5 minutes!  

I am considering purchasing the Iskra P-40 MIMO pair which is a pair of low band 700-900MHz antennas, as I would like to improve the upload speed and possibly improve the download speed a little further.  Going by the NBI, our area is expected to get fibre in 2026, so it's possible this may be my last upgrade, assuming Starlink doesn't cut their monthly price even lower.

[Seán]

While on my way to work this morning going through Carrick Village I saw men at work on a cherry picker mounting a tubular shape antenna on the chimney.  The original CB style antenna is gone. The following is a picture when I went back to the post office, by which stage they were gone apart from the hoist vehicle:

   

I did not have my Vodafone SIM with to do any testing, although I'm not sure if it's even live yet with the cherry picker still on site.

I purchased a pair of Iskra P-40 MIMO antennas, which I plan testing with both the Vodafone and Eir masts in Kilcar as both operate bands 20+28.  With Eir the Iskra P-58's and Poynting LPDA-92's are unable to isolate the Kilcar mast (behind a hill) enough from the Eir sites across Donegal bay to give a usable connection, i.e. 20 to 40Mbps at best compared to 150Mbps+ (band 20+28 CA) in Kilcar in direct view of the Eir mast, so if the P-40's perform well, I will give Eir a test run also to see how it compares with Vodafone.

[Shane]

The Vodafone 3G network has been turned off in Dublin.

[fullofquestions]

The Vodafone 3G network has been turned off in Dublin.

Really? I was connected to it yesterday evening.

[Corklad]

The Vodafone 3G network has been turned off in Dublin.

Same around Cork city in the areas I’ve checked. No sign of 4G/5G band 8 yet though. Without that the 3G switch is nothing but a downgrade for users and a cost saving for Vodafone.

[Shane]

That's true, I was expecting a massive speed boost but still the same

I wonder what that will do with the reallocated spectrum.

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They turned off the 3G at 8am this morning, strange though. It might not be all of dublin. I'm up in swords, and I'm still able to connect to it. Probably doing a slow shutdown

[fullofquestions]

That's true, I was expecting a massive speed boost but still the same

I wonder what that will do with the reallocated spectrum.

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They turned off the 3G at 8am this morning, strange though. It might not be all of dublin. I'm up in swords, and I'm still able to connect to it. Probably doing a slow shutdown

I'm based in swords too. Seems to still be active. How'd you know it stopped at 8, and what area? Thanks.

[Shane]

We have internal briefs every week. That was on our brief for this last week.
We received that it would be shut down in Dublin which was mostly done, but when I went shopping in airside, it was still connecting, albeit slower than usual 10mb

[fullofquestions]

We have internal briefs every week. That was on our brief for this last week.
We received that it would be shut down in Dublin which was mostly done, but when I went shopping in airside, it was still connecting, albeit slower than usual 10mb

Ah ok interesting! Perhaps it’s a slowed shutdown then, interesting to see what’s going to happen since June ends very soon. I think the mast you were connected to was the one on the Ryanair HQ down the road from Tesco.

[Shane]

Ah ok interesting! Perhaps it’s a slowed shutdown then, interesting to see what’s going to happen since June ends very soon. I think the mast you were connected to was the one on the Ryanair HQ down the road from Tesco.

Thats the one, More than likely. Im surprised they didnt just shut them all off at once though

[scannerman2021]

Morning all

The passed month a new 20 metre hight mast has been erected in the town im from at the eir exchange building,the array of antennas have been installed last week and a red beacon light on top which is visible,the eir mobile 4g coverage is pretty good and stable ,band 1 +band 3 aggregated I can get between 100 - 180mbps,5g is available also operating on band N3,I live outside town so speed I got was OK I think 30/50mbps,I'm just curious to know why they put up this new tower as the coverage and signal on eir is great,Any thoughts would be kindly appreciated.

[fullofquestions]

I think 3G is finished now in Dublin. Can't connect anymore.

[EirPerson]

Well, thats the end of an era! Wonder how long it will take them to do the rest of the country, Still getting 4G+ in Kells, Co. Meath

[Seán]

I took my MikroTik Chateau 5G router with to work today and ran a few tests while in Carrick just before 2pm.  Their new mast on the chimney of the Indian restaurant is operating 4G bands 20 and 28.  Like Kilcar, it no longer serves band 8.  The speed is also much better over the previous 4G band 8 conversion from 3G:

       

I tested the router at my workplace for curiosity and to my surprise it could not pick up a usable 4G signal indoors, just when I thought Three's signal was bad . . .   

   

I stopped in Carrick again on my way home after 6pm and took a close-up picture of Vodafone's new omni-directional antenna.  The eNodeB transceiver / radio equipment is inside the building, so not much else to see as the two coaxial cables and grounding wire run down and into the wall:

   

The speed dropped off noticeably by then:

   

As I had the router with, I decided to head on to Kilcar and tested along the main street which has clear line of sight of their new taller mast.  While the download speeds were similar to Carrick, the upload speeds are much higher, like what I would expect from a 20MHz band.