topic Re: Signal strength of PM in Get Support

Signal strength of PM

laulawrence — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 06:28:43 GMT

Comparing signal strength of PM with other major carriers

I've been comparing the signal strength of my phone using PM with my wife and daughters at same locations but using other major carriers. I noticed that the PM signal is constantly better than the others. In some cases, I'm getting signal with PM, but not for my wife or daughters.

Wonder if you have similar experience? Please share.

Comparing the signal strength of PM with other major carriers

laulawrence — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 19:49:31 GMT

Re: Signal strength of PM

Rockdaddy22 — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 20:31:43 GMT

Uses the Telus network

Re: Signal strength of PM

will13am — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 21:06:24 GMT

In the eastern half of Canada, Telus has virtually no towers. They share with Bell, effectively you are on the Bellus national network. The difference in signal strength may be due to different phone models perhaps?

Re: Signal strength of PM

sheytoon — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 22:08:48 GMT

Telus does have towers in eastern Canada, including Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec city.

As mentioned by others, the signal is identical to Bell or Telus subscribers. Laulawrence, where are you located?

Re: Signal strength of PM

Korth — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 22:45:56 GMT

Public Mobile is a Telus MVNO and subsidiary, it uses the Telus network. Not sure what that means on shared networks, it all depends on whatever agreements Telus has with Bell and with Public Mobile.

PM and Telus coverage and signal strength are fully interchangeable for me (in the Lower Mainland area, BC). I often work at urban and non-urban industrial sites where signal dips or fades, sometimes it's hit or miss when I'm moving around on the fringes, but it's comparable to what the other guys get on Bell/Virgin or Rogers/Fido networks. I don't really know details, but I suspect the Big Three all "share" the same towers to some extent. They don't even "own" all their towers anymore, they often lease antenna space (next to each other) on the same towers.

Telus Coverage Map here.

Re: Signal strength of PM

Zombie — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 18:41:32 GMT

As others have posted, you are on the Bell/Telus network, which is effectively a shared infrastructure (at least in Eastern Canada). Telus had no 850 band (lower frequency good for penetrating buildings and rural areas) in the east, and Bell had no 850 in the west, since they initially were part the Stentor Alliance and didn't compete against each other. Now they have banded together against Rogers who also has a pretty substantial network (which was originally Cantel, I think Canada's first mobile phone company).

So your coverage should be equal to Bell/Telus. There are other areas you may see variation though.

For example, if your phone doesn't support LTE, and only supports HSPA (3G) and your other family member has an LTE phone from Bell, it is quite possible the LTE phone will show lower signal strength as it requires different (higher) levels of strength to achieve it's most efficient coding methods, so the scale is a bit different.

If you are on the fringe of a rural/urban area, or have recently been travelling, or are in motion, or one of you were recently in the basement of your house, one of the phones could have switched to a lower frequency band (like 850) while the other is on a higher 1900 or 2500mhz frequency, which even from the same tower may have lower bars due to more susceptibility to signal path loss from the house itself/trees/other obstacles between you and the tower.

At the end of the day though, you are probably on, over all, the best quality network available in Canada if you are just looking for validation. 🙂

Re: Signal strength of PM

Taekgun — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 18:28:30 GMT

I'm looking for some anecdotal opinions here. I've recently spoken with Rogers about switching over to PM. The admitted they can't compete with pricing but warned of bad coverage even if using the Telus network, as PM customers wouldn't get priority on the usage of cellphone towers. Thoughts?

Re: Signal strength of PM

TheOldVR — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 18:52:20 GMT

@Taekgun - I ported over from Rogers last year and I find the Bellus network to be way better than Rogers.

With that said... both networks do share some similar weak spots, and both have strong/weak spots that the other does not.

With that said, I've VERY happy on the TELUS network and wouldn't look back.

Good luck!

Re: Signal strength of PM

srlawren — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 18:57:13 GMT

@Taekgun the Rogers rep fed you a bunch of hogwash. PM is not deprioritized in any way. There was a bug that was affecting LTE data speed, but it was resolved recently. But even when that bug was present, there was no issue of coverage compared to Telus, just possibly data speed. It was still fast, just not as fast. But now the playing field is even. The rep probably just wanted to make you nervous enough to stick with Rogers.

That said, either of the two big networks (Rogers or Telus+Bell) will have coverage issues in some locations. But if you were to experience any with PM, you would experience the same issues with Telus. There's no practical difference.

Re: Signal strength of PM

sheytoon — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 19:59:10 GMT

@Taekgun
You were told nonsense. Think about it from Bell's point of view. Do you really think they will put in engineering effort to de-prioritize Telus subbrands from each other on a Bell tower?

Re: Signal strength of PM

Taekgun — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 20:44:09 GMT

Thanks. I know the game the Rogers rep was playing, but I want to hear from people who are currently using PM. Thanks for the replies.

Hopefully others can read this thread to see all the different "stories" that the reps from other carriers will try to feed you.

For laughs, the rep also told me that I would likely have to pay roaming fees when I was on the fringe of the PM network - and I told her that she was full of sh*t, she didn't have a reply other than to say I should research the issue a bit. I'll be coming over in the next couple of days.

Re: Signal strength of PM

Rockdaddy22 — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 21:15:19 GMT

That last statement just proves she has no idea about PM, roaming lmfao.

Re: Signal strength of PM

CaptKirk — Tue, 08 May 2018 21:43:47 GMT

My experiece is the exact opposite. Even Telus and Koodo will show bars while I can't get any bars. It's a serious issue for me.

Re: Signal strength of PM

CaptKirk — Tue, 08 May 2018 21:47:18 GMT

This is my experiece. Is there a tweak on my phone to make PM get at least one bar of signal when Telus or Koodo have two bars?

Re: Signal strength of PM

Luddite — Tue, 08 May 2018 21:49:28 GMT

@CaptKirk wrote:
This is my experiece. Is there a tweak on my phone to make PM get at least one bar of signal when Telus or Koodo have two bars?

If you have set the phone for LTE, try 3G. In many places, like my home, it is stronger.

Re: Signal strength of PM

sheytoon — Tue, 08 May 2018 22:42:50 GMT

@CaptKirk

Are you using the same phone on Telus vs PM and getting different signal strength? That's not possible.

Re: Signal strength of PM

koimr1 — Tue, 08 May 2018 23:59:39 GMT

@CaptKirk wrote:
This is my experiece. Is there a tweak on my phone to make PM get at least one bar of signal when Telus or Koodo have two bars?

Gonna need a bit more info. 🙂

Is this on the exact same phone? If not then you can't reliably compare - some phone models are better/worse at signal strength as well as there's no standard for what a "bar" should be.

For example, my Moto X Play showed two to three bars at home and when I switched to a Zenfone it only showed one to two bars - however, the app Network Cell Info Lite was showing on both that the signal strength was almost the same (within a couple db of each other).

If this IS on the same phone (meaning you've tried Telus and Koodo SIMs in the same phone) then I'm not sure what would be the cause. For what it's worth I get the exact same signal on my phone with both Koodo and PM SIMs which is expected since they use the same network. You could try the app mentioned (if you're on Android, not sure if there's an IOS equivalent but you should be able to find the signal strength somewhere in your settings in either Android or IOS) and see if it shows any difference between SIMs.

Re: Signal strength of PM

Korth — Wed, 09 May 2018 13:38:07 GMT

@koimr1 wrote:
Is this on the exact same phone? If not then you can't reliably compare - some phone models are better/worse at signal strength as well as there's no standard for what a "bar" should be.

Somewhat true. Signal bars are very much like the fuel gauge in your car, there is no real technical standard which defines exact "bar" thresholds.

But manufacturers (like Apple, Samsung, etc) tend to use the same "standard" signal metrics across all of their devices. ARM-based Android devices tend to scale signal metrics to whatever values are provided in the technical literature for their onboard SoC/chipset parts, meaning that different phones by different manufacturers which happen to use the same radio/modem/processing hardware and the same Android OS version will tend to define the same thresholds for each signal bar.

Different software/apps which report signal strength will each define their own thresholds and parameters. Regardless whether they're OEM software built into the device or they're user-installed third-party apps.

Smartphones can be configured to report signal strength in raw dBm or calculated ASU instead of or alongside user-friendly signal bars. (dBm and ASU are technically meaningful and accurate terms ... but they're also slightly complex and very non-intuitive terms.)

https://powerfulsignal.com/cell-signal-strength/

Many apps exist which promise to somehow improve, increase, boost, or amplify signal strength. And some of these are popular, they have avid followings of happy people who swear the app has made their once-worthless phone magically work perfectly. But I've never bothered with any of these sorts of apps - partly because my PM (Telus) signal has generally been quite adequate, and partly because I understand that no amount of software can increase capabilities (or remove limits) built into hardware.

Battery strength can have profound impact on apparent signal strength. This can be misleading or confusing with batteries which have degraded from age, misuse, high duty cycle, or accumulated charge/discharge cycles ... it can even be misleading or confusing with a brand new factory fresh battery which is exposed to small variations in temperature ... because the phone software will calibrate and scale everything else at "100%" when the battery reports "full" charge, even if eroded or underspec battery chemistry can't actually reach nominally rated "100%" anymore.

PM uses Telus network and Telus hardware. So PM's signal strengths, bandwidths, QoS, reliability, and performance should never be any worse (or any better) than Telus or Koodo, the phone plan and prices and billing is a different company (er, Telus subsidiary/brand) but the phone service itself is identical. The only explanation I can offer for apparently inferior PM signal strength - and it's sheer speculation, and I think it's highly unlikely - is that perhaps your area is serviced by Bell base stations and for some unknown reason Bell's systems handle PM traffic at a lower-priority than they handle Telus traffic during peak-demand conditions.

Re: Signal strength of PM

sheytoon — Wed, 09 May 2018 13:06:21 GMT

@Korth wrote:
... perhaps your area is serviced by Bell base stations and for some unknown reason Bell's systems handle PM traffic at a lower-priority than they handle Telus traffic during peak-demand conditions.

Sorry @Korth, but this is not correct. The RAN cannot differentiate between Telus and PM subscribers, and signal strength is entirely in the RAN's domain and control. Nothing from the core network or user profile can impact this.

On the same device at the same location, the RSRP for Telus, Bell, Koodo, Virgin, PM, Lucky subscribers is 100% identical. The only exception I will mention is B30, which is currently not shared with Bell and doesn't impact coverage, but it's identical between the Telus family of subscribers.