Degrading reception

[jrm]

Hello,

My wife and have had Public Mobile service for a few years.  Despite living in urban Halifax, our reception isn't great and we occasionally have dropped calls.  Today things were quite bad.  I had a phone appointment with my family doctor and the service was unusable.  There were no reception bars and we could only hear bits of words and sentences.

I see Bell towers nearby, so I'm at a loss for why the service is so bad.  Does anyone have ideas before we give up and switch providers?

Thanks,

Joe

[jrm]

Thanks.  I did open a ticket.

[hTideGnow]

---

@jrm wrote:

I have confirmation from a neighbor who is just a few houses down that "the connections are great" with Bell.  So I guess/suspect there is something up with the tower access arrangement between Bell and Public Mobile.

---

HI @jrm  No, don't worry about that.   We got confirmation buy someone with technical background in this industry that there is no "second class" service in PM or with us using Bell towers.  There is no priority set for any provider (Bell/Telus/PM). 

You can test by going to your friend 2 house down to see if reception is any better

or as I suggested, open a ticket with PM Support

 🙂

[jrm]

I have confirmation from a neighbor who is just a few houses down that "the connections are great" with Bell.  So I guess/suspect there is something up with the tower access arrangement between Bell and Public Mobile.

[hTideGnow]

Hi @jrm, according to the site, you should have good connection with Rogers and Eastlink.   But Bell (Telus/PM) should be good, too.  There are couple towers in your area

[jrm]

@hTideGnow, I suspect there is no temporary problem. Based on my limited daytime usage, the service fluctuates in a range of barely adequate to unusable and today it happened to be unusable.

@Meow, I have discussed coverage with one neighbor who uses Rogers and he said that he had no problems with his service. That's not too surprising given the large Rogers tower that is within view of our homes. I'll ask some other neighbors. I'm curious whether Bell customers in the area have good service. If that's the case, then I suspect there is something up with the arrangement between Bell and Telus/Public. I would assume that given we pay less, perhaps not unlike the bandwidth throttling, we are somehow given a lower priority in terms of quality of service.

[hTideGnow · Accepted solution]

HI @jrm   I tried different site and don't see much info in your area.  Yes, there should be a Bell towers close by when I try  etyu site.  I suggest open a ticket with PM support and ask them to confirm if there is issue in the area

Click on the Bubble or directly at : https://publicmobile.ca/chatbot. Follow this to get to ticket open screen quicker:

1. type: Contact CS Agent
2. Click "Contact Us"
3. Click "Other"
4. Click "Click here to submit a ticket"
5. you will then direct to another page to open ticket.

After ticket is submitted, make sure to check your Community Inbox(top right corner envelope icon) periodically for response from PM's CS Agent

If you have problems submitting a ticket, you can also send a private message to the moderators (but this can take longer):
https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437

[hTideGnow]

Hi @jrm  Yes,  with  Regency Drive in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia., checked Bell , it should have coverage in both 3G or 4G.  So, let's hope they are just ungoing work there and the issue is temporary. 

[Meow]

Can you compare your connection with somebody who is using different provider to determine if it is PM issue or every network is experiencing the same?

[jrm]

Sorry, I just realized that the bell.ca link was generic and didn't contain information about our area.  I guess you can gather our location from the second link, but we're near Regency Drive in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Thanks,

Joe

[jrm]

We're at the centre of https://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Our_network_coverage so apparently well covered by all networks.

When I look at https://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/cancellsites.html?lat=44.668896&lng=-63.541435&zoom=16&type=Road... (we're near the cross on Regency Drive) I see nearby Bell towers between Joffre Street and Portland Street and another off of Norm Newman Drive.  Both of these towers are smaller ones on top of apartment buildings, unlike the Rogers and Eastlink towers, that are actual towers.

[hTideGnow]

@jrm   You might need to leave your setting to 3G only and just occasionally change back to LTE and see if it works.  Which area in Halifax?  since Telus is using Bell's towers there, you can check the coverage here:

https://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Our_network_coverage

check only LTE  and remove the rest and see if you have good coverage

then check only 4G/HSPA+ (in fact that is 3g) and see the coverage and compare.  You should get more 4G/HSPA+ signal in your area from what you said

[jrm]

Hi @hTideGnow.  I tried: Settings / Network & Internet / Mobile Network / Preferred Network Type and changed the radio box selection from LTE (recommended) to 3G and the bars immediately jumped from 0 to 1 below full.  This is still on the same phone from my last post in 2019, a Pixel XL.

[hTideGnow]

HI @jrm   But you see no improvement since 2019? 

Is the reception better in another area?  

Your wife and yourself use the same model of phone? what model?

[jrm]

I asked about this in 2019, but so rarely use phone lines during the day, that this may just be the same problem.

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Get-Support/Dropped-calls-after-moving/m-p/428236#M27...

[hTideGnow]

HI @jrm   Must be network issue with both you and your wife experiencing the same. 

Change the network setting to 3G Only/WCDMA Only and maybe it helps

Telus/Bell are upgrading the network to 5G and it might affect the regular LTE service. If they are really working in your area for this ,   3G Only would be a workaround until they are done upgrading in the area