Poor signal

[Boondoggle]

Hey. I recently ported from Fido to Public Mobile. I always had decent signal strength from Fido on their LTE network, but on PM, I get one bar of signal and speeds are really low. My calls get dropped all the time. When I run a speed test (Ookla), I can also see that packet loss is high (50-70%) and my speeds vary from 51 to 188 Mbit down and .64 to 1.98 Mbit up. I've restarted my phone several times since switching to PM without any change. I checked to make sure I'm within the coverage area before I signed up, but really disappointed in the network so far.

I'm in Waterloo, Ontario and within a KM of the mall here where all of the carriers seem to have towers. I'm not sure if this is a temporary issue, and the chat bot in the PM app is a joke.

I thought that since Telus was using the same towers as Rogers and Bell, coverage would be better, but that seems not to be the case. Having serious buyer's remorse.

[hTideGnow]

hi @Boondoggle 

Telus shares towers with Bell together, so the coverage would be different from Rogers but would be same as Bell

Speed 188 is not bad, it just a matter of how often you got 188 and how often you only got 51.  But even with 51, it would be decent for regular mobile usage and honest, most would not notice the difference

and what phone do you have?

[eddieO]

@Boondoggle, I'm just down the highway from you (in Cambridge) and have been very pleased with my signal strength and service quality overall (joined back in May) so hopefully the suggestions made will get you feeling happy about your switch too. Reach out to a support agent and see if they can reset your network setting no their end. Are you experiencing dropped calls regardless of where you are or just at home?

[Phil_Adelphus]

@Boondoggle   and my speeds vary from 51 to 188 Mbit down and .64 to 1.98 Mbit up

What plan are you on?  Public Mobile's cap on 4G plans is 100 Mbps (megabits per second) so you're sometimes getting over that, more like 5G speed which is throttled to 250 Mbps.  I would have said 51 to 188 Mbps was actually not at all bad.  Your upload speed is a bit slow but that happens sometimes.  Calls dropping is a frustration though, you can contact customer service via the chat icon bottom right of this page to submit a service ticket.  I often have just one or two bars (was the same with Rogers) and I haven't had dropped calls except for one episode some months back when there was a known issue with the network.

[ORNGNBLK]

@Boondoggle , If BKNS27’s suggestions don’t solve your issue, ask a CS_agent to reset the network for you from the back end. You can open a ticket by using the orange message bubble on the bottom right, and ask for Customer Service Agent. I’m not far from your area, using an iPhone 8, at 4G, and have great service. I think your issues are temporary, so please give the suggestions a shot. 

[BKNS27]

@Boondoggle 

PM utilize Telus and Bell towers for their signal.

Maybe checkout the tower location where you are located.

https://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/cancellsites.html?lat=49.151510&lng=-122.237835&zoom=12&type=Roa... 

Reset the network setting on your phone and check the speeds have changed.