phone service in southwestern Ontario - problems?

[John_G1]

For the past two weeks or so, mobile phone service has been very spotty in the Grand Bend area, on Lake Huron. This has affected several people with Public Mobile phone plans.  Sometimes calls go through, sometimes they don't, sometimes they drop. Very frustrating. A call comes in and I can't answer it. Then five minutes later it's OK. Then five minutes later, it's not OK again.

This is only about phone service, since we have Internet from a separate provider - though mobile data out of range of our router seems not too bad.

We have not had this issue before, and have been using P.M. for several years.

[John_G1]

I have reset networks and type of coverage, to no avail. I have a not-so-old phone I could put my PM SIM back into, though I am not optimistic. My wife and brother-in-law and daughter are all having the same problem, only here on Lake Huron, not in Toronto, and only this month, not previously (though we were not here in July).

I don't know anyone using Bell or Telus directly. I guess I can ask around.

Thanks for the PM service link. I expect I will have to use it.

[softech]

@John_G1 

did you try a reset all networks?

and did you try to manually change to different network mode? Try 3G, 4G and 5G

Try your sim card in another phone, this will force a sim re-provision and could resolve the issue.

and ask if any of your friends on Telus or Bell in your area experiencing the same issue? They share the same network towers and should see the same problem 

and if nothing works, open ticket with PM agent by messaging them here

 https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437

**Monitor your Community inbox (envelope icon on top right) after the ticket is opened.  CS Agent will reply to you there

[John_G1]

Telus fixed its outage with no improvement in my service. I managed to speak with a Telus service rep, who said he was not trained for Public Mobile problems. Of course it is next to impossible to get in touch with anyone at Public Mobile.

So - no improvement. As of right now, my PM signal is -117Dbm. Service continues to be very unreliable - sometimes a call gets through, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it drops.

As I said - before this month, we have had no such problems in 6 years with Public Mobile.

My daughter has had the same problems this month with her phone, which runs on Koodo, which again runs on Telus.

But Telus is not accepting any responsibility.

I don't know anyone around here who has a direct Telus account, to see if their service is any better. 

[John_G1]

I am now getting 'service notitications' just sitting at my desk, telling me every few minutes that service on the Telus network is not available.  I had three such notices in ten minutes this afternoon. The Telus service map shows an outage in my area - though it did not, as recently as yesterday. We'll see if service on PM improves when they say they've fixed it.

[John_G1]

It turns out that my signal strength is a pathetic -116db - One site I looked at about signal strength (and how to find what it is) said anything less than -100db is equivalent to no signal.

This is a new problem - never had it before, in six years with PM.  It's a new phone as of this June, and my wife's phone, also on PM, has the same issue.

Could it make a difference that we now have, as of a week ago, fibre-optic Internet from the local telecom, with a booster in the main living area? The installer said the fibre helps the speed but not the strength of the signal (hence the booster). I don't know how that could interfere with the phone signal, but ... it's the only thing at our end that has changed in recent years. 

The crummy service is new as of this month, though we were not here in July to test. It was fine in June.

[John_G1]

Thanks for the suggestions. The Telus service map does not suggest any outages in the area, though I may use it to report ours.

My network settings appear to specify Public Mobile for the operator of my mobile network.

[Chalupa_Batman]

Here is the service map.

https://istheservicedowncanada.com/status/telus/map

Here you can tell if there are any reported problems in your area. If there are none reported, it doesn't mean there isn't, just means it hasn't been reported enough. 

One option you can try is to go into your network settings and if it just happens to be setting to automatic, turn that off and pick Public Mobile as an option and then reboot your phone. See if that helps.