I remember the days of the old Nokia 5110. Fishing offshore in a boat 25+nm out to sea. Full signal or close to it. CDMA was even better. Newer tech is good for maybe 3nm offshore before a significant loss in reception. Congratulations, telcos, I'm wishing for a return of the reception of my old brick 5110. The new tech is great! Yeah, nah, GFYS.
In the late 90s my old man was an electronic tech and was doing alot of experiments with reception and what was achievable then as far as signal range goes was phenomenal. Why we are sacrificing range so much now really has me stumped
> Why we are sacrificing range so much now really has me stumped
speed and capacity
when it come to wireless transmission you can pick speed or range you can extent the range bit that will require more power
It's not a conspiracy. You trade range for data throughput. If you want good browsing speeds, you need more towers to cover the same area.
It's physics.
I know, so what. I also said nothing about it being a conspiracy, I stated points that show the downside to the new 4g and 5g and how new technology in some areas, like range of reception the losses now are getting ridiculous and are missing the point of why i have a phone in the first place. The gains with the new tech do not outweigh the disadvantages anymore, particularly if you are in the outer suburbs or heaven forbid if you don't live in a capital city. There are dead spots in coverage in the middle of Sydney that didn't exist 10 years ago. Progress? Yes or no?
Telstra has been converting 3g towers to 5g.
3g signal could reach 40km.
4g signal could reach 15km.
5g can reach 5km.
Our reception coverage has been sacrificed for better speed in population centers.
I can't wait for starlink mobile to bankrupt Telstra.
3g won't exist soon and it's a serious safety concern for rural people.
Best case scenario too. Throw some hills between you and the tower and maybe some tall trees, yeah. I’m 1.5km from my closest Telstra tower and I’m still sitting here with two bars reception, 1 bar if I’m in my home office.
Telstra 3G for distance is 850MHz. They have 4G at 700 MHz which goes further and as soon as 3G is off they will reuse the 850 spectrum for equivalent coverage. It is shaky in places now but it will get better after 3G goes.
I'm 2km from a telstra 4g tower and only get reception MAYBE if I'm standing at the top of my yard. It's the best. Our landline runs through the NBN so if the power goes out and there's an emergency we're fucked.
Lol even if you could get your local tower if there’s an emergency and the power goes out for an extended amount of time you’re still fucked. Live on the edge of Melbourne where we regularly have multi day blackouts, and the emergency backup at the towers don’t last for long. Apparently Telstra has generators they can bring in but-I’m sure you’ll be shocked by this- they don’t usually bother.
So, I have an iPhone 11. It doesn’t have 5G but my 4G seriously sucks. I assumed I was in a dead zone, or optus sucked. But maybe this is the reason?
I didn’t intend on upgrading it any time soon…
Yes, high frequency radio waves are stopped by thinner / less dense material than low frequency radio waves.
Low frequency means better penetration and distance but lower bandwidth.
5g is absolutely terrible at broadcasting past obstacles and at distance.
Explains why it’s absolutely abysmal in shopping centres. Like when I take my daughter shopping and the one thing I could do to make it more bearable, go on my phone and scroll… not possible 😩😩😩
is starlink thinking of operating as a mobile carrier? That would be absolutely fucking MASSIVE.
Would gladly pay the premium for it. Knowing i can get coverage pretty much any corner of the god damn globe.
My reception has dropped to nearly zero in parts of my house in *Sydney*. Granted it’s triple brick, but fuck me, I should be able to use my phone downstairs… I could three weeks ago
Yeah modern phones seem to need "full bars" for anything otherwise the connection is shit, it's either there and crystal clear or it's not.
To be honest I'm surprised they haven't started putting ads during phone calls yet, but I won't be surprised when they do.
The bars are quite simply a lie. They don't represent any real world measure of signal quality.
Transitioning away from 3G is painful but necessary, with significant improvement to both 4 and 5G services once 3G is out of the picture.
As for 'in call advertising', or 'enhanced customer engagement services', shut up. Shut RIGHT the hell up. They might be listening and getting ideas.
I have a 15 Pro and my experience is the same - central west NSW. Not sure if it’s the phone or the telcos aren’t putting out a strong 4g signal.
I have had to get back in the habit of downloading what I want to listen to or be prepared for lots of driving in silence.
I’m currently regional for 6–2 months but usually live metro - I don’t have any issues with it there.
It varies through the day. At work mostly 5G on the Optus phone, at home and around my suburbs 4G. On my Telstra phone always 4G.
I was recently on the south coast of NSW and was on 4G all the time from memory.
Because many of the new phones have glass/metal construction and need plastic bands/slits for reception. If you use a case or cover them with your fingers, SNR (signal to noise ratio) may drop, which results in bad reception. Older models have less of this issue because either they have larger of those plastic bands or have a plastic body. Supposedly, they solved this issue but who knows if they actually did 🧐
I bought a Netgear M6 Pro hot spot to use with a big external antenna for when I travel into regional areas. I was looking at a celfi booster, but the netgear has mimo radios where the celfi is only single so the netgear crushes it coverage wise. Even with just the base unit, it will have 4 bars when my iPhone 15 has 1.
The trick is placing it so its got line of sight to a tower.
There is an element of worse coverage but there also is the fact that we have gone from using a few gb of data a month to crushing 20-30x that.
Files are way bigger, videos are giant and music is encoded at higher bitrates.
This doesn’t help when coverage starts to get stretched.
Try typing in Speed Test in Google--it will tell you if you have slow-- medium-- or fast then ring Telstra if it's slow --Medium --they can give you stronger signal.
Blue Tick are phones tested by Telstra as having better coverage in country areas, i.e have better antennas.
[https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/blue-tick](https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/blue-tick)
I had to scroll this far to find it?
Cell Coverage is so widespread now in high population zones, that modern phones do not need a decent antenna. So, why would manufacturers prioritise it?
Telstra does still attempt to address the issue with its blue tick handsets.
(Let me guess, because I haven't looked at the list for years, but there are no flagships on the list?)
Note that the tick is related to the handset, and the phone does not have to be used with a Telstra service.
2g stingrays monitor phones, which affected the reception on phones running 2g/3g.
So I'm sure they have made 3g and 4g stingrays, which we won't find out about for 10 years.
Argh please don't tell me this, I just updated to a 5g phone. Presently get (my only internet) 3 bars of 4g because the tower is a few KMs away on a hill. I don't even know if it does 5g 😳
Yeah I’ve had exactly the same experience in a regional town. Honestly, I prefer being on 3g at some places, because as soon as it jumps over to 4g web browsing basically cuts out.
Not having any issues on 5g though.
Before I got my 5G phone I had never had a phone drop to 3G for years and years. As soon as it got I was 3G a lot and it made me wish I never upgraded phones.
I took a road trip last week, my phone completely lost all reception in Healesville and Beechworth- both quite substantial towns which *should* have been served by my provider aldi which uses Telstra 4g
I live Rural Vic. 90km drive to the nearest large town, majority of the drive is out of reception. I converted from Vodaphone to Telstra about a year ago. Vodafone has zero reception outside of a major town. Telstra has gone downhill too. Pretty sucky.
I remember the days of the old Nokia 5110. Fishing offshore in a boat 25+nm out to sea. Full signal or close to it. CDMA was even better. Newer tech is good for maybe 3nm offshore before a significant loss in reception. Congratulations, telcos, I'm wishing for a return of the reception of my old brick 5110. The new tech is great! Yeah, nah, GFYS.
Starlink might fix that soon! Pretty cool what they can do already and it’s not that far away in price too.
In the late 90s my old man was an electronic tech and was doing alot of experiments with reception and what was achievable then as far as signal range goes was phenomenal. Why we are sacrificing range so much now really has me stumped
> Why we are sacrificing range so much now really has me stumped speed and capacity when it come to wireless transmission you can pick speed or range you can extent the range bit that will require more power
I know what the choices are, and the speed and capacity gains I'm seeing do not outweigh the losses at this point. That was my point.
Fix a problem that was solved 20 years ago. Such progress.
It's not a conspiracy. You trade range for data throughput. If you want good browsing speeds, you need more towers to cover the same area. It's physics.
I know, so what. I also said nothing about it being a conspiracy, I stated points that show the downside to the new 4g and 5g and how new technology in some areas, like range of reception the losses now are getting ridiculous and are missing the point of why i have a phone in the first place. The gains with the new tech do not outweigh the disadvantages anymore, particularly if you are in the outer suburbs or heaven forbid if you don't live in a capital city. There are dead spots in coverage in the middle of Sydney that didn't exist 10 years ago. Progress? Yes or no?
Telstra has been converting 3g towers to 5g. 3g signal could reach 40km. 4g signal could reach 15km. 5g can reach 5km. Our reception coverage has been sacrificed for better speed in population centers. I can't wait for starlink mobile to bankrupt Telstra. 3g won't exist soon and it's a serious safety concern for rural people.
5km???? That really is not enough
Best case scenario too. Throw some hills between you and the tower and maybe some tall trees, yeah. I’m 1.5km from my closest Telstra tower and I’m still sitting here with two bars reception, 1 bar if I’m in my home office.
That’s fucked
Yea government has simply decided to screw over rural people in particular by removing lower frequency cell service.
Telstra 3G for distance is 850MHz. They have 4G at 700 MHz which goes further and as soon as 3G is off they will reuse the 850 spectrum for equivalent coverage. It is shaky in places now but it will get better after 3G goes.
I appreciate your comment 👍
But - I understood 4G (which I think is GSM?) was limited to 30km regardless of signal strength. Or am I wrong? Experts please?
I'm 2km from a telstra 4g tower and only get reception MAYBE if I'm standing at the top of my yard. It's the best. Our landline runs through the NBN so if the power goes out and there's an emergency we're fucked.
Lol even if you could get your local tower if there’s an emergency and the power goes out for an extended amount of time you’re still fucked. Live on the edge of Melbourne where we regularly have multi day blackouts, and the emergency backup at the towers don’t last for long. Apparently Telstra has generators they can bring in but-I’m sure you’ll be shocked by this- they don’t usually bother.
So, I have an iPhone 11. It doesn’t have 5G but my 4G seriously sucks. I assumed I was in a dead zone, or optus sucked. But maybe this is the reason? I didn’t intend on upgrading it any time soon…
Seems to have crappier penetration in/around buildings too? Is that a real thing?
Yes, high frequency radio waves are stopped by thinner / less dense material than low frequency radio waves. Low frequency means better penetration and distance but lower bandwidth. 5g is absolutely terrible at broadcasting past obstacles and at distance.
Explains why it’s absolutely abysmal in shopping centres. Like when I take my daughter shopping and the one thing I could do to make it more bearable, go on my phone and scroll… not possible 😩😩😩
...and analogue did 70km or more and I've had nearly 200km from CDMA.
is starlink thinking of operating as a mobile carrier? That would be absolutely fucking MASSIVE. Would gladly pay the premium for it. Knowing i can get coverage pretty much any corner of the god damn globe.
They have been testing it. Rolling out next year I believe.
God tier stuff. Would gladly use it. Imagine tethering hotspot to your phone using starlink. Fuck that would be sick.
My reception has dropped to nearly zero in parts of my house in *Sydney*. Granted it’s triple brick, but fuck me, I should be able to use my phone downstairs… I could three weeks ago
When are starlink going to mobiles?
3g is already switched off for some networks. Lot of remote sensors out in the field suddenly and without warning stopped working...
4g is basically Fd now. You are right.
Yeah modern phones seem to need "full bars" for anything otherwise the connection is shit, it's either there and crystal clear or it's not. To be honest I'm surprised they haven't started putting ads during phone calls yet, but I won't be surprised when they do.
The bars are quite simply a lie. They don't represent any real world measure of signal quality. Transitioning away from 3G is painful but necessary, with significant improvement to both 4 and 5G services once 3G is out of the picture. As for 'in call advertising', or 'enhanced customer engagement services', shut up. Shut RIGHT the hell up. They might be listening and getting ideas.
What's your phone?
iPhone 14 pro
I have a 15 Pro and my experience is the same - central west NSW. Not sure if it’s the phone or the telcos aren’t putting out a strong 4g signal. I have had to get back in the habit of downloading what I want to listen to or be prepared for lots of driving in silence. I’m currently regional for 6–2 months but usually live metro - I don’t have any issues with it there.
Can’t say I’ve noticed this. Most of my day is spent on 4G and the service has been fine. I’m using an iPhone 15 FWIW
Telstra or Optus?
Both cos I have a work and a personal phone.
Are you in a 4G only area?
It varies through the day. At work mostly 5G on the Optus phone, at home and around my suburbs 4G. On my Telstra phone always 4G. I was recently on the south coast of NSW and was on 4G all the time from memory.
Because many of the new phones have glass/metal construction and need plastic bands/slits for reception. If you use a case or cover them with your fingers, SNR (signal to noise ratio) may drop, which results in bad reception. Older models have less of this issue because either they have larger of those plastic bands or have a plastic body. Supposedly, they solved this issue but who knows if they actually did 🧐
I'm also regional and I've had to switch to 4G only. After Jasper, our 5G went to shit.
I bought a Netgear M6 Pro hot spot to use with a big external antenna for when I travel into regional areas. I was looking at a celfi booster, but the netgear has mimo radios where the celfi is only single so the netgear crushes it coverage wise. Even with just the base unit, it will have 4 bars when my iPhone 15 has 1. The trick is placing it so its got line of sight to a tower. There is an element of worse coverage but there also is the fact that we have gone from using a few gb of data a month to crushing 20-30x that. Files are way bigger, videos are giant and music is encoded at higher bitrates. This doesn’t help when coverage starts to get stretched.
Try typing in Speed Test in Google--it will tell you if you have slow-- medium-- or fast then ring Telstra if it's slow --Medium --they can give you stronger signal.
My 5g is trash most of the time
Yep. Signal is woeful out bush these days. All the money spent on highway coverage by state and federal governments down the toilet
Yes I do. My phone is incredibly slow in such 4G only areas.
What phone do you have? Does it have the Telstra Blue Tick?
iPhone 14 pro. And what’s a Telstra blue tick?
Blue Tick are phones tested by Telstra as having better coverage in country areas, i.e have better antennas. [https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/blue-tick](https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/blue-tick)
I had to scroll this far to find it? Cell Coverage is so widespread now in high population zones, that modern phones do not need a decent antenna. So, why would manufacturers prioritise it? Telstra does still attempt to address the issue with its blue tick handsets. (Let me guess, because I haven't looked at the list for years, but there are no flagships on the list?) Note that the tick is related to the handset, and the phone does not have to be used with a Telstra service.
Because not all of us live in the city...
But we are the minority who know how different life is once you leave the burbs.
I have a Samsung and I see the blue tick list doesn't have any iPhones.
😭
5g is trash and I disabled it on my iPhone 14
2g stingrays monitor phones, which affected the reception on phones running 2g/3g. So I'm sure they have made 3g and 4g stingrays, which we won't find out about for 10 years.
with modem mobile packet routing they are not longer needed but Assistance and Access Act (2018) makes the mot any way
So close yet so far. Why would they make the reception worse? That question takes you down a deep rabbit hole
Yes its rubbish
I found that some of the newer models have less sensitive receivers built into in them,
Argh please don't tell me this, I just updated to a 5g phone. Presently get (my only internet) 3 bars of 4g because the tower is a few KMs away on a hill. I don't even know if it does 5g 😳
Yeah I’ve had exactly the same experience in a regional town. Honestly, I prefer being on 3g at some places, because as soon as it jumps over to 4g web browsing basically cuts out. Not having any issues on 5g though.
Before I got my 5G phone I had never had a phone drop to 3G for years and years. As soon as it got I was 3G a lot and it made me wish I never upgraded phones.
I took a road trip last week, my phone completely lost all reception in Healesville and Beechworth- both quite substantial towns which *should* have been served by my provider aldi which uses Telstra 4g
It’s just so shit 😣
Wait until you find out 3G is being deactivated in 2 months.
Yeah I know
I live Rural Vic. 90km drive to the nearest large town, majority of the drive is out of reception. I converted from Vodaphone to Telstra about a year ago. Vodafone has zero reception outside of a major town. Telstra has gone downhill too. Pretty sucky.