Dreadful Tesco Mobile/48 Months service on the O2 network

TomOnBoard

I understand that the above two providers are offering their services on the old O2 network that was subsumed into the Three network last year. As far as I can see from Boards posts, any of the old O2 clients can still be stuck on the old infrastructure and do not get their service from any improvements that Three have made since acquiring O2 some years ago.

I've just returned from a few days in Louisburgh in Co Mayo where my Meteor/Eir service was grand (3G on an iPhone4). In order to control costs, I have my kids on 48 and there was war when it came to them using the odd bit of data for keeping in touch with their m8s. No-one got anything better than what the phones said was 2.5G and came up as a desperately slow Edge connection (like maybe 2-5 minutes to refresh a web page). Their phone service was grand, getting 4 or 5 bars most of the time.

Is this policy on Three's part, to prevent users who were re-sold services on the former O2 network from getting Three's full offering in places? Or is it a case that the Three network in Louisburgh is simply pants??

ED E

More likely the latter, Three were a new entrant (Esat/Telefonica/Vodafone were the originals) and never built their own 2G network and used to rent such from Vodafone. When that deal died they used old o2 2G to fill gaps in their 3G footprint.

Unless its a case of a 3(VM,iD) handset working and Tesco/48 not working then its just the nature of 3.

O2's 3G was never great outside urban areas but it has gotten worse since Three took over. It was one of the reasons why I left Tesco for Vodafone last year.