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Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

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Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#121

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gadders wrote: post #113

Related: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crexqyj7n5lohttps://www.... "Tests carried out by research group PolicyTracker, and shared with BBC's Morning Live, found that nearly 40% of the time a phone displays the 5G symbol, it is actually using a 4G connection"

I worked for a mobile network company a few years ago, the vibe I got there was that 5G penetration was still years away and that none of the providers were anywhere near ready for it.

Interestingly that company built a bridge of sorts allowing providers to get more life out of their older hard and software, converting e.g. 5G signals to 4G and 4G to 3G (where a signal is for example a phone phoning home telling the provider they used a megabyte of data, or looking up the IP address when calling a phone number)

Also where 2/3/4G network signals were all their own protocols (RADIUS and DIAMETER), 5G is just HTTP. And where for the 3G/4G stuff they had to write their own code to handle the protocols, for the 5G stuff they just used the cURL library. That is, cURL powers 5G networks.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#122

Post by Cthulhu_ »

kmm wrote: post #114
microtonal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you. We have stellar coverage pretty much everywhere in NL. Heck, I was recently in a work video meeting in the car, not a single drop. The route included part of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsluitdijk Yet, when we visit family in Germany, five minutes after crossing the border we are in a cellular dead zone.

Interesting to see you have a different experience. I'm not sure I would call it stellar. On the train route between Den Haag and Amsterdam, one of the busiest routes in the country presumably, reception is constantly dropping out. I'd love to be able to work on the train, but it's completely impossible if you need a network connection for anything. Perhaps the route being so busy is the cause of the connectivity iss…

+1 on the train, mobile internet in the train is really bad. I kinda get it because you're in a faraday cage, moving between cells quickly, and frequently far outside of inhabited areas but still.

I'm pretty sure the in-train internet also relies on mobile networks, so that's unreliable too. Plus any bandwidth is taken up by people scrolling through tiktok.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#123

Post by navigate8310 »

2dvisio wrote: post #107

With Three UK I used gathered evidence over the course of 4 months to wiggle myself out of a £46/month 28-month 5G contract (had to pay £200 remaining on my iPhone 16 Pro) when I demonstrated that my phone was basically useless whenever in the postcode are where I live, even if I always had 1 bar 5G signal. Not even phone calls would go through, let alone calls on Whatsapp et al, or loading websites using something h…

WiFi calling is the one of the most improperly implemented feature by carriers. Some just straight up deny WiFi calling if you're in airplane mode but connected to a WiFi.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#124

Post by eru »

wongarsu wrote: post #104
eru wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Highest total GDP in the EU but can't build a mobile network for the life of it. GDP per capita (or GDP per square metre) would be a more useful indication here. Otherwise, you could throw a bunch of poor countries together--just for purposes of statistics, and expect a better mobile network?

GDP per square metre is probably the best metric, even though it's the more rarely used one. [1] has a neat map of Europe by GDP density. However Germany is still very high in both GDP per capita and GDP per land area. Roughly on par with the UK, and far higher than France which has a much better mobile network 1: https://ssz.fr/gdp/

> GDP per square metre is probably the best metric, even though it's the more rarely used one. [1] has a neat map of Europe by GDP density.

Well, it would be the best metric, if your country was homogeneously populated.

If everyone lives in one big city and there's literally no one in the rest of the country, then I expect mobile reception (and every other service) to be pretty good for everyone, because they all stay in the big city.

> However Germany is still very high in both GDP per capita and GDP per land area. Roughly on par with the UK, and far higher than France which has a much better mobile network

Yes, France, Germany and UK are all equal enough in these measures (well within an order of magnitude) that the much bigger difference in mobile networks is most likely due to some other factors.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#125

Post by fransje26 »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #71
JoshTriplett wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Highest total GDP in the EU but can't build a mobile network for the life of it. > Then again we somehow forgot how to run trains The mobile networks don't have enough dB and the trains have too much DB?

Sir, with this comment you signed up to auto-renewable two years contract.

For the bargain of 45€ a month. Noncancelable.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#126

Post by Panzer04 »

samplatt wrote: post #22
eqvinox wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know, I don't recall ever seeing 1 bar of signal strength on a smartphone. I do. I'm from Germany, land of perpetual EDGEing. Highest total GDP in the EU but can't build a mobile network for the life of it. Then again we somehow forgot how to run trains and build cars without cheating, so I guess it fits. Want to see a single bar? Come visit, our carriers aren't on the list with that inflate flag enabled. I gue…

I also do, I'm Australian. I regularly experience both congestion caused by tower over-subscription as well as traveling waaaay out into the country where there's no reception, even on the Telstra network that boasts better coverage than everyone else by a mile.

I rarely encounter outright congestion in Australia tbh, but then again I avoid watching videos on the train.. so that's probably indicative of something :D

Coverage is decent on Telstra, but if you're out of town reception is rarely any good, presumably because there's little to no incentive to improve it when there's no on around to need it.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#127

Post by davemp »

metadat wrote: post #2

You know, I don't recall ever seeing 1 bar of signal strength on a smartphone. And once it's down to 2 bars, it barely works, if at all. Human brains: wow, what a bunch of suckers. Damn. By the way, is it legal to be deceptive in this way?

I’ve always just blamed the extreme bloat of the web and lack of design around poor connections for 2bar lack of performance. HN usual works fine on but that’s about it for sites I visit.

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#128

Post by swiftcoder »

wongarsu wrote: post #104
eru wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Highest total GDP in the EU but can't build a mobile network for the life of it. GDP per capita (or GDP per square metre) would be a more useful indication here. Otherwise, you could throw a bunch of poor countries together--just for purposes of statistics, and expect a better mobile network?

GDP per square metre is probably the best metric, even though it's the more rarely used one. [1] has a neat map of Europe by GDP density. However Germany is still very high in both GDP per capita and GDP per land area. Roughly on par with the UK, and far higher than France which has a much better mobile network 1: https://ssz.fr/gdp/

> GDP per square metre is probably the best metric

GDP per square metre only really works for countries with uniform population density. For example, by European standards, Spain is huge, and basically entirely empty outside of a handful of cities...

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#129

Post by wongarsu »

eru wrote: post #124
wongarsu wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP per square metre is probably the best metric, even though it's the more rarely used one. [1] has a neat map of Europe by GDP density. However Germany is still very high in both GDP per capita and GDP per land area. Roughly on par with the UK, and far higher than France which has a much better mobile network 1: https://ssz.fr/gdp/

> GDP per square metre is probably the best metric, even though it's the more rarely used one. [1] has a neat map of Europe by GDP density. Well, it would be the best metric, if your country was homogeneously populated. If everyone lives in one big city and there's literally no one in the rest of the country, then I expect mobile reception (and every other service) to be pretty good for everyone, because they all sta…

Luckily Germany is pretty homogeneously populated. Far more so than the UK (England is pretty even, but Scotland is far emptier) or France (1/5th live in the Paris metro area).

Re: Simple trick to increase coverage: Lying to users about signal strength

#130

Post by MaxL93 »

userbinator wrote: post #27

A friend recently got a (carrier-supplied) phone and has been complaining about how it would often have no reception despite showing a good signal; taking mine to the same areas on the same carrier and doing a comparison, mine was indeed showing no bars on the signal indicator. The difference is, mine predates this stupidity, and I can also see the details in the MTK Engineer Mode app, which shows the actual signal s…

-140 dBm is far beyond no coverage, yeah. -120 dBm is pretty much when LTE stops working (sometimes it can painfully stretch to -123 to -125 but usually not because of noise etc)
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