Update 28/05/22
Summary
In mid November last year a cellular mast was decommissioned at Nanfans Farm by O2. They never told mobile phone users what they were doing, only that they were working in the area. After that time people located in the north of Prestwood with mobile phone contracts with Virgin, O2, Plusnet Mobile, Sky and GiffGaff (there may be more, these are the ones I am aware of); all saw their mobile coverage fall dramatically, in many cases a phone would no longer work reliably indoors for text messages or phone usage. Outdoors the advertised coverage for Prestwood is 4 bars of 4G. If you live in the north of Prestwood, outside it was at best 2bars, and often only one.
If you are affected then you know who you are. If you have good cellular coverage, then you are served by the mast near Collingshanger Farm which has remained working and providing good coverage for the rest of Prestwood. The rest of the article below shows the history below this panel.
What has changed?
Various users on O2 have reported that O2 is again doing maintenance in the area. However so far the alleged promise from the CEO’s office at O2 to turn the decommissioned site back on has not happened. O2 have been working across the valley at another site some 5kms to the north east, also at the same height as the Nanfans form site. Something has changed, but we are not quite back to where we were. From around 1 month ago, rather than my signal completely disappearing in the house, it now falls back to the earlier 3G standard vs the current 4G which is active around here. Before the signal just disappeared or at best was intermittent and I would frequently get missed calls. The calls side is now working fine in the house. Largely because 3G has been turned back on, and the phones are now falling back to it.
Digital Data
However our digital data coverage (the ability to reliably use our phones on the internet using the cellular network) has not returned. That is the 4G part. Before November 2021, we had that, and like any utility, you don’t notice it, or miss it until someone removes it. Many thanks to the people who have complained, and have kept complaining, one of whom managed to get the CEO’s attention at O2/Virgin, that was the turning point. For my part I raised an OfCom complaint which was not upheld because apparently GiffGaff (GiffGaff is carried by O2) cannot guarantee that I have a signal, and even if I had a signal and someone has removed it, then they are still not responsible. It is all there in the small print. But sadly nobody saw the bigger picture even at Ofcom.
Other Solutions
As the summer is here, and if you are out in your garden trying to use your phone to access the internet outside of WiFi contact from your house, then you could try one of these. EAP110 Outdoor at £46 from Amazon and other retailers. I now have excellent WiFi in my garden, so now it does not matter so much, the phone works as a phone, and WiFi works in the garden too. I can add an article about Mesh networks if that helps anyone.
Nanfans Cellular Site
I would ask anyone affected to keep the pressure up on O2/Virgin. If anyone can think of any other ways of handling this, or gaining the attention above the “computer says no” technical support people, please do so. One of the things the active group has found out dealing with this is O2 and OfCom do not recognise multiple complaints about the same problem. So if part of a community is affected there is no way you can make a greater impact by going through the normal escalation channels.
I am sure turning it off was either an error, or a business decision. What apparently did not happen was nobody tested the coverage when they did it. They assumed it was ok. If they had tested it, then they would have seen the results the users have seen. It is also easy to assume the north part of Prestwood can be covered by the huge array of aerials at Collingshanger Farm, however what is not so obvious is the North of Prestwood is 10m higher than the ground where the aerial is located. Propagation is mostly line of sight, and relies on reflections. This is probably why the Nanfans farm site was used in the first place. We would still like it back please!
By Mark Wingrove
An update to the report “Does your mobile phone still work at home?” raised on the 5th of Feb 2022.
A few people in Prestwood are pursuing this problem; there are currently two OfCom cases open but progress is very slow, and we are still not sure whether we are making progress. There are some patterns emerging though.
If you live in the north part of Prestwood and are on O2, GiffGaff, Virgin Mobile, EE, Plusnet or Sky, you may have noticed that your mobile phone reception has become very poor, with mobile phones that used to work ok indoors with strong signals can now barely connect and frequently drop out.
Outdoors you may have 2 bars of signal on 4G where previously you had a solid 4 bars of signal.
The change happened between October 2021 and December 2021, we think around the 17th of November. What we think has happened is a cellular network tower was taken out of the grid at Nanfans Farm. We do not know why, possibly a cost cutting exercise.
We also know that as individuals, particularly when dealing with O2 or those services that use O2 as their carrier, the response is “there is no problem in your area, and there are no other complaints”. So individually we may assume it is our problem. Have you turned it on and off?
Everyone claims that mobile coverage is not guaranteed, what they are missing is we used to have it, and they have removed it.
O2 will look on their computer screens checking the information about their network and report it is all OK. We speculate the reason it is being reported as OK is because the mast that used to serve the north part of Prestwood is no longer on their coverage maps, so it has been removed. So in that respect they are right, but it is all beginning to feel like Ground Hog Day.
For my OfCom case I stated I was not looking for any compensation, all I wanted was the excellent service we used to have restored. The response from GiffGaff (my provider) was they are not going to pay any compensation. An interesting defensive response because that was not what I asked for. They then quoted a load of points from the standard terms and conditions. Interestingly they seem to claim they are not responsible for the service provision. That is provided by O2. But it appears they have no influence over O2 to check the system properly.
Other people in Prestwood have the same issues and have been pursuing this through their providers with generally similar results.
Do we have a gap in coverage?
This is all broad speculation, but it may be indicative of the problem we face in Prestwood, at least the northern side. Some of the antennas at Nanfans Farm are pointing directly in our direction. The installation is not very sophisticated compared to the only current antenna array serving Prestwood behind Collings Hanger Farm. I checked it out a couple of days ago. While the beam width from each of the antennas is probably fairly wide, you can see from the image below there is no antenna(s) pointing in the general direction of north (or to be a little more precise 350 degrees magnetic from the mast base). If we also consider that according to Ordnance Survey the Collings Hanger Farm antenna array is located on the 190m contour, the north of Prestwood is uphill, by around another 10 metres which will not help.
I suspect that Collings Hanger Farm site was optimised for the bulk of Prestwood to the east and north east where coverage is very good. To the north however, that was formerly covered by the Nanfans farm site. If O2 have decommissioned the tower at Nanfans, what they have not done is compensated for the loss of coverage at the Collings Hanger Farm site.
Apart from the coverage maps on THREE (service provider) all of the other coverage maps for mobile phones show excellent 4G strong signals indoors and outdoors in the north of Prestwood. THREE is however the most accurate for our current reception.
The diagram below shows the detail of the installation. The location of the photo was taken at approx 340 degrees, so not quite in alignment with the northern part of Prestwood. But you can see there is nothing there covering us. That is most likely the reason for the poor coverage.
How you can help
If your signal is now practically unusable at home, where it formerly worked fine, then you should make an official complaint to your provider. Make a record of the dialogue, much of it will be online to faceless people. They will eventually reply there is no problem in your area. Then ask for a deadlock letter. A deadlock letter means you have a problem with your service, and your provider is unable to do anything to help you resolve it. Then open a case with Ofcom to raise it to their attention. The key question is: what happened to the cellular network coverage in Prestwood between October and December 2021. What changed. Once they identify what changed, the solution should be self evident.
If you click on the image below you will see a larger version of it.
I am at the top of Martinsend Lane and I have significant issues with O2 to the point it is unusable at peak times. I have complained multiple times to O2, It appears to be volume related. Out of normal working hours it is not as bad.
Managed to speak to an O2 guru today – gave her all the details of the poor / non-existent coverage in this area since November. She didn’t think many other people had logged complaints! She is going to pass the information on to the technical team for them to investigate. I asked her to also give them directions to this article for them to read. She has asked me to get as many people as possible to contact O2 via a guru to log the problem as widely as possible – as if we haven’t been doing that anyway, but please do report again and again. Thanks
I complained to GiffGaff on 22 February regarding this particular problem. They confirmed a mast was down and it was being rectified by O2, which as we all know hasn’t happened yet. On a happier note, I was refunded three months rental, which has since appeared in my bank account!
I have heard from OfCom today that my complaint has not been upheld on the grounds that GiffGaff have handled my complaint within their terms of service. I have appealed on the grounds that we now know the reason why there is a loss of service. However it is GiffGaff that has the relationship with O2, not me. If GiffGaff choose to dismiss my complaint, or not drive the problem through to a conclusion with their carrier provider O2, then that is ok apparently.
It is with some irony, and perhaps ignorance on my part that my case did not focus more on the fault than the process of identifying and resolving the fault within GiffGaff. It appears it is wholly acceptable to allow the ship to sink provided the paperwork and processes are in order. Of course, we in Prestwood are still stuck with the problem.
Thanks for perseverng with this Mark. Network has indeed been bad since November and it also affects our running of Prestwood Area Community Transport (PACT).
Our phones have much reduced coverage and we are O2 and Giffgaff. We are in Clarendon Road and hadn’t realised we had lost an antenna. That was a lot of very interesting information Mark
I appreciate this suggestion is of limited help, but down in the dip of Perks Lane, the signal is poor, one bar as I write. However Vodafone, the network we use, does have Wifi-calling where your phone uses the household WiFi, then utilising IP telephony, goes down your phone line. It works well.
Thanks for the tip Richard. The problem for me is more related to data over the cellular network. If it isn’t there, you cannot receive any. Things like Two Factor Authentication over your mobile is a pain because you have to cross your fingers and walk to the window and hope you will receive the text message (which are also time sensitive!) For those of us with GiffGaff the monthly costs are very low cost at £6-8 per month. VoIP through the handset is not available on the lowest cost service providers, but yes it would help with voice calls.
I have been chasing both my mobile phone provider and O2 over the issue of poor or non-existent signals. I have also advIsed them that the issue affects many people in the Prestwood area but O2 do not seem to want to consider this. As far as they are concerned it is only an individual problem and merely want me to record times when the signal fails.
We need to raise this as a village problem and not an individual problem. That way we may get a better response.
Just a note to express thanks to Mark for leading this campaign to restore the mobile service. Also to encourage O2 customers in North Prestwood to use OfCom’s Ombudsman service because the more cases logged the more complaint power OfCom have to represent North Prestwood O2 customers. Logging cases is straightforward enough. Many thanks if you can help
I have heard today from two sources that O2 have admitted to decommissioning the mast at Nanfans Farm on the 19th of November 2021 and this is reason why we have all been struggling with mobile phone coverage since that time. That is a big leap forward from saying there are no problems in Prestwood. At least we now know they created the problem. O2 also have said that they are not able to provide the signal coverage that they once did before 19.11.21. We will see.