On Sat, 11 Jun 2016 22:14:24 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

There was no signal at all Wednesday, it ahowed up briefly and
occaisionally Thursday and has continued to improve since then.
Now
that phone shows three bars and a steady connection.

As I said, that may mean no more than 'there are less phones currently
using that tower'

If that was the case then I'd expect the signal indicator at venues I
visit to plumet when the 50,000 crowd arrive, it doesn't but data
throughput does.

I have data via Three and that was rock solid / full speed as soon as
set it up.

Different tower or transmitter?

May well be a different tower but is always a different transmitter,
one owned/operated by Three rather than 02. B-)

All of the four networks have different service levels available
here. O2 is 2G only, Three and Vodafone 3G, EE double speed 4G.

My point being that '3 bars' doesn't means 'the transmitter signal is
more or less strong; it may and does actually mean that's how good a
connection you are going to get'

I think the signal bars are a "quality" indication, ie how hard any
error correction is having to work on each burst of data. This is
link layer stuff not application. The cell not having enough time
slots to provide proper service to all those that want it doesn't
come into it. Hence venues with full signal indication but only 300
bps throughput.

--
Cheers
Dave.