On 01/11/2020 11:29, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sun, 01 Nov 2020 10:45:06 +0000 (GMT), charles wrote:

Is there a device/way of paralleling mobile phone connections to
boost
data rate? Possibly in connection with gaming activities.

There are methods of "bonding" individual links to make them appear
as one larger one but requires the right kit at both ends of those
links.

Long shot question but my Vodafone service is suddenly very
intermittent and usually emergency service only. Vodafone deny any

issues and this has been continuous over more than a week.

Keep banging the table, remember that even if you have a contract
with Vodafone for service that is with a different part of Vodafone
than provides the physical network...

Paranoia alert but we are on a radial path to the transmitter.

what is a "radial path to the transmitter"

Presuambly Tim, neighbours and Tx form a straight line possibly with
the neighbours between Tim and Tx. I don't think this would have any
effect on data rates as the TDM shares out the available time slots
across all users. Ther could be capacity issues on that cell sector
but Tim's rural so not likely.

Actually during half term with kids streaming endless stuff on their
mobiles (not just the family along the line of sight) it is quite
possible that a rural node backhaul could be saturated.

Biggest clue may be signal strength, has that fallen through the
floor as the local cell has died or got a fault (wind blow an aerial
down, water got into feeder?).

On Android it might be worth getting one of the apps that tells you
everything your wanted to know about the cell you are connected to
and it's neighbours. If you are normally connected to cell X with Y
bars, but know connected to cell J with K bars and no sign of cell X
it would be reasonable to assume that cell X has died. How you tell a
Customer Services droid this information and get them to pass it on
to some one who understands it is another matter...

One of the apps that shows cellular signal quality and error rates might
shed some more light. I'd bet on bandwidth contention problems on the
backhaul caused by half term though. Sometimes see that happen in the
evenings on our rural exchange now that some places have FTTC. QD TV
uses a fair chunk of bandwidth and with people watching different
programmes on demand it adds up to a lot of peak bandwidth.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown