On Sun, 1 Nov 2020 12:07:52 +0000, Martin Brown wrote:

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.

Not in the network providers interest to have backhaul capacity
problems, it would affect all services. Yes you could prioritise some
traffic over other but bandwidth is cheap. Far simpler just to shove
everything down a big enough pipe.

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.

Could be but most "contention" problems these days are not the
network backhaul but capacity within the ISP. I quite like the idea
of the local cell being "upgraded" to 4G and the 2G service ceasing
from that cell. Need feedback from Tim on signal strength, trouble on
the backhaul wouldn't affect signal strength. Does he have a 4G
capable phone?

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.

Never had my ADSL slow down in the evenings, even when people I know
with ADSL on the same exchange but different ISP have complained
about it.

--
Cheers
Dave.