Limit of mobile phone range

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rallyveteran

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Latest news on YBW has a story about a dismasted yacht being rescued 2 miles off Skegness, which was said to be "at the limit of mobile phone range"

My phone works 20 miles or more into the Channel. Even allowing for lower antenna height in the flat land of Lincolnshire, I'd have thought a phone would work 10 miles out.
 
My phone works 20 miles or more into the Channel. Even allowing for lower antenna height in the flat land of Lincolnshire, I'd have thought a phone would work 10 miles out.

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Many factors......maybe the cell transmitters were away from the coast...

When you get a call from 20 miles out in the channel you must almost be in Calais /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

The accepted limit for digital mobiles is about 15 miles and this has nothing to do with signal strength. It is a factor of the type of signal used where the stations acknowledge each other on the same frequency and within timed slots. When the range is more than 15 miles the acks fall outside these slots...so it is the speed of light and radio waves that is the limit /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif As any ham who does amtor will know.
 
There's also a bay in Kent that only picks up French mobile phone network!

However, my mobile does not work at home.

Range is more where you are rather than how far out you are.
 
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There's also a bay in Kent that only picks up French mobile phone network!

However, my mobile does not work at home.

Range is more where you are rather than how far out you are.

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Previous poster's point covers max range. This cover blank spots, cellphones use microwave frequencies which are line of sight and hill/ valley contours play havoc with coverage. This may not seem relevant on the sea, but that depends on where the nearest aerial is sited. They do not generally aim for coastal coverage unless there is a population hot spot or major road along the coast.

Coverage is entirely dictated by cost & potential revenues. Yotties - except where regularly congregated (marinas, anchorages, moorings) do not generate much call revenue when scattered on the high seas.
 
There are times when I find my mobile is on a French Network and I don't live in that bay in Kent (St. Margaret's Bay) - so I'm sure we have a back-up to the VHF.
 
Base stations can be designed not to radiate equally in all directions, and as the subscriber density isn't good at sea they don't like using radiated power on that bit. So a BS tower near the coast may in fact only be much use inland.
 
4 yrs ago my phone worked 11 miles off the skegness coast on the 02 network. Maybe ranges have changed for some reason cos I now get a signal at home and I didn't then. Maybe the range was directly quoted from the network provider as maybe not a final range but more as a we can only guarantee coverage upto 2 miles thus giving some indication to the rescue services as to how long 100 percent assistance could be given by the network provider. Maybe before I get shot down, I could be completely wrong but lives saved and the need for our lifeboat service demonstrated again........ GOON ON YA LADS
 
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that should have been gooD on ya lads!!! SORRY

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Your first attempt sounded better! A cry from the terraces p'raps?
 
having been in the industry, I would give the answer 'variable'!
The points raised about antenna directional coverage above are correct, but there may also be a day to day variation, depending on how busy the network is. The timing limit on GSM used to be 40km.
I'm on Vodafone, found this is often the last to pick up a signal when returning to the solent from France.
Down west, it pays to have Orange in some of the harbours.
So I took an old phone with a payg sim in it sometimes.
Don't know what the current best way of roaming to any network is?? Mint used to do it, or a cheap foreign sim???
Voda will roam to many different networks in france/Channel Isalnds, but not in UK.
Its also useful to remember that an SMS text will often get through where a voice call fails.
 
At South Stack light on Anglesey I lose my Vodaphone signal and the phone then connects to an Irish network approx 65 miles away.
 
I was surprised to find my mobile phone registering a signal when I was working 40 miles off the coast of Angola once. Couldn't make a call though.
 
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The accepted limit for digital mobiles is about 15 miles and this has nothing to do with signal strength. It is a factor of the type of signal used where the stations acknowledge each other on the same frequency and within timed slots. When the range is more than 15 miles the acks fall outside these slots...so it is the speed of light and radio waves that is the limit /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif As any ham who does amtor will know.

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The limit for a GSM phone is the fact that it's time division multiplexing and, as you say, because the speed of light is finite, the phone and base station have to work out a timing advance based on the distance from the base station. Once you get so far, the timing advance would take you into the next timeslot, so you're knackered. I think the maximum range is actually about 25 miles. In theory, the operators can reduce the number of timeslots, giving a greater theoretical range.

I'm not sure the same is true of 3G phones, which are based on CDMA, which means that all the phones on the network blast out at the same time and some nifty decoding works out which one is which. That means that there isn't the same hard cut off as with GSM and you'll probably get more distance until you reach the maximum power of the handset and start to fry your brain.
 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
that should have been gooD on ya lads!!! SORRY

[/ QUOTE ]

Your first attempt sounded better! A cry from the terraces p'raps?

[/ QUOTE ] No one reacted , maybe an explanation would help us join your world
 
No it isn't - but SMS is likely to get through later when you briefly get a signal, whereas a voice call will already have failed.
 
There are some booster kits available form the States. Passage Maker (the mag) did a survey of them fairly recently. I'll see what I can dig out. I know that one implication is whether the bands are the same, but at least it's a starting point.
 
whether the bands are the same, but at least it's a starting point.

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As the problem with digital is a distance issue and not a signal power issue these do not help...Because of their wide open spaces places like Oz and USA still have analogue systems where distance is NOT an issue so if you can boost the ooomph and hear then all is ok.

We used to use yagi antennas in the Southern North Sea and easily got 70/80 miles in the old days but then the car kits we used also put out proper power /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I'm not sure the same is true of 3G phones, which are based on CDMA,
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Hey....slow down....I only just got clued up on digital and its drawbacks....Vodaphone bribed me to get rid of my analogue so they could close down ..

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
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