weak service in downtown condo - should I change providers?

[Sambora]

Hello,

 

I am living on a a high floor in a condo just 200m off BTS Ekkamai and only have one signal bar on my iPhone 12. I have this issue anywhere in my apartment and also on the condo rooftop. The problem is that the weak service drains my battery considerably faster. I am wondering if this is down to a bad positioning of my current provider's cell tower (I am using AIS)? Would changing to another provider e.g. True or DTAC make a difference? Do you have experiences with this kind of scenario?

 

I have this issue on both 4G and 5G.

[tomazbodner]

Most highrises have this issue on high floors. Signal is from towers that are way down and do not reach high floors. I have same issue on 32nd floor, though I found that True has nearly full signal. I believe they've put repeaters into the building like what shopping malls have on the ceilings.

 

You say you have iPhone. Do you have Wifi in your room? If so, without costing you a dime, first connect your phone to your Wifi, then in settings under Phone application, enable Wifi Calling. All Thai telecoms support it.

 

What this will do is put a Wifi Calling next to your telecom name, say AIS Wifi Calling instead of AIS, and route all calls and messages over your Wifi, removing the battery drain as in that case it would no longer care about the cellular signal.

 

When you get out of area of your Wifi, it will automatically switch to cellular network.

 

Alternative is to talk to juristic about possibility of asking telecoms to put repeaters into the building. They don't cost much but someone still has to pay for it.

 

Last alternative - get prepaid SIM cards from other providers, that have all functionality you need (say if you need data and 5G, take one that supports 5G and has some data allowance included), then test them out inside different parts of your condo (if corner room, you might have different signals in rooms facing different sides of the building), and then decide for the best one.

 

I've changed from DTAC to AIS because of nearly no signal at my own place. AIS signal was full. Very happy. Moved and... AIS signal is next to non-existent, but another phone with True has full signal. Ah well... wasn't going to go through moving it again so I just enabled Wifi calling like I had with old SIM in the past.

 

Side note, when travel is available again - you could disable cellular service and enable wifi calling only in another country and use phone normally whenever connected to any wifi like if you were in Thailand - local calls and SMS...

[Sambora]

Hi Tomaz,

 

Appreciate your detailed response!

 

I probably get a cheap prepaid from DTAC and True first to see if their coverage works better at my place. I do have a corner unit so several rooms face different directions, however, the signal is consistently low in all rooms. 

 

I have used the voice over Wifi functionality, however, it does not actually 'switch off' my mobile phone signal. Whenever I am connected to the voWIFI, it still shows the one signal bar, making me think that the battery still drains as much as before. You mention that voWIFI takes precedence over the mobile phone signal, is that your own observation or is this written somewhere? I haven't found anything on this topic.

[tomazbodner]

5 hours ago, Sambora said:

You mention that voWIFI takes precedence over the mobile phone signal, is that your own observation or is this written somewhere? I haven't found anything on this topic.

If signal drops below 2 lines, it will switch to using Wifi Calling. At least that's from experience on my iPhone. 3 different models all worked in the same way.

[natway09]

Have you asked your present provider why ?

[rwill]

Do you have any friends with the other providers that could come to you place to check the signal strength?  Or perhaps ask some of your neighbors.

[dontpanic]

11 hours ago, Sambora said:

Hi Tomaz,

 

Appreciate your detailed response!

 

I probably get a cheap prepaid from DTAC and True first to see if their coverage works better at my place. I do have a corner unit so several rooms face different directions, however, the signal is consistently low in all rooms. 

 

I have used the voice over Wifi functionality, however, it does not actually 'switch off' my mobile phone signal. Whenever I am connected to the voWIFI, it still shows the one signal bar, making me think that the battery still drains as much as before. You mention that voWIFI takes precedence over the mobile phone signal, is that your own observation or is this written somewhere? I haven't found anything on this topic.

With regards to voice over WiFi. The best thing to do is turn on airplane mode then turn back on WiFi (as far as I know you can do this on every smart phone) so it's on airplane and WiFi then it will always route through WiFi. Only thing is just remember to turn off airplane mode when you leave. It works flawlessly as I have been doing the same for some time now.

 

I previously used it without turning on airplane mode and WiFi and it was terrible as I only had 1 or 2 bars at best and it would just keep flicking between WiFi calling and network and most of the time I wouldn't get anything because it couldn't make up its mind what it wanted to do. 

Edited February 11, 2021 by dontpanic

[Iron Tongue]

9 hours ago, rwill said:

Do you have any friends with the other providers that could come to you place to check the signal strength?  Or perhaps ask some of your neighbors.

 

This.  First thing you should do is ask neighbors on your floor & above.  Then ask the management what carriers they use.

[Sambora]

Hello everyone,

 

thank you all for your input. It turns out that True and DTAC deliver a signal just as ‚bad’ as AIS. There’s no difference whatsoever. Therefore I am staying with AIS.

I do know that other tenants on lower floors have full signal on AIS so me living on a very high floor does seem to be the root cause of the problem.

 

Actually, the voWIFI function does work pretty well; I am just wondering what it does to my battery if I decide to leave the mobile network switched on? Will it still drain my battery because the phone is trying to boost/find a better signal even though it’s using voWIFI or is it only using the wireless signal? If it’s the first, then I better keep it in airplane mode. 

I am using the iOS Automation feature to put my iPhone in airplane mode whenever I get into a 100MBit perimeter of my condo and to switch off whenever I leave the perimeter. It works quite well actually.

Edited February 13, 2021 by Sambora

[Dagfinnur Traustason]

It all a matter of your own interest. Either you choose new provider or you change place of living.

[soi3eddie]

 

I've noticed this previously too when going to rooftop bars. Either strong or no signal with lack of connection or data throughput. Various places with both DTAC and AIS. Seems like the phone had problems connecting to the network or was trying to connect to many different towers subsequently. Not had it happen much in the last few years as guess that more repeaters installed at height. In the UK, some providers offer devices that plug in to your router that create their own mini cell site for your phone to use (Vodafone call it "sure signal" and maybe something similar is available here?). 

 

[dontpanic]

Give something like this a try. They sell signal boosters probably similar to what some condos install on higher floors. This guy is supposed to be good. Also you have it if you ever need it again in another condo. I think you can find their products on lazada to. 

 

https://www.sunyarndee.com/

[mtls2005]

On 2/11/2021 at 8:48 AM, tomazbodner said:

You say you have iPhone. Do you have Wifi in your room? If so, without costing you a dime, first connect your phone to your Wifi, then in settings under Phone application, enable Wifi Calling. All Thai telecoms support it.

 

Yes. This. One of the main reasons WiFI calling was introduced here ages ago.

 

It's also usefull when traveling outside of Thailand, as it affords in-country/on-plan calling anywhere.

 

Your handset needs to support WiFi Calling.

 

https://www.ais.co.th/4g/vowifi/en/

 

https://www.dtac.co.th/en/info/dtac-call.html

 

https://help.truecorp.co.th/truemoveh/16/1656?ln=en

[tomazbodner]

On 2/14/2021 at 5:58 AM, dontpanic said:

Give something like this a try. They sell signal boosters probably similar to what some condos install on higher floors. This guy is supposed to be good. Also you have it if you ever need it again in another condo. I think you can find their products on lazada to. 

 

https://www.sunyarndee.com/

I can confirm this guy is awesome. Dealt with him before.

 

But before you go into buying one, a few things to consider:

- the antenna receiving the signal must actually be in the area with relatively good signal (that would mean somewhere outside, pointing to actual tower)

- you need to make sure to buy the correct one as each generally only covers one or very few frequencies - and telecoms in Thailand use multiple, so you'd need to find out what band your nearest tower is using

- you would need to check if the box has any bandwidth limitations. I know it works OK for voice but it might drop data speeds or even not support data throughput at all, especially on cheaper models.

 

So be sure to ask the questions before buying. Other than that - these boxes are made for countryside where signal is scarce. It should work in condo unless there's a lot of interference. Had Wifi extender from him before but there was so much interference from other rooms that it was impossible to use. Cellular signal luckily works on different frequencies, though.

[mtls2005]

Yeah, a cell signal booster will be about as useful as three magic beans or an amulet.