[Jim Kimber]

…has the best coverage in the mountains / at road-ends? I’m thinking about signing up to the 21st century and would welcome advice. See you at club and in the hills shortly

[AllanMac]

Telecom 025 used to have better coverage than 021/029. That might still generally be the case, but recently I made a call on a friend’s 021 phone from Sabine Hut in Nelson Lakes NP, my 025 phone didn’t even register a bar.

I’d heard the advantage of the 025 phone was that if your phone can’t find a digital signal (it needs to time it’s 1s and 0s), the phone switched to analogue. But my 025 phone can’t seem to make a call when all it is getting is a dodgy analogue signal. It also depends on your phone: people with different phones on the same network get differing coverage, in that if your phone has a more powerful ariel you are more likely to pick up a cell site.

All in all, I reckon the coverage at road-ends and in the bush is so variable and in most cases non-existent, so I don’t rely (or even expect) to get coverage at the road-end. So it doesn’t really matter what network you are on if none of them sufficiently cover road-ends and the hills.

[Andrew Ledbrooke]

Comparing 021/029 coverage with 025 coverage is not a fair comparison these days. Telecom have stated that all new mobile base stations that they put into operation only provide service the 027 (or CDMA) capable phones. Check out http://www.telecom.co.nz/coverage

Just rememeber that 027 now has significantly greater coverage than 025 and that 025 is no longer growing in coverage so if go Telecom you’ll be better off most of the time with 027.

I went on the Southern Crossing trip over New Year’s and at Field Hut only the 027 phones worked well the person with an 021 phone couldn’t make any calls. 027 appeared to have pretty good coverage across the tops from Field to Alpha judging from all of the phone calls being made.

One major advantage you will get if you go 027 is many of the handsets have an aerial that you can extend. This improves the ability of the phone to receive the signal by reducing shielding of the aerial from things like your hand.

Like Allan said you will find that at a lot of the road ends you’ll be lucky to have coverage from any provider. This is especially true in gorges, valleys and along rural roads.

[Allan Mac]

Well, if you are thinking of buying an 025 phone of course it is fair to make the comparison of coverage with 021/029 as well as 027.
The vodafone website also has maps showing coverage. The maps for Vodafone and Telecom (025 or 027) looked much the same to me.

Overall though Jim, I reckon you should look at features other than coverage at road-ends and in the hills in making your decision on which phone network to use.

Happy shopping

[Jim Kimber]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Seems like there’s not much in it and that neither is going to be particularly reliable at road ends. Cheers. Jim.

[Author]

Posts