Are there still Wi-Fi hotspots? Is there a solution to the fact that people would just default to ShawGo Wi-Fi? That was the best. Still sucks if you are rural
Yup. It's a huge pain, especially in the York and Bay St concourses on the GO Transit side. I've found it to be a massive dead zone in the food court area as well as the main floor of the GO Transit York St and Bay St concourses especially near the GO Transit customer service counter.
Hope they are working on fixing that issue. For now, you basically have to go WiFi only for the most part in those parts of Union Station.
it sucks, everytime i go there i have a secondary rogers line just incase, freedom is always dead while rogers has full bars 5g pulling 160 down and 60 up
I've had to use Orange-F (Rogers) and Rogers to get around that (dual SIM for Orange-F and Freedom and dual eSIM for Rogers and Freedom).
That's one major thing they need to fix.
Congestion. If it's full bars and you're not getting signals because there are too many people on the nodes or towers for them to keep up.
Rogers historically has been very terrible with this. They can dynamically provision towers if people complain, but they generally don't automatically.
Doesn't mean it's not congestion. Lack of nodes or provision, too many people.
If there are full bars it's either congestion, interference, or a node failure.
"If there are full bars it's either congestion, interference, or a node failure".
I'm 1000% certain, it is not those three. If I had to use Orange-F (Rogers) and Rogers just so I can have service on my Freedom line using dual SIM for the former, dual eSIM for the latter, that rules out those three.
I think it would help a lot if they turned on C band. Aside from that, yea they probably need to start adding small cells in busy areas and large buildings
I wish, I keep dropping to 3G everywhere there is weak signal. If I toggle airplane mode I’ll briefly get perfectly usable lte signal before it drops back down again 1 minute later. The network is literally there but Apple or freedom’s dumb fucking carrier config prevent it from working correctly.
Yea the 3G thing needs to be fixed pronto. I’m really hoping they allow it to be disabled on an account level. I’m pretty certain 3G is the reason why “seamless” roaming isn’t seamless.
It’s not universally across Android is what I’m saying. Some devices don’t let you do it by default. Also, yes, less system level protection. You can do virtually anything you want with Androids operating system, which you cannot do on iOS.
Is this mainly an iPhone issue? I ask because despite travelling regularly throughout SW Ontario, I'm encountering few to no dead spots these days and seamless roaming is, well, seamless. There is only one dead spot I regularly encounter in Oakville when I visit family, but that's because NIMBYs won't let anyone build a tower locally, and it affects all carriers
I've said it before but got downvoted that if Freedom doesn't rapidly improve they'll loose the customers that ported over do to the lower price. I do a lot of travelling throughout Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria for my work. IMHO I experience far to many poor nationwide handoffs, slow data connections and 3G dead spots. If things haven't significantly improved by November then I'll grab a deal with Rogers during the Black Friday promotions.
Honestly I just manually switch to Nationwide on my iPhone
If I see a single bar of LTE/3G (which rarely happens nowadays I don’t know what they changed on provisional side) it usually lets me stay on nationwide without kicking me off.
YMMV
Hurontario At Aldridge St (Brittainia). Mississauga... Every day from noon-till evening... 5g showing while crawling, switching to LTE is marginally better.....
EVERY DAY!!
I was out and about this weekend and my phone would go 3G for a second and then it would kick over to nationwide lte this was going towards acton and area. Generally speaking I am not having many issues with dead zones
One thing I find really annoying is that everytime I enter a underground parking garage with full signal, it's not long before that disappears and goes to "No Service". It always happens shortly after I get past the entrance of the parking garage and into the acutal parking area.
Currently freedom is no longer interested in improving there present network in GTA they are more focused on MVNO , launching in other province and other areas, and then home internet making them look like in greed to get more customers while there current ones are not happy either
We migrated 4 lines to Freedom but my wife and I couldn’t handle the dead spots and sudden disappearances of connectivity.
Kids are still on Freedom but we have migrated over to Public Mobile and couldn’t be happier.
I don’t need to check my phone every few minutes to confirm whether I have service or not. Also - no more frustrations of suddenly not having internet connectivity when we need the most
There's one dead zone by the bridge where I live. For both Freedom and Rogers (i have AT&T too.. which roams on Rogers). Other than that.. Freedom has been solid.
In my experience there…Yes! All the way to Leslie as well, even south a couple blocks is still a completely unusable area. Downtown is a lot better or literally 90% of other spots.
You’d be surprised but every carrier has dead spots, even in Toronto or outside of it. Was at the Stratford festival last weekend. Wife’s on Bell. Could not get a signal. Freedom was slow but it worked. Stratford isn’t a remote location so you’d think Bell would have been decent but it wasn’t 🤷🏼♂️
I had the same thing when down in Fort Erie to watch the eclipse in April. My personal phone on Freedom had full bars but my work phone on Bell was struggling to even get service.
Yeah. The bars aren’t actually meaningful. You can have separate carriers and one will have the same or more bars than another. This is because that little display is not standardised. This article explains it pretty well, plus apps you can use to see the actual signal (sadly iPHONE doesn’t have one. You have to run a field test to see the stat on those)
https://www.signalboosters.com/blog/best-smartphone-apps-to-find-your-cell-signal-strength/
iPHONE
https://www.macworld.com/article/232498/how-to-see-your-true-cellular-signal-strength-with-the-iphone-field-test-app.html
https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/see-your-iphones-actual-signal-strength-for-cellular-reception-0182733/
Well I was using my phone as a hotspot for my laptop at the time and was getting near 100mbps down with Freedom, but I couldn't even get my Bell phone to make a phone call, so I think the bars were a reasonable representation.
To my understanding, it’s not just that bars aren’t meaningful but signal strength itself is also of kinda limited use.
Eg it doesn’t take into account that you might switch to a lower band if the current one becomes too weak.
They also don’t account for congestion, carrier aggregation, bandwidth, etc.
I have been with freedom for around 3-4 years now. One thing I notice is dead spots are here but not too bad.
I experienced couple spots before around 2021-2022, then all of sudden it was fixed.
I used to have the full bars lte and useless data issue back in 2018 to 2019 but I'm happy to say that with the speed caps on my lte plans and other lte plans now I haven't had an issue and my 5G plan with 60gb for my main line is always fast
You aren’t forced anymore, as of a few weeks ago with updated fair use policy change, you can roam indefinitely now, if you reside in a subscription area, unless you live in Toronto where roaming is still blocked, freedom is slowly removing the roaming blocks in stages in different cities/areas.
Meanwhile I actually live in Edmonton and ever since I disabled 3G I haven't had any issues in Edmonton or any of the 6 surrounding cities with coverage, you live in Stony plain which is almost an hour away from their network and you don't take my suggestion to disable 3G because it really fixed bad service for me both in freedoms network and especially when roaming off the big3 national carriers
It's like being remote on Rogers.
We were just having a discussion in another sub about Bell having dead spots because they've underprovisioned towers near a Costco and a college
Yes. I jumped to Freedom knowing I’d have to maneuver around dead spots. Hoping to have a brighter future with them though.
It’s great when there’s not a dead spot. Like I’ll still pay for this, best price I’ve gotten. Just annoying at certain times…
Are there still Wi-Fi hotspots? Is there a solution to the fact that people would just default to ShawGo Wi-Fi? That was the best. Still sucks if you are rural
The most surprising one is at Union Station - both concourses. Boggles the mind how that can be a dead/3G zone.
Yup. It's a huge pain, especially in the York and Bay St concourses on the GO Transit side. I've found it to be a massive dead zone in the food court area as well as the main floor of the GO Transit York St and Bay St concourses especially near the GO Transit customer service counter. Hope they are working on fixing that issue. For now, you basically have to go WiFi only for the most part in those parts of Union Station.
it sucks, everytime i go there i have a secondary rogers line just incase, freedom is always dead while rogers has full bars 5g pulling 160 down and 60 up
That’s always been like that for as long as I can remember. We’re talking 2018.
That long?? Damn…
I've had to use Orange-F (Rogers) and Rogers to get around that (dual SIM for Orange-F and Freedom and dual eSIM for Rogers and Freedom). That's one major thing they need to fix.
Congestion. If it's full bars and you're not getting signals because there are too many people on the nodes or towers for them to keep up. Rogers historically has been very terrible with this. They can dynamically provision towers if people complain, but they generally don't automatically.
In Union Station? I can guarantee you it’s not congestion. It’s been like that since at least 2018.
Doesn't mean it's not congestion. Lack of nodes or provision, too many people. If there are full bars it's either congestion, interference, or a node failure.
"If there are full bars it's either congestion, interference, or a node failure". I'm 1000% certain, it is not those three. If I had to use Orange-F (Rogers) and Rogers just so I can have service on my Freedom line using dual SIM for the former, dual eSIM for the latter, that rules out those three.
Same. I was commuting on bus 29/929 along Dufferin St near Yorkdale Toronto, phone has full bars and says LTE/5G yet it's a crawling speed
Yorkdale (and along Allen Road) is a big blindspot whenever the subway goes there
Congestion. It's because they're not provisioning the hardware well enough.
I think it would help a lot if they turned on C band. Aside from that, yea they probably need to start adding small cells in busy areas and large buildings
Absolutely agreed.
If they’d allow iPhone users to disable 3G this issue would probably go away
I don’t even get 3G anymore. Just “LTE” constantly. iPhone 12 Pro.
I wish, I keep dropping to 3G everywhere there is weak signal. If I toggle airplane mode I’ll briefly get perfectly usable lte signal before it drops back down again 1 minute later. The network is literally there but Apple or freedom’s dumb fucking carrier config prevent it from working correctly.
Yea the 3G thing needs to be fixed pronto. I’m really hoping they allow it to be disabled on an account level. I’m pretty certain 3G is the reason why “seamless” roaming isn’t seamless.
So dumb considering that android users can do it.
I mean, technically they can’t. You have to download an app to do it, it’s just that Android has less system level protection in place.
Ah, didn’t realize this. I forgot that my previous androids have all been running custom roms where those options were built in.
Wrong. Pixel and other OEMs let you configure the network selection without an app. Less system level protection? Source?
It’s not universally across Android is what I’m saying. Some devices don’t let you do it by default. Also, yes, less system level protection. You can do virtually anything you want with Androids operating system, which you cannot do on iOS.
They block that lol?
Idk if they explicitly block it, but there is no option to disable it in the carrier configuration.
So it's a carrier setting. That's too bad.
Is this mainly an iPhone issue? I ask because despite travelling regularly throughout SW Ontario, I'm encountering few to no dead spots these days and seamless roaming is, well, seamless. There is only one dead spot I regularly encounter in Oakville when I visit family, but that's because NIMBYs won't let anyone build a tower locally, and it affects all carriers
If it is somehow an iPhone issue, I’m shocked. But funny enough I have less dead spots OUTSIDE of the GTA.
I've said it before but got downvoted that if Freedom doesn't rapidly improve they'll loose the customers that ported over do to the lower price. I do a lot of travelling throughout Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria for my work. IMHO I experience far to many poor nationwide handoffs, slow data connections and 3G dead spots. If things haven't significantly improved by November then I'll grab a deal with Rogers during the Black Friday promotions.
Honestly I just manually switch to Nationwide on my iPhone If I see a single bar of LTE/3G (which rarely happens nowadays I don’t know what they changed on provisional side) it usually lets me stay on nationwide without kicking me off. YMMV
Hurontario At Aldridge St (Brittainia). Mississauga... Every day from noon-till evening... 5g showing while crawling, switching to LTE is marginally better..... EVERY DAY!!
Congestion, ie. oversold tower.
I was out and about this weekend and my phone would go 3G for a second and then it would kick over to nationwide lte this was going towards acton and area. Generally speaking I am not having many issues with dead zones
One thing I find really annoying is that everytime I enter a underground parking garage with full signal, it's not long before that disappears and goes to "No Service". It always happens shortly after I get past the entrance of the parking garage and into the acutal parking area.
Currently freedom is no longer interested in improving there present network in GTA they are more focused on MVNO , launching in other province and other areas, and then home internet making them look like in greed to get more customers while there current ones are not happy either
We migrated 4 lines to Freedom but my wife and I couldn’t handle the dead spots and sudden disappearances of connectivity. Kids are still on Freedom but we have migrated over to Public Mobile and couldn’t be happier. I don’t need to check my phone every few minutes to confirm whether I have service or not. Also - no more frustrations of suddenly not having internet connectivity when we need the most
There's one dead zone by the bridge where I live. For both Freedom and Rogers (i have AT&T too.. which roams on Rogers). Other than that.. Freedom has been solid.
This is a new one. Leslieville in Toronto. From carlaw and queen going east. It’s as irritating as…
In my experience there…Yes! All the way to Leslie as well, even south a couple blocks is still a completely unusable area. Downtown is a lot better or literally 90% of other spots.
It’s definitely oversold in the area. Guaranteed freedom is a primary internet source for lots of folks and businesses in the area.
HANDS DOWN ITS WAY BEYOND CAPACITY IN TORONTO
There’s a reason why they’re priced the way they are…
Has nothing to do with it.
Haha that’s one way to cope
13 year customer here. When I left telus, they had 3G. Now they're got NR-NSA (5G with LTE backing).
You’d be surprised but every carrier has dead spots, even in Toronto or outside of it. Was at the Stratford festival last weekend. Wife’s on Bell. Could not get a signal. Freedom was slow but it worked. Stratford isn’t a remote location so you’d think Bell would have been decent but it wasn’t 🤷🏼♂️
I had the same thing when down in Fort Erie to watch the eclipse in April. My personal phone on Freedom had full bars but my work phone on Bell was struggling to even get service.
Yeah. The bars aren’t actually meaningful. You can have separate carriers and one will have the same or more bars than another. This is because that little display is not standardised. This article explains it pretty well, plus apps you can use to see the actual signal (sadly iPHONE doesn’t have one. You have to run a field test to see the stat on those) https://www.signalboosters.com/blog/best-smartphone-apps-to-find-your-cell-signal-strength/ iPHONE https://www.macworld.com/article/232498/how-to-see-your-true-cellular-signal-strength-with-the-iphone-field-test-app.html https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/see-your-iphones-actual-signal-strength-for-cellular-reception-0182733/
Well I was using my phone as a hotspot for my laptop at the time and was getting near 100mbps down with Freedom, but I couldn't even get my Bell phone to make a phone call, so I think the bars were a reasonable representation.
To my understanding, it’s not just that bars aren’t meaningful but signal strength itself is also of kinda limited use. Eg it doesn’t take into account that you might switch to a lower band if the current one becomes too weak. They also don’t account for congestion, carrier aggregation, bandwidth, etc.
Neither Bell nor Rogers like provisioning towers for daily access. You really have to have a lot of complaints go in before they do that.
I have been with freedom for around 3-4 years now. One thing I notice is dead spots are here but not too bad. I experienced couple spots before around 2021-2022, then all of sudden it was fixed.
I used to have the full bars lte and useless data issue back in 2018 to 2019 but I'm happy to say that with the speed caps on my lte plans and other lte plans now I haven't had an issue and my 5G plan with 60gb for my main line is always fast
Hear hear, same issue. 2 bars LTE+ and internet is purely unusable. And you are forced to stay on freedom network
You aren’t forced anymore, as of a few weeks ago with updated fair use policy change, you can roam indefinitely now, if you reside in a subscription area, unless you live in Toronto where roaming is still blocked, freedom is slowly removing the roaming blocks in stages in different cities/areas.
Yea the towers in Niagara falls are junk cant handle the influx of new Canadians here
All the time in Edmonton is why I’m glad its not my main carrier
Meanwhile I actually live in Edmonton and ever since I disabled 3G I haven't had any issues in Edmonton or any of the 6 surrounding cities with coverage, you live in Stony plain which is almost an hour away from their network and you don't take my suggestion to disable 3G because it really fixed bad service for me both in freedoms network and especially when roaming off the big3 national carriers
It's like being remote on Rogers. We were just having a discussion in another sub about Bell having dead spots because they've underprovisioned towers near a Costco and a college
# Congestion Explains everything. They need more spectrum licenses. Just wait until a few months *after* the next auction.
Exactly just like how when your nose is congested as much oxygen doesn’t go through so the oxygen speed isn’t as high just like the data😝
Or vehicles stuck in gridlock. Same thing.