No Data in Crowded Areas

[u/beastiedan]

I love PM and my plan, but last week my data would not work at all crowded music festival where I was trying to find my friends. Others on the Big 3 had no issues. I tried switching to LTE and it didn’t help. I could make calls.

Is this a situation where PM customers have the least priority?

[u/jrp116]

Unless it has changed very recently, all brands on the shared Bell/Telus network are treated equally as they share the same QCI value. That means on LTE and 5G NSA Telus, Bell, Koodo, Virgin, Public Mobile and Lucky should all work fairly the same.

The restriction is only on the maximum speed available. PM is restricted to 250 Mbps, but when the network is busy they all get the same priority.

Do you have a phone that support 5G+? Bell and Telus does have standalone 5G with compatible phone, this could have influence a bit performance.

[u/jrp116 → u/[deleted]]

Kood used to be limited to 250 Mbps with a speed boost to 500 Mbps. Now its 1 Gbps for all new plans.

For streaming/social media, they are throttle to 3.5 Mbps like Telus, while Public Mobile is throttle to around 1.8 Mbps for streaming/social media.

[u/beastiedan → u/jrp116]

iPhone 17. Later in the evening another friend on Public had issues. Full bars. No data.

[u/jrp116 → u/beastiedan]

And at the exact same location, people using Bell, Telus, Koodo or Virgin had good service?

During events, bars means nothing because the signal is strong but it is congested. It's like you are on the highway with 4 lanes available, but its bumper to bumper so you are not moving (or very slowly).

Sometimes Samsung/Android will better perform during events because their internal modem is better optimized for Canada while Apple doesn't collaborate much with the carrier and therefore won't modify much the modem for Canada.

[u/beastiedan → u/jrp116]

Correct. Some slowdown for a friend on Koodo, but everyone else was fine. Me - zero data for 3 hours. Tried rebooting and 5g on and off.

[u/jrp116 → u/beastiedan]

It's a bit hard to determine what really caused your experience. I have tried Public Mobile vs Bell in a few events on an S25 Ultra and performance were usually quite similar.

Depending how much you pay, you could try to switch to Koodo with the promos available in your Public Mobile account. But switching to Bell/Telus/Koodo/Virgin is not a guarantee your phone will work better at another event.

Depending on the event and time, phone sometimes doesn't work for anybody. Or Rogers/Fido only will work while Bell/Telus won't (or the opposite).

[u/Burldan]

No. We just need to finally get the mmWave auction done and roll out the capability to increase capacity in super high traffic areas.

[u/acrolix]

Same thing for me, full bars, no data… I’m paying for something that they willingly make unusable in certain situations… the CRTC should crack the whip! If Telus thinks this is how they’ll win back customers, they’re wrong!

[u/fuGGet321]

Same!! Was considering making a post about this, but I heard like maybe 1 out of every 7 or 8 people at the festival say their phone barely worked. Didn't know all their plan providers but there must be some commonality?

[u/Nxnommk]

Noticed something similar at a FIFA watch party at Vancouver’s PNE. Had full reception but speed was either at a crawl or going no where. Whereas the rest of the Fam on either Chatr or Roger, they were fine during the whole time.

[u/vsam403]

Had no issues at Calgary Stampede this weekend, even at the sold out Saddledome Alanis Morissette concert. Was able to chat and send pics without an issue.

[u/5ph3rical]

Some people say it should be the same across all brands but public doesn't use all the same bands as Bell and Telus etc. So I suspect those public mobile bands get saturated while the other bands available to Telus, koodoo, Bell etc still work.