Location matters
We’re all used to being constantly available on our mobile phones, so it can be surprising if there’s no coverage in a basement, for example. It makes a difference to your mobile phone whether you are in an open field or a thick-walled building, and how close you are to a base station that provides signal strength. This is because the shorter the distance the radio waves need to travel between the base station and your handset and the fewer the obstacles (buildings, forests or mountains) in their way, the better your call quality will be and the less interruptions and slowdowns you will experience when using the internet. Metal walls and beams, adobe and thick brick or glass walls can also greatly reduce the propagation of radio signals, which is why the signal may be stronger near a window than in the middle of the building.
Environmental conditions
Changes in vegetation and the seasons can also affect your mobile experience. Although the weather is better in summer, the dense canopy can affect the propagation of radio waves, which is why a place may offer better call quality or faster download speeds in winter. In extreme cases, vegetation or trees that have become overgrown over the years may require the operator to find a new location for network equipment to ensure appropriate service quality.
The same applies to the weather. Calm weather is good for the propagation of radio signals, while stormy weather or extreme snowfall can hinder perfect wave propagation. The number of users in your environment also matters. If more users connect to a base station, the available capacity will be distributed between them, which can mean a noticeable drop in mobile internet speeds at mass events, for example, or result in phone calls setting up slow.
Tips & tricks to help
A lot depends on the handset and apps you use, as each mobile phone has different capabilities and you use different apps. However, there are a few tricks you can try to improve your mobile experience. It’s important to always have the latest software and operating system installed on your handset, as this is how the vendor can guarantee seamless operation. If you experience an issue, the first thing you should do is try to restart your handset. It’s a good idea to restart it once a week to ensure it runs smoothly anyway. If you're having problems using an app, check if there’s a newer version available and download it, or try other apps, but you can also check if the network or the app is the problem by taking a speed measurement test. You can detect a SIM card failure by “cross-swapping” your SIM card to another handset and testing the service using that handset. If the problem persists, it’s most likely to be caused by your SIM card.
Domestic mobile operators are phasing out 3G to replace it with more advanced 4G and 5G technologies making services faster and more reliable. This also means, however, that it’s worth replacing your mobile phone with an at least 4G-enabled handset. To ensure a good mobile experience, it’s also important to be able to talk and browse the internet at the same time using your handset, which is supported by VoLTE technology (provided by 4G). Buy a VoLTE-enabled phone and enable VoLTE, so you’ll no longer have the problem of being unable to load pictures in Messenger or navigate while on a call, for example. Voice quality will also be better than before.
Being ready for calls while on a holiday
When travelling abroad, using your mobile phone and having proper coverage are common concerns. The quality and coverage of Hungarian networks are outstanding in global terms. However, across borders, you use the networks of foreign operators rather than domestic ones, so many places may not have the same coverage as in Hungary. Before travelling, it’s a good idea to check the list of operators available in the given country. The network automatically selected by your phone may not be the partner of your home operator, so you may want to choose manual network selection in case of a connection error.
Yettel is constantly modernising its network. In order to ensure the best possible network experience, a modernisation program worth tens of billions of HUF is underway to increase the capacity of the 4G mobile network to 2-3 times its previous level, on parallel with the gradual roll-out of 5G technology.