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Some homes and businesses in the Hampshire (South Coast of England) town of Bishops Waltham have been left with poor 4G and 5G mobile (broadband) reception from EE for around six weeks. This appears to have occurred after one of the few primary shared masts in the area went partly offline during stormy weather.
The town, which is home to over 6,000 people, is technically within reach of two or three masts that sit just outside the community – varying a bit depending on network operator. One of the main masts is a shared site in the SO32 area, which has a good view over the town but has also been struggling, at least for EE’s customers, since stormy weather in June 2025.
A number of other mobile operators in the area have also been experiencing issues, although it’s unclear if those relate to the same site or issue. For example, both O2 and Three UK are reporting that local network congestion “means your data could be slower than normal … our team is aware and working to make it better” (O2’s status). Three UK also recently had a service outage in part of the town, but they’ve since told ISPreview that “these issues should now be fixed“.
However, the problems for EE’s customers appear to be more complex, with some locals reporting a protracted period of lost service lasting nearly seven weeks and others highlighting issues with weak 4G and 5G signals (likely due to roaming on to a different cell site). Some limited information via EE’s forum also suggested that there had been a delay in being able to access the site, and that engineers have since found they needed to carry out a treeline survey due to a site-to-site Microwave capacity (backhaul) link possibly being blocked.
An EE spokesperson told ISPreview:
“We’re sorry that customers are experiencing issues with their service and we’re currently addressing this. We encourage any EE customers in the area who might be experiencing issues to contact our customer service team so we can support them directly”.
Sadly, EE didn’t confirm what the cause of the issue was, although ISPreview understands that the operator has ordered replacement parts and are continuing to work with the landowner in order to access the site. The plan is then to carry out the work as soon as possible. In the meantime, impacted customers are being encouraged to use WiFi Calling, where possible, and they should still be able to make 999 (emergency calls) as these get routed via any available network.
The complexity of some sites, as well as any safety considerations and problems with existing access (wayleave) agreements, can sometimes mean that it ends up taking longer than usual to resolve such problems. The exact issues in this case remain unclear, but in the absence of a solid fix time, we can only hope that EE are able to resolve the problems sooner rather than later.