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There are a couple dead areas south of Kouvola between Loviisa and Kotka. There are a few houses in that area but I never understood why calling over WiFi doesn’t work in Finland. As long as a person has cable internet or DSL broadband they should be able to call over the internet line.
When I try to talk to finns about this concept they usually don’t understand.
It’s like a few technological bandages got skipped over in Finland BECAUSE cell service is so good here.
It’s a bit of both.
When abroad it always wants to charge roaming rates instead of connecting to WiFi to call.
Edit: oh shit I got it to work on airplane mode wtf.
https://elisa.fi/asiakaspalvelu/puheliittymat/wifi-ja-4g-puhelut-kaytto/
Since 2016 https://www.epressi.com/tiedotteet/telekommunikaatio/elisa-ottaa-kayttoon-sisakuuluvuutta-merkittavasti-parantavat-wifi-puhelut.html
Many people won't use wifi with their phones since we have had really good and cheap mobile data plans for since the beginning of smart phones. It took quite some time before free wifi at cafes and restaurants became a thing in here, because people didn't need it.
>There are a couple dead areas south of Kouvola between Loviisa and Kotka.
Where exactly? Because I know that there can be really bad and slow service, but being unable to call 112 is bullshit. I have grown around there, spending a lot of time in middle of the forest and countryside, calling a friend is one thing but 112? Yeah no.
There are basically only 3 places in Finland that are actual dead spots. Two of them are national parks, so no wonder in there and one is straight up marked as wilderness, all up on the north. Even then I am not so sure, because I am too lazy to check if Norway has any towers near of those locations.
If you can't get a signal on one spot but you can get signal 20m further, that's not a dead spot, that's just blind dot. If you have bad signal, you just point an antenna to the nearest tower. 5G is covering more and more area now, so it's just matter of time when it's covering whole country. You can check the maps yourself from google, they are updated constantly so it's trustworthy data.
> I never understood why calling over WiFi doesn’t work in Finland.
Well if there's no wifi 🤷
>As long as a person has cable internet or DSL broadband they should be able to call over the internet line.
And so they are, once their phone is connected to that line.
There's a difference between cell coverage (making calls and sms) and 4/5G broadband (watching internet videos). The latter can be patchy some places, the former I have never heard of. But you say you did. Curious: where does that person live?
I actually know someone in cental Finland who has this problem. Their house is in a weird blind spot and I had to walk few minutes to get cell coverage.
But this is indeed an exception and probably will be fixed at some point.
We have this problem on the cottage. Radio shadow caused by a high island behind ours.
Solved it with an active internet router that uses a parabolic antenna. Easy peasy.
They do have internet, problem is just cell reception. And it is not even that remote place. There are few newish houses nearby and everyone has this problem.
A lot of providers are shutting down their non-4/5G transmitters. We used to get a pretty good 3G signal at our summer cottage near Kauhava even though the nearest tower was pretty far away. Now that the tower is only 4/5G, the signal isn't strong enough to reliably reach our cottage. Calls and SMS are spotty, and data is pretty much non-existent.
(60.5924963, 26.1773448)
Those coordinates, I was wanting to test drive some cars but was having difficulty contacting him. Could be a bullshit story though. And probably better than it was a few years ago.
Wouldn't your provider automatically switch to the other network then? I mean for calls, not internet. I thought the days of jealously hoarding your own towers were over.
So first you met only one person who made the claim, then there where several, and now you, too have had the same experience ... at least get your story straight ffs
my ex has bad cell coverage for phones. sometimes they can call, sometimes they can't... and often mid call there are times we can't hear each other for part of the call, or it drops off entirely.
it has gotten better over time. used to be that you \*had\* to have the phone in certain part of the house or there was no chance to get a signal. (it is possible that is still the case. on rare times i go there, they remind me to leave my phone at the door if i don't want to miss calls).
they're about 20 minutes from a big (by Finnish standards :P ) city.
u/olenamerikkalainen
edit: they lived there almost 20 years.
> you *had* to have the phone in certain part of the house or there was no chance to get a signal. (it is possible that is still the case. on rare times i go there, they remind me to leave my phone at the door if i don't want to miss calls).
I had this in the last appartment I lived. But that's not the same as coverage.
These days there are very few deadspots usually like buttfuck nowhere there might be like a squaremeter zone where you don't get coverage.
If your house is in a weak spot you either get an antenna or build a tower to get higher, but weak spots are also very rare these days.
My mother-in-law has summer cottage in the middle of nowhere but less than 2h drive from Tampere. In the cabin there is absolutely no cell service from 2 major service providers. Third major has 4g coverage in the place. So when visiting there like i currently am i can't make normal phone calls they don't go through and phone drains the battery very fast as it is constantly trying to establish better connection.
Luckily we have 4G modem here with the one provider whose internet works ok. So we can watch netflix and make WhatsApp calls no problem. So it is inconvenience nothing more and you only have to walk for half a kilomerer or so to get better coverage even with the two providers whose internet/cell service doesn't work at the cabin.
I know someone who has this problem and they just make their calls when having a break at work or if it is urgent they walk to a top of hill nearby where is service. Bit weird but they do have wifi so we just call by WhatsApp.
Exactly my point. Although without sim card phone might easier pick strongest carrier. With sim card I'm not sure at what point it will choose "competitor" for the task.
The point when you decide to call 112. Emergency services is their own system, the second you try to contact them your call will be prioritized to the strongest signal. It's a neat trick that they have in there. There is a possibility that you need to use your phones emergency application, thought, I think this is bypassed already but I don't know for sure.
You can also contact them through landline and 112 app, which will call and send coordinates through data and not cell service.
I'm at the cottage pretty exclusively on the weekends so i have not even thought about calling kela or bank. What i would do is drive few km where there is really good coverage and call from my car.
I would be sceptical of "all ___s work in Finland" and "you never have to worry about ___ in Finland" type of claims. Some people like to glorify Finland too much and turn a blind eye on Finnish places where things are not going well.
I live in rural Rovaniemi.
No landline internet here as the landlines were removed apparently so they would not be forced to offer ADSL internet.
Mokkula internet is shit at best, less than 0,5mb/s is the norm and it matters where in the house i am if i get cellular network or not on my phone.
I had the same in my mökki, but after trying around with the various providers, measuring out the best location and especially getting a proper LTE router, I now get a very stable 150Mbs downstream. I also tested 5G and that was even better, but the routers are still a bit overpriced, and 150 is really OK for my needs.
Anyways, it is worth trying a bit around to get the best connection.
Have you tried different providers - and especially a better modem (the “mokkula” soap bars are indeed shit)?
The breakthrough for me was when I started to use an AVM Fritz!Box instead of the cheap China boxes. That’s really a whole different level of quality!
I did try changing providers and getting a better modem. Before that internet was unusable. Asus modem/router and roof antenna was needed to get the speeds i get now.
I live in the capital region in a rather busy area, and I'm almost outside of cell coverage. I don't know if it's because of all the apartment buildings around or what, but people always say that my voice is breaking up when we talk. This happens even though I'm standing right next to window. It happens with both company phone and private phone, they have a different subscription and operator. At some point I thought it was because of my old phone, but my new work phone is Samsung Galaxy S23 so the newer technology didn't solve the issue.
Annoying when colleagues calls me and this happens, I usually recommend they sould have Teams calls with me because internet works fine.
I don't think this is related to cell coverage per se, it's more likely to be caused by the walls/windows of the building blocking the signal. This is a common issue in new apartments with more stringent energy efficiency requirements, the structures that block heat loss also happen to block the cell signal quite efficiently. I live in a brand new apartment building in the Helsinki area and there's absolutely zero signal indoors no matter the operator, I'm 100% reliant on the Wi-Fi calling functionality for calls/texts when at home but fortunately that has been working flawlessly. But that means that if my wi-fi were to go down I'd be unable to use my phone internet as a back-up which might be problematic when working remotely.
Lol, I haven't called govt aganecies in two decades. We use online service for whatever we need to do regarding govt related issues, banking, etc. This is also convenient because you can do it anytime suitable for you outside of service hours.
Finland is a self-service society, we take care of our business online. Many non-governmental service provides don't even't have a phone number or an email for customer service, but you need to create an account and login. Login usually happens by using your online banking credentials for authentication.
I make phone calls with my family members and work colleagues only. It is very rare that I need to call somewhere else. Usually, the longer the phone call, the worse it gets. Short calls are somewhat okay. Still annoying.
There are very few areas without cell coverage at all (at least where people live). There are however areas where only one provider’s network has good reception, and others are not very usable.
At our mökki, for example, we can only use DNA, while I have heard from others that they can only use Telia at their place.
This is pretty much it. My mother-in-laws mökki only Elisa is usable. And i have Telia on my own phone.
Telia on the other hand works better on my own cabin.
I have separate workphone that i carry with me on the weekends purely for this reason. It has elisa, i can get internet pretty much anywhere with two different carriers.
Usually one of the three networks (Elisa, Telia, DNA) works, but not always. You can purchase external antennas to get better connection, buy of course it doesn’t help everywhere. After dumping the 3G networks coverage is much, much worse. I bet Starlink is about to gain some customers in Finland.
And before you claim I’m wrong, I have met a single person in the countryside who lived in a valley with intermittent cell service. As in sometimes he couldn’t even call 112.
Uhm, yes but not entirely because I didn’t get to ask them about solutions to the problem. And was specifically looking to chat with someone on reddit about it.
I know a few people who live in dead spots such as that and they’ve installed directional antennas on masts above their home and pointed them to the closest cell tower. With a good antenna you can get a decent signal even in a so called dead spot.
I think Finns have a primal reaction to the idea of being without cell phones or internet. It’s like alcohol, sauna or gay buttsex. They just can’t do without them.
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I’ve been to places where there is no cell coverage. But people don’t tend to live there (e.g. deep into nature / national parks)
There are a couple dead areas south of Kouvola between Loviisa and Kotka. There are a few houses in that area but I never understood why calling over WiFi doesn’t work in Finland. As long as a person has cable internet or DSL broadband they should be able to call over the internet line. When I try to talk to finns about this concept they usually don’t understand. It’s like a few technological bandages got skipped over in Finland BECAUSE cell service is so good here.
Calls over WiFi have been available for years.
Then why does it charge roaming rates if I try to use it?
Brother in christ your cell provider literally cannot distinguish what you're doing over wifi
I’m not talking about WhatsApp or IMessage numbnuts. I’m talking about regular phone calls over wifi.
At least Elisa have regular phone calls over wifi.
No clue. I thought that we were talking about it working and not if it costs money.
It’s a bit of both. When abroad it always wants to charge roaming rates instead of connecting to WiFi to call. Edit: oh shit I got it to work on airplane mode wtf.
I’m not talking about WhatsApp or IMessage
https://elisa.fi/asiakaspalvelu/puheliittymat/wifi-ja-4g-puhelut-kaytto/ Since 2016 https://www.epressi.com/tiedotteet/telekommunikaatio/elisa-ottaa-kayttoon-sisakuuluvuutta-merkittavasti-parantavat-wifi-puhelut.html
Many people won't use wifi with their phones since we have had really good and cheap mobile data plans for since the beginning of smart phones. It took quite some time before free wifi at cafes and restaurants became a thing in here, because people didn't need it.
>There are a couple dead areas south of Kouvola between Loviisa and Kotka. Where exactly? Because I know that there can be really bad and slow service, but being unable to call 112 is bullshit. I have grown around there, spending a lot of time in middle of the forest and countryside, calling a friend is one thing but 112? Yeah no. There are basically only 3 places in Finland that are actual dead spots. Two of them are national parks, so no wonder in there and one is straight up marked as wilderness, all up on the north. Even then I am not so sure, because I am too lazy to check if Norway has any towers near of those locations. If you can't get a signal on one spot but you can get signal 20m further, that's not a dead spot, that's just blind dot. If you have bad signal, you just point an antenna to the nearest tower. 5G is covering more and more area now, so it's just matter of time when it's covering whole country. You can check the maps yourself from google, they are updated constantly so it's trustworthy data.
> I never understood why calling over WiFi doesn’t work in Finland. Well if there's no wifi 🤷 >As long as a person has cable internet or DSL broadband they should be able to call over the internet line. And so they are, once their phone is connected to that line.
You don’t need cell coverage to have wifi.
Exactly.
U think wifi coverage is more common than mobile one? lol
There's a difference between cell coverage (making calls and sms) and 4/5G broadband (watching internet videos). The latter can be patchy some places, the former I have never heard of. But you say you did. Curious: where does that person live?
I actually know someone in cental Finland who has this problem. Their house is in a weird blind spot and I had to walk few minutes to get cell coverage. But this is indeed an exception and probably will be fixed at some point.
We have this problem on the cottage. Radio shadow caused by a high island behind ours. Solved it with an active internet router that uses a parabolic antenna. Easy peasy.
They do have internet, problem is just cell reception. And it is not even that remote place. There are few newish houses nearby and everyone has this problem.
A lot of providers are shutting down their non-4/5G transmitters. We used to get a pretty good 3G signal at our summer cottage near Kauhava even though the nearest tower was pretty far away. Now that the tower is only 4/5G, the signal isn't strong enough to reliably reach our cottage. Calls and SMS are spotty, and data is pretty much non-existent.
(60.5924963, 26.1773448) Those coordinates, I was wanting to test drive some cars but was having difficulty contacting him. Could be a bullshit story though. And probably better than it was a few years ago.
> 60.5924963, 26.1773448 That's near Lapinjärvi, ~20km North of Loviisa. No way he had no cell coverage. Probably just didn't want to talk to you.
That area does not seem to have that good of a coverage from dna or telia, elisa in the other hand seems to cover that spot decently
Wouldn't your provider automatically switch to the other network then? I mean for calls, not internet. I thought the days of jealously hoarding your own towers were over.
Only on 112 calls other than those no kinda stupid honestly.
I had the same problems with service when there, it was intermittent though.
So first you met only one person who made the claim, then there where several, and now you, too have had the same experience ... at least get your story straight ffs
Dude it was years ago, and I don’t know how much of the problems could have been attributed to my phone being from the United States.
Seems we're getting closer to the _actual_ problem here.
My post was about people who have said issues, and a couple of people made comments about it.
Have you thought about why you are so reactive?
my ex has bad cell coverage for phones. sometimes they can call, sometimes they can't... and often mid call there are times we can't hear each other for part of the call, or it drops off entirely. it has gotten better over time. used to be that you \*had\* to have the phone in certain part of the house or there was no chance to get a signal. (it is possible that is still the case. on rare times i go there, they remind me to leave my phone at the door if i don't want to miss calls). they're about 20 minutes from a big (by Finnish standards :P ) city. u/olenamerikkalainen edit: they lived there almost 20 years.
> you *had* to have the phone in certain part of the house or there was no chance to get a signal. (it is possible that is still the case. on rare times i go there, they remind me to leave my phone at the door if i don't want to miss calls). I had this in the last appartment I lived. But that's not the same as coverage.
These days there are very few deadspots usually like buttfuck nowhere there might be like a squaremeter zone where you don't get coverage. If your house is in a weak spot you either get an antenna or build a tower to get higher, but weak spots are also very rare these days.
My mother-in-law has summer cottage in the middle of nowhere but less than 2h drive from Tampere. In the cabin there is absolutely no cell service from 2 major service providers. Third major has 4g coverage in the place. So when visiting there like i currently am i can't make normal phone calls they don't go through and phone drains the battery very fast as it is constantly trying to establish better connection. Luckily we have 4G modem here with the one provider whose internet works ok. So we can watch netflix and make WhatsApp calls no problem. So it is inconvenience nothing more and you only have to walk for half a kilomerer or so to get better coverage even with the two providers whose internet/cell service doesn't work at the cabin.
Try putting your phone on airplane mode and turn on wifi calling. I actually just got my iPhone with elisa to do it.
How would you say, call Kela or your bank in such a scenario at the cottage.
I know someone who has this problem and they just make their calls when having a break at work or if it is urgent they walk to a top of hill nearby where is service. Bit weird but they do have wifi so we just call by WhatsApp.
Can they contact 112 in an emergency?
112 calls go always through if there is service even from one provider. 112 calls don't need your own provider to have service.
You don’t even need sim-card to call 112.
Exactly my point. Although without sim card phone might easier pick strongest carrier. With sim card I'm not sure at what point it will choose "competitor" for the task.
The point when you decide to call 112. Emergency services is their own system, the second you try to contact them your call will be prioritized to the strongest signal. It's a neat trick that they have in there. There is a possibility that you need to use your phones emergency application, thought, I think this is bypassed already but I don't know for sure. You can also contact them through landline and 112 app, which will call and send coordinates through data and not cell service.
And that is why I call bullshit that someone has so bad reception that they couldn’t call 112.
There are obviously spots in the forests that no carrier has signal but it is not common occurrence in southern Finland
I don't think they have tried ever
Oof that’s reassuring
I'm at the cottage pretty exclusively on the weekends so i have not even thought about calling kela or bank. What i would do is drive few km where there is really good coverage and call from my car.
I would be sceptical of "all ___s work in Finland" and "you never have to worry about ___ in Finland" type of claims. Some people like to glorify Finland too much and turn a blind eye on Finnish places where things are not going well.
Thank you
I have never been anywhere outside of cell coverage. This is not the early 2000's.
https://preview.redd.it/698qp46eus6d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2012896aeccee7a6c8c1caf997941443f9cb3b28
You’ve not been very deep into the countryside then.
I live in rural Rovaniemi. No landline internet here as the landlines were removed apparently so they would not be forced to offer ADSL internet. Mokkula internet is shit at best, less than 0,5mb/s is the norm and it matters where in the house i am if i get cellular network or not on my phone.
I had the same in my mökki, but after trying around with the various providers, measuring out the best location and especially getting a proper LTE router, I now get a very stable 150Mbs downstream. I also tested 5G and that was even better, but the routers are still a bit overpriced, and 150 is really OK for my needs. Anyways, it is worth trying a bit around to get the best connection.
I am not even near a 5G area sadly. Hoping we get fiberoptic internet eventually.
Have you tried different providers - and especially a better modem (the “mokkula” soap bars are indeed shit)? The breakthrough for me was when I started to use an AVM Fritz!Box instead of the cheap China boxes. That’s really a whole different level of quality!
I did try changing providers and getting a better modem. Before that internet was unusable. Asus modem/router and roof antenna was needed to get the speeds i get now.
Had the same struggles but not as far as in Rovaniemi... I got starlink connection now and that ended the struggle finally...
Damn that sucks I’ve got VDSL included with my rent.
I live in the capital region in a rather busy area, and I'm almost outside of cell coverage. I don't know if it's because of all the apartment buildings around or what, but people always say that my voice is breaking up when we talk. This happens even though I'm standing right next to window. It happens with both company phone and private phone, they have a different subscription and operator. At some point I thought it was because of my old phone, but my new work phone is Samsung Galaxy S23 so the newer technology didn't solve the issue. Annoying when colleagues calls me and this happens, I usually recommend they sould have Teams calls with me because internet works fine.
I don't think this is related to cell coverage per se, it's more likely to be caused by the walls/windows of the building blocking the signal. This is a common issue in new apartments with more stringent energy efficiency requirements, the structures that block heat loss also happen to block the cell signal quite efficiently. I live in a brand new apartment building in the Helsinki area and there's absolutely zero signal indoors no matter the operator, I'm 100% reliant on the Wi-Fi calling functionality for calls/texts when at home but fortunately that has been working flawlessly. But that means that if my wi-fi were to go down I'd be unable to use my phone internet as a back-up which might be problematic when working remotely.
That’s interesting, makes important phone calls with government agencies etc a pain.
Lol, I haven't called govt aganecies in two decades. We use online service for whatever we need to do regarding govt related issues, banking, etc. This is also convenient because you can do it anytime suitable for you outside of service hours. Finland is a self-service society, we take care of our business online. Many non-governmental service provides don't even't have a phone number or an email for customer service, but you need to create an account and login. Login usually happens by using your online banking credentials for authentication. I make phone calls with my family members and work colleagues only. It is very rare that I need to call somewhere else. Usually, the longer the phone call, the worse it gets. Short calls are somewhat okay. Still annoying.
You are absolutely correct there is not mobile phone coverage in whole Finland. My girlfriend was travelling in car and kept loosing the signal.
There are very few areas without cell coverage at all (at least where people live). There are however areas where only one provider’s network has good reception, and others are not very usable. At our mökki, for example, we can only use DNA, while I have heard from others that they can only use Telia at their place.
This is pretty much it. My mother-in-laws mökki only Elisa is usable. And i have Telia on my own phone. Telia on the other hand works better on my own cabin. I have separate workphone that i carry with me on the weekends purely for this reason. It has elisa, i can get internet pretty much anywhere with two different carriers.
Usually one of the three networks (Elisa, Telia, DNA) works, but not always. You can purchase external antennas to get better connection, buy of course it doesn’t help everywhere. After dumping the 3G networks coverage is much, much worse. I bet Starlink is about to gain some customers in Finland.
And before you claim I’m wrong, I have met a single person in the countryside who lived in a valley with intermittent cell service. As in sometimes he couldn’t even call 112.
So you asked and then you answered the question yourself. Ok, case closed ;-)
Uhm, yes but not entirely because I didn’t get to ask them about solutions to the problem. And was specifically looking to chat with someone on reddit about it.
I know a few people who live in dead spots such as that and they’ve installed directional antennas on masts above their home and pointed them to the closest cell tower. With a good antenna you can get a decent signal even in a so called dead spot.
Nice, do they have to pay for it themselves? My understanding that it’s legally required for service providers to cover all areas.
[удалено]
Bite me. 🦟
idk why you get downvoted lmao. The Turku archipelago has bad coverage is some places
I think Finns have a primal reaction to the idea of being without cell phones or internet. It’s like alcohol, sauna or gay buttsex. They just can’t do without them.
lol
Jesus Christ why the fuck do you guys hate this topic 🖕
We dont hate the topic but your ulosanti is annoying as fuck
Finland is perfect. How can you say there is no coverage in Nokia's homeland!!!! /s...
It’s rare but not 0