Difference between signal on contract and payg

[Anonymous]

Just wanting to know of this is normal, or even allowed.
I have with me 3 different phones, One a o2 contract phone, and two pay and go o2 phones, one of which is brand new (got today). The signal currently on the contract phone is 2 bars with 4g active. No signal on either of the pay and go phones. I swop the SIM cards between the contract phone and pay and go phones and the signal strength swops with them, telling me that the phones are ok.
Can anybody shed some light on this ?
Cheers

[MI5]

They connect to the same masts so maybe the PAYG sims are faulty or inactive?

[anticpated]

Also consider different handsets antennae may have varying quality. They may be restricted by capable radio frequencies and overall bandwidth. The nnly real difference between PAYM and PAYG servers are the IP location they use. Using the corrrect APN (service setting) ensures you get the correct connection and charged accordingly.

Like MI5 said, if a SIM isn't active it has to be initiated by the O2 customer service team or you need to replace the SIM.

[Anonymous]

They are both active and both are working, they work fine in a different area. It's almost as if they are being deliberately choked... In the house the signal drops out only on the pay and go phones. Almost like the signal is weaker . But it shouldn't be, they should all have the same. The contract phone is almost two years old, and like I said, one of the pay and go's is brand spanking new. With the contract sim in it gets the signal In the house, .

[anticpated]

It might be worth resetting the default APN and get the phone to reregister over the network again.

[Anonymous]

I think it's very fishy. I can put all 3 Sims in one phone, contract gets signal, pay and go is extremely intermittent. Leave the house and they all have signal. Like mi5 said, they are all off the same mast so should all work the same apart from margin of error across the different handsets, but that isn't the case

[MI5]

Bit of a mystery this one.
I've never seen any difference in signal strength between the two types and I can't think of any reason why there should be either.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your input guys. I have already reset the APN, I've tried manually selecting network and auto select, hasn't made a difference.

[MI5]

It's highly unlikely to be affecting both sims but worth sim swapping to new sims in case they are faulty?

[Anonymous]

As you can probably tell, I live in a rural area. Pretty recently the radio towers had an upgrade, before the upgrade I wouldn't have had signal in the house from any of them at any time. But then one day I noticed the 4g symbol on my phone (my broadband was down haha).
I thought ooo that's good never seen that before. At which time I checked on The O2 website to find that there had indeed been an upgrade to the antenna. I was happy enough at the time. But then my father started asking about changing network because he never gets signal in his place, I originally thought it was probably his phone or maybe the SIM card. As we are both on O2. I tried swapping the Sims and doing resets at that time, but as the testing was only between 2 phones and 2 old SIM cards I thought maybe it could just be that, until I received my own second pay and go phone, which signal was rubbish. So I swooped everything only to find the old contract sim from my 2 year old phone did indeed get signal In my house. So I then went and borrowed my dad's phone, and tested everything there. Basically I found, contract sim gets adequate signal in every phone wherever it is, neither pay and go SIM get adequate signal in any phone, one of which is brand new SIM, and both of which get signal when outside. I find this strange, and I hope that it is just one of those things, and it's not O2 somehow deliberately choking pay and go for whatever reason.