SOLVED: BlueTooth interference - 3G, 4G, 5G ?

[StainlessS]

Hi guys, just a quick question.

Anybody know if 3G, 4G, or 5G is known to interfere with bluetooth signal ?

I recently got a pair of cheap (£20.00) bluetooth headphones
(KS Metro-X, something or other, from Wilko store)
I'm reasonably happy with them but expect to require another pair the first time I sit on them [solution, dont sit on them].

When using the phones outside, I could not fail to notice bad interference when passing though certain areas, crackles and distortion, speedup/slowdown and other general nasties.
I have noted that in a number of the places that it occurs, there are 3G/4G/5G antenna/access points on near rooftops.
I'm using 4G phone (Galaxy Note 4) to send on-phone audio via bluetooth. [EDIT: 4G data, WiFi, GPS, OFF on NOTE 4]

I dont suppose I can do anything about it, but curious to know what is causing it [and if it happens to all Bluetooth headphones].

EDIT: Galaxy Note and Headhones no more than 2 feet apart.
EDIT: Usually happens when waiting patiently, 2 Meters apart in 200 yard queue for supermarket beer run.
EDIT: KS Metro X on Wlko site:- https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/kitsound...lack/p/0484174

Customise the fit with the included interchangeable small, medium and large earbuds

That part of the Wilco webpage is rubbish, probably copied from another ear buds page by mistake.

[SquallMX]

No, but WiFi signals will, they use almost the same bandwidth, some Bluetooth devices are better at filtering the interference than others.

[StainlessS]

Arh, I think that some ISP's have free WiFi for their users (maybe O2 contract is one ie not PAYG),
so they probably have powerful access point sitting alongside the 3G etc antenna's.

I guess microwave ovens will therefore on occasion be problematic.

Thanx for your answer, I guess that solves it. [did not occur to me that there could be WiFi sitting up on the roof next to 3G etc]

EDIT: No sign of any problems at all sitting 2 meters away from my Mobile Broadband whotsit, even streaming from YouTube,
in fact I think I've been using Mobile broadband in my breast pocket so less than a foot away from the phones.

[FranceBB]

Originally Posted by SquallMX

WiFi signals will, they use almost the same bandwidth

Indeed!
Bluetooth uses bands between 2.402 and 2.480 GHz while Wi-Fi is using between 2.401 and 2.495 GHz depending on the channel you choose, although many countries limit the channel to 1-11 and therefore to 2.473 GHz.
A microwave will also affect your bluetooth signal and your Wi-Fi signal as well as it's not properly shielded by design; as a matter of fact, the international regulation doesn't say that a microwave has to be completely and perfectly shielded, it just says that it has to up to a certain level. For instance, if you place your phone in front of it while it's on, it will have difficulties to properly receive and send packets through Wi-Fi. One of the most sensible and not so properly shielded part of a microwave is the little door which lets you see inside. Anyway, they say that such a small amount of waves at 2.5GHz (the resonant frequency of water) isn't harmful. I think Dianna Cowern did a funny video about it a few years ago.

Originally Posted by StainlessS

Hi guys, just a quick question.

Anybody know if 3G, 4G, or 5G is known to interfere with bluetooth signal ?

When you use Bluetooth technology, you gotta use it to transmit signals to devices that are close-up to your source, like your mobile phone bluetooth antenna which is close to your headsets and so on, it's not meant to travel much farther than a few meters. Mobile networks instead are totally made to travel much further and have a way lower frequency. As result, if you take a look at the 2G spectrum it's 450 MHz (nowadays 800MHz) which is way lower than the 2401MHz used by Bluetooth devices. Same goes for AM radios which air between the 153–279 kHz which is 0.153MHz - 0.279MHz which is very low but those waves can easily travel across the world. Odd fact: if I set my old radio to AM I can still barely, just barely hear 1 single distorted French channel (and I'm not living in France). If you take a look at FM instead it spans from 87.5 to 108 MHz, which is why you lose the FM signal as soon as you leave a neighborhood. (Stations that used to air nation-wide in the UK like Capital or the LBC - which is my favorite radio station - actually had several towers all airing the very same signal at the very same frequency whenever they were able to do that, in fact sometimes you had to tune your radio to a different frequency to get the same station). Now, all this was fine 'till a relatively few years ago when mobile internet became a thing and people began to use it a lot on their mobile phones to be connected with each other, chat, call other people via internet and so on...
Right now, if we think about 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G there are several bands that are in use in Europe, namely 800MHz, 900MHz, 1.4GHz, 1.8GHz, 2.100GHz, 2.300GHz, 2.6GHz and 3.4GHz all in use to provide connectivity. Even by doing so, there was not enough "space" to accomodate each and every customer, so cities have been sliced into smaller areas covered by an antenna each and the smaller an area is, the higher the number of devices of an entire city can be. If you think about big cities like London, there are more than one tower in a single Borough! That's insanely high due to the very high number of people living there.


So, in a nutshell, my answer to your question is: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G networks shouldn't interfere with your headsets, however other bluetooth devices and some Wi-Fi might.




Side-note: this forum is about encoding, so it's mostly populated by engineers and there's no need for me to say what I'm about to say, however people might search for something similar on google and read this topic, so I wanna take the chance to get things right. In the past few months, I've seen a lot of disinformation about 5G networks and how they're harmful, with people making up any sort of things, really, and also protesters taking down 5G towers with trucks. This horrifies me 'cause many engineers and workers spent a lot of time along with government-backed taxpayers money to build those towers and they wouldn't have done it if they were harmful! 5G as well as any other technology has been tested over and over again to make sure it's safe: those electromagnetic waves - which people are so scared of - are just non-ionizing radiation, they're NOT ionizing radiation sources like X-rays and gamma rays which are at the very opposite side of the spectrum!! And to the random guy saying "But our body gets them everyday and there are more cases of cancer, so they must cause cancer!!11!!" I reply: Wanna know what they do when they get through the human body even if you never took a quantum mechanics class in your whole life and you have no bloody idea about polarisation, vector components of waves and the differential equations involved? Fine! They warm your body! That's it. Whenever they go through your body and hit it, they release a part of their energy as heat due to the joule effect and therefore warm your body up. Then the random guy would say "They warm us! I knew it! It makes cells uncomfortable and this causes cancer!". Trying to refrain myself from yelling at this fictional random guy I would say "No, dumbass! If a cell is heated up 'cause it receives powers in the form of heat, it will just get more water through the lipid membrane (bilayer) via osmosis." So, in the end, this clueless fictional guy asks "Then they're not harmful, they're safe, they don't cause cancer, but are all electromagnetic waves safe?" and I will lastly reply "of course not, ionizing radiations like gamma rays will not uniformly hit your body or a single cell, but they can directly affect your DNA replication and therefore unwillingly modify it, thus making a cell different. This newly affected cell might lose its function and just sit there, taking up resources from other fully functioning cells and you can bet that it's gonna try to reproduce and the more of those cells reproduce, the less nutriment the functioning ones have and they therefore die. Congratulations, you just caused cancer, but of course, nobody would ever be dumb enough to produce gamma radiations as they're not just harmful but also incredibly hard to control in a wide area, so it's nonsense!
I hope this clarifies any doubts about the safety of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, AM, FM, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G. I mean, seriously, internet folks googling conspiracy theories, get over it.

[SquallMX]

Originally Posted by StainlessS

Arh, I think that some ISP's have free WiFi for their users (maybe O2 contract is one ie not PAYG),
so they probably have powerful access point sitting alongside the 3G etc antenna's.

I guess microwave ovens will therefore on occasion be problematic.

Thanx for your answer, I guess that solves it. [did not occur to me that there could be WiFi sitting up on the roof next to 3G etc]

EDIT: No sign of any problems at all sitting 2 meters away from my Mobile Broadband whotsit, even streaming from YouTube,
in fact I think I've been using Mobile broadband in my breast pocket so less than a foot away from the phones.

One single small WiFi device will not affect a BT signal (unless buggy), but on very congested areas you can have 25+ WiFi APs (+ microwave ovens, cordless phones, etc), that's when de BT goes bananas. Thanks godness for 5G WiFi.

[StainlessS]

Thanks guys.

Update.

A couple of days back I was using a Motorola G4 LTE (xt1039, 1st gen) streaming FM radio to Bluetooth headphones [Galaxy NOTE 4 dont have FM radio].
Went through both areas were I always get interference using NOTE 4, and nothing at all with the XT1039, so whatever it was,
seems to have been interfering with the NOTE 4. [EDIT: No SIM in the Motorola xt1039]

JFYI.

[kolak]

If you can use 5G WI-FI, which is outside bluetooth bandwidth. Some manufactures advise this when equipment supports both WI-FI bands+bluetooth.
You can also play with channels for 2.4G.

[StainlessS]

In actual fact, I tried again since prev post and then got interference with Motorola G4 LTE (xt1039, 1st gen).
Its not my Wifi that is the problem, it is WiFi out in the street, in particular at main shopping areas
or local town centers [or sort of local area/district centers in London] where there are 3G/4G/5G masts (and beside them a host of other antennas, incl WiFi presumably).
I bought another BlueTooth headset, same problem, still a cheap one (£35.00 reduced to £20.00), took it back to shop got refund.
Just ordered a second hand grade A bluetooth headset (£12.00), with MP3 from builtin SDCard, and also FM radio, so at least can switch to another audio
source if bluetooth plays up. This one:- https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail/...o-headphones-a
More here:- https://www.google.com/search?source...4dUDCAg&uact=5

I just want a cheap one that I dont mind losing too much when I forget it on a train or bus, or in a pub (a favourite party trick).
Probably receive it tomorrow.

EDIT: I nearly went for these ones on Amazon:- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bluetooth-H...PV2NH7SM69AS4E
Both above with Hands Free Calling.

[foxyshadis]

FWIW, there's no such thing as "5G Wifi", there's only 802.11ac and its successors, which uses the 5GHz while Bluetooth stays with 2.4GHz. The congestion relief has been enormous, compared to the good ol' days a decade ago, but because 2.4 still has much better range (and is legacy-compatible) there's often still a lot of competing signals.

If you want to see what your local landscape looks like, get a free app like SignalSpy. In your case, StainlessS, I imagine it's not so much the cellular masts (which usually don't have wifi) as your neighbors with their own wifi modems. All it takes is one or two people sending out tons of packets on their network to saturate everything.

Of course, at my old job, all wifi would go down every day from 6 to 6:30. Something was just spewing RF on the unlicensed spectrum (and quite possibly licensed spectrum), and no one cared enough to track it down, since most people went home by then.

[StainlessS]

Here in the UK, Vodaphone, O2, and in particular BT, have their own Wifi for their users,
for BT, they have BTOpen_SomethingOrOther, which is usually available via one of their users landline phone Wifi routers,
these BT WiFi thingies are sometimes free for eg 30mins [EDIT: think that ,might be BT_OpenZone] (just give them an email addr, a@b.com used to work, maybe still does),
and another named BT option you pay per Day/Hour). O2 have 'open to anyone' wifi in eg pubs where you have to register and give a mobile phone
number which will be sent text msg to gain free access to wifi. [EDIT: One time text msg with PIN number, enter PIN on O2 site and, then forever connect for free, must add cookie to phone/laptop]
Also, there are some weird advertising thingies about 7 foot tall and 3 or 4 foot wide and 10/11 inches thick, with ads of some sort on them, and they have free wifi builtin,
sometimes see them next to bus stops.
Anyways, would not surprise me if some of above companies had their own antenna in town/area center, in particular the BT options.
The conflict with Bluetooth occurs in town/area centers where masts are clearly visible in close proximity, maybe
on top of a big supermarket roof, or some other high vantage point.
EDIT:
There is one place a few hundred yards from where I live that is alongside a common (large grassy area, maybe 1 Sq kilometer), it is not a busy place, very quiet in fact, but I get bad
Bluetooth interference there, there is a small block of flats there (about 3 storeys) with a flat roof, you cannot see what is on top of the roof, but I'm
guessin that there is a bunch of antennas up there, and that is the source of interference. [most other places with BTooth trouble, antennas are clearly visible].

EDIT:

Also, there are some weird advertising thingies about 7 foot tall and 3 or 4 foot wide and 10/11 inches thick

This thing:- https://www.business-live.co.uk/tech...k-out-17532607

[foxyshadis]

I think it'd be very interesting to take an app like SignalSpy and just walk around the flats. I've been in places where 30, 40, even 50 wifi signals register, and it's just obvious why nothing works. As much as wifi engineers have tried to alleviate it, it's still a tragedy of the commons.

[StainlessS]

take an app like SignalSpy and just walk around the flats

Not possible, not open to the public.
Where I live I only see about 12 to 16 Wifi routers under windows, but under some Android apps more in the 30 to 40 region,
the small block of flats will likely be about the same [block of flats probably only 6 flats total, some of the houses around here have that many, big houses,
the point about block of flats was the flat roof, attractive for those wanting to erect antennas].
[EDIT: I dont have any interference with WiFi problems where I live, only seems to be where there are, or where there are suspected phone masts/antennas]

Well, got my new pair of headphones today, same thing Bluetooth interference via Wifi or something.
Now tried 4 phones, 2 Samsung Galaxy Note 4's, 1 x Motorola G4 (xt1039, 1st gen), and Motorola RAZRi (xt890, the old carbon fiber body job),
and 3 sets of headphones, KitSound Metro-X, JVC something or other, and the Zealot B19 (just received today)
All phones and headphones same problems in same areas. [a little bit of difference between them, sometimes one combo escaped probs at a particular time
but then exhibited problem at some other time].

The Zealot B19 HeadPhones are bloody great at £12.00 [2nd hand Grade A, musta been and unwanted gift or something, mint/boxed condition and still got the plastic film on the
LED/backlit LCD, display. Wifi interference like the others [but only for a fraction of a second passing the block of flats].
FM radio with (I think 20) scan once auto presets, indoors many channels have FM interference but reasonable enough to hear the news, and I also get FM interference with
larger FM radio set if not provided with aerial and a certain amount of screwing around, so not really unexpected nor disappointed bout that.
Outside, about 30% of channels are pretty reasonable even good reception.
The SD Card mode, dont seem to have any way to navigate folders but I'm OK with that I guess, so if problem with Bluetooth then switch to SD card, probably all same
tracks anyways, indeed why bother with bluetooth unless need to play specific tracks from a library.
Will take up to 32GB SDcard, only got a 2GB card, thats enough as cant navigate anyways. Would be ideal for audio book or learning Klingon or something.
[Why is English a Dalek's 1st language ?, any ideas Wonkey ? ]
Lastly, the battery is apparently 600mAH and accessable by prying a cover off the non dislay/buttons ear piece [but it dont tell you that in manual].
All in all, I'm pretty damn delighted with the Zealot B19 [one of their older models], I just wish the the Kitsound Metro-X had SD card and FM radio too.
[I aint ever buying another set of phones without SD and FM. EDIT: Was wanted for use outside on-the-go].

EDIT: I have to say that after about 4/5 hours use my ears were less than happy with the phones, but,
I got big sticky out ears with volumous cartilage stuff, so I am unlikely to ever be happy with any sort of phones.
(I also cannot keep a pair of plugs in for more than about 20 seconds, big ear holes, keep dropping out, lifes a bith, and then you die).

EDIT: For "SD Card" above, read "Micro SD Card".

[wonkey_monkey]

[Why is English a Dalek's 1st language ?, any ideas Wonkey ? ]

It isn't. They auto-translate to the local language, or so it seems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGx7c-QBotE

[StainlessS]

Auto-translate to local language, OK makes sense, and very considerate too.
I read bout 20 pages of the posts in that YouTube thread, never ending, you think you're at the end and a whole lot more pop up.
The German Daleks would indeed be scary, but as someone pointed out Japanese screaming Daleks might actually take the cake.

Ich bin ein Dalek. [See how I did that, you thought I was gonna say "Ich bin ein Berliner"]. [EDIT: Wikipedia:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner ]

Wonkey, ever considered rollin' your own Dalek voice plugin, my little brother made an electronic Dalek voice changer from a 555 timer
[an IC chip] and maybe a few resistors and capacitors. So far as I remember, the circuit just hard switches the audio off every now and then,
so maybe something like 20ms normal, 20ms off. Knock up your own Dalek plug and you could have anybody speaking Dalek, however, the electronic
box is only part of it, you also have to inject a manic urgency into your speech to make it sound authentic.

Search on "Dalek 555 timer" for circuit details [I'm sure there will be a number of hits].
EDIT: "Dalek" "555 timer" https://www.google.com/search?ei=4hL...4dUDCAs&uact=5
Some of the designs linked seem a lot more complex than I remember.

BBC Official [with source for Dalek and Cybermen] :- https://webaudio.prototyping.bbc.co.uk/ring-modulator/

[StainlessS]

You find it good that 5G DOES interfere with Bluetooth ?

The InLinkUK things [ https://www.business-live.co.uk/tech...k-out-17532607 ]
seem to have stopped working some months back, or at tleast the Wifi part of them, the 30 sec free phone calls thing still seems to work.
No mention of them stopping working on-line, indeed very quiet about the whotsit on-line, nothing new at all recently.

The Zealot 19 Headset [with Micro SD card mp3 player and FM radio, mentioned earlier], is all I ever use outside now
[on SD card mp3 player, dont normally use Bluetooth any more], has originally a 400mAH BL-5B battery [I previously said 600mAH],
but I got a pair of compatible BL-5B batteries for £8.98 for 2, but at 1200mAH [triple capacity], so nice long life batteries now.
here:- https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
BL-5B also compatible with these phones

BL-5B Battery

Standard-ish for Nokia phones.

For Nokia models:-
N80 Internet Edition
N90
2600 Classic
3220
3230
5070
5140
5140i
5200
5208
5300 Xpress Music
5320 XpressMusic
5500
6020
6021
6060
6070
6080
6120 Classic
6121 Classic
6124 classic
6230
7260
7360

EDIT:

[FranceBB]

Don't mention 5G...
I bought a Google Pixel 5 in November 2020 and I have upgraded to a 5G SIM Contract, but I'm still stuck with 4G everywhere...
Folks living in the States are so lucky for those kind of things... I'm sure 5G is already widely used there...

[StainlessS]

I'm happy to stick on 4G, maybe when everybody deserts to 5G - 4G will become less swamped.
I like my Samsung Note 4 and its removable battery, none of that constant hunting around for charge ports nonsense.