Three UK - 4G Home Broadband - any users here?

Three UK - 4G Home Broadband - any users here?

Author
Discussion

Psycho Warren

3,087 posts

112 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
FunkyGibbon said:
What sort of speeds can you get at non peak times.

I have seen speeds as high as 65 down and 50 up.

Currently at 5:18 I'm getting 8 and 8

Not great but workable.
During the working day, typically 10-15mbps.

dead of night midnight until 6am ish consistently over 15mbps.

halo34

2,429 posts

198 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
Been using this for about 4-5 months. Finding it variable - tried a omni patch but it made things worse, trying to think if the direction 4g might help.

IanA2

2,762 posts

161 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
Psycho Warren said:
anybody with recent experience of the three4g lately?

got the hub about 9 months ago as i was fed up of poor service on virgin, regular outages, poor speed despite being fibreoptic and thier increasingly rip off prices.

The last straw was them upping it to over £40 a month. three offered an unlimited tariff on the 4g hub for £15 a month. bargain. on paper slower than virgin but as a single person who only does general internet, youtube and netflix etc then i expected it would be fine.

all has been great until last few weeks.

these are the peak time speeds i am getting:



i know its not a problem with the hub as my three phone gets same kind of speeds.

my hub is line of sight with the tower which is about 3/4 mile away. the problem is only peak hours.

basically as i understand it, either the tower is strugggling due to a fault meaning peak demand 8s too much or there is now congestion due to too many new users in my area.

tried customer services and tech support both through chat and phone and they deny therr is any problems either technical or congestion.

to me those kind of speeds are unacceptable as the net is almost unusable.

do you think i have reasonable case to get out of the contract and go elsewhere? i dont see i have any choice at present.

anybody have a similar expereince? will i get anywhere complaining to three or is it suck it up until out of contract?
You don't say what router your using. Better router, better speeds, I've found. That said my Huawei B618 seems to splutter now and again and speeds get a bit low. Generally when that happens I reset it and it starts flying again. Flying in these parts is around 30 to 60. My phone speeds, (EE) are nowhere near as good as my router speeds (Three).
HTH.


sly fox

2,220 posts

218 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
Well a few weeks in using my 3 5G hub and it's been solid.

Just measured download speeds - 342MB/s, upload 11Mb. I've got 22 devices connected (Sonos/Hive etc) and they have all worked fine too.

Caveat - 5g Mast is less than a mile from my house.

RanchoGrande

1,151 posts

168 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
sly fox said:
Well a few weeks in using my 3 5G hub and it's been solid.

Just measured download speeds - 342MB/s, upload 11Mb. I've got 22 devices connected (Sonos/Hive etc) and they have all worked fine too.

Caveat - 5g Mast is less than a mile from my house.
That's seriously quick. I'm due to switch providers soon and contemplating going with 5g via Three. They have some good deals on at the moment. Is there anyway to find out where the masts are?

thetapeworm

Original Poster:

11,192 posts

238 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
Psycho Warren said:
anybody with recent experience of the three4g lately?

got the hub about 9 months ago as i was fed up of poor service on virgin, regular outages, poor speed despite being fibreoptic and thier increasingly rip off prices.

The last straw was them upping it to over £40 a month. three offered an unlimited tariff on the 4g hub for £15 a month. bargain. on paper slower than virgin but as a single person who only does general internet, youtube and netflix etc then i expected it would be fine.

all has been great until last few weeks.

these are the peak time speeds i am getting:



i know its not a problem with the hub as my three phone gets same kind of speeds.

my hub is line of sight with the tower which is about 3/4 mile away. the problem is only peak hours.

basically as i understand it, either the tower is strugggling due to a fault meaning peak demand 8s too much or there is now congestion due to too many new users in my area.

tried customer services and tech support both through chat and phone and they deny therr is any problems either technical or congestion.

to me those kind of speeds are unacceptable as the net is almost unusable.

do you think i have reasonable case to get out of the contract and go elsewhere? i dont see i have any choice at present.

anybody have a similar expereince? will i get anywhere complaining to three or is it suck it up until out of contract?
That all sounds very family only my poor service came around sooner than yours has, I documented it earlier in this topic but I realise it's now grown beyond anything I could have imagined from my initial question. If you're bored have a look back at my rantings 9Dec 2019 / Jan 2020 ish)

Essentially the issue seemed to stem from the 5G upgrade they were doing on the masts where I was and it was affecting the 4G, I could drop to 3G and get better performance some of the time but it was still incredibly sketchy.

I could see the mast from my house, router in optimal place, all other 4G devices on other networks working just fine, replacement router had no effect, new SIM had no effect (these were all sent by Three support to "fix" things) and in the end I just annoyed them so much on a daily basis (via their support channels and twitter) that they released me from my contract early and told me to keep the hardware (which I sold at CEX for £50).

Three support wouldn't confirm what the underlying issue was, status checkers confirmed there was an "issue" most of the time and coverage stuff said I was in an "excellent" area.

It wasn't easy to escape but persistence in logging and pestering paid off eventually.

http://www.three.co.uk/support/how-to-complain

I had lots of web chats logged already and asked to raise a formal complaint about the service, that's what kicked off the improved levels of support and ultimately allowed me to leave early.

It was a shame as it worked great for the first month or so and then as soon as the cooling off period ended it went to crap. Definitely a localised problem as confirmed by all the posts here where people were getting great service still.

Good luck.


Edited by thetapeworm on Friday 26th February 14:16

sly fox

2,220 posts

218 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
RanchoGrande said:
sly fox said:
Well a few weeks in using my 3 5G hub and it's been solid.

Just measured download speeds - 342MB/s, upload 11Mb. I've got 22 devices connected (Sonos/Hive etc) and they have all worked fine too.

Caveat - 5g Mast is less than a mile from my house.
That's seriously quick. I'm due to switch providers soon and contemplating going with 5g via Three. They have some good deals on at the moment. Is there anyway to find out where the masts are?
I spoke to 3 sales team - used the coverage map, they pointed out that if you were in a deep red zone, you were approx within a mile of the mast. I'm not far from J11 M4/ Reading, and the mast can be easily seen .
Coverage map here> http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Network/Coverage?m...

Psycho Warren

3,087 posts

112 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
IanA2 said:
You don't say what router your using. Better router, better speeds, I've found. That said my Huawei B618 seems to splutter now and again and speeds get a bit low. Generally when that happens I reset it and it starts flying again. Flying in these parts is around 30 to 60. My phone speeds, (EE) are nowhere near as good as my router speeds (Three).
HTH.
Whatever the standard 4g hub is? However the speed is not significantly different to my three phone so I would not expect the router to be the issue.

thetapeworm said:
It wasn't easy to escape but persistence in logging and pestering paid off eventually.

http://www.three.co.uk/support/how-to-complain

I had lots of web chats logged already and asked to raise a formal complaint about the service, that's what kicked off the improved levels of support and ultimately allowed me to leave early.

It was a shame as it worked great for the first month or so and then as soon as the cooling off period ended it went to crap. Definitely a localised problem as confirmed by all the posts here where people were getting great service still.
Sounds like i need to moan at them more then!

IanA2

2,762 posts

161 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
1. What is a standard 4G hub? I have tried two Huawei routers, one was much faster than the other.

2. My router speed bears no relation to my phone speeds. Phones are EE and MUCH slower than the router (THREE) speeds.

Is that clearer?

thetapeworm

Original Poster:

11,192 posts

238 months

Friday 26th February 2021
quotequote all
Starlink is open to orders if you're brave...

https://www.starlink.com

Gad-Westy

14,521 posts

212 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
After a little advice. We're pretty rural. Using an EE 4G SIM and wifi fed around the house using Unifi AP's.

This last week, we've been suffering pretty slow internet. Generally for the few weeks beforehand since we got this set up. It's been okay. Generally 20-50 down which is perfectly usable.

This week we have regularly been down in the 2-5 range and sometimes seemingly nothing at all. The inconsistency is the biggest issue. Both working via VPN and getting regular drop outs this week causing all sorts of syncing issues.

Tried resetting everything etc.

We're still using the router and antenna that were here when we moved in so I'm wondering if I should look to change these as a precaution if nothing else.

Antenna points in the right direction but is at head height on the house. I do wonder if gains might be had by raising it up a lot.

The router is a TP Link TL-MR6400.

Like this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unlocked-Configuration-Re...

Antenna looks like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Poynting-4G-XPOL-A0001-Cr...

Both products seem to be reasonably well regarded so I'm a bit reluctant to spend a load on replacements.

page3

4,912 posts

250 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
I’d ring EE and ask if the local tower has any issues. When I had phone issues they were pretty good at checking this.

My biggest gripe with EE is their lack of an unlimited plan and their lack of transparency of such. Reducing “fair use” to 600Gb during a pandemic was a pretty shady move.

Gad-Westy

14,521 posts

212 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
page3 said:
I’d ring EE and ask if the local tower has any issues. When I had phone issues they were pretty good at checking this.

My biggest gripe with EE is their lack of an unlimited plan and their lack of transparency of such. Reducing “fair use” to 600Gb during a pandemic was a pretty shady move.
I'll try and get hold of them or is this something that can be checked online?

Actually a little annoyed with them at present. I'm only 8 weeks into a new phone contract and already have a small price rise.

page3

4,912 posts

250 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
Gad-Westy said:
I'll try and get hold of them or is this something that can be checked online?

Actually a little annoyed with them at present. I'm only 8 weeks into a new phone contract and already have a small price rise.
You have to call. I got through to a UK centre who were surprisingly helpful.

IanA2

2,762 posts

161 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
1. What speeds do you get without the Poynting? I ask as antenae don't always help.

2. My VPN sometimes reduces speeds considerably. so I don't always use it.

3. What speeds do you get on your phones?

4. Are you quite sure the router is best placed. I've found even a few inches can have a markedly reduce speed.

A two year veteren of THREE (also very rural) with a Huawei B618. Speeds range usually between 25 & 65, more aften around 40.

HTH.

Gad-Westy

14,521 posts

212 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
IanA2 said:
1. What speeds do you get without the Poynting? I ask as antenae don't always help.

2. My VPN sometimes reduces speeds considerably. so I don't always use it.

3. What speeds do you get on your phones?

4. Are you quite sure the router is best placed. I've found even a few inches can have a markedly reduce speed.

A two year veteren of THREE (also very rural) with a Huawei B618. Speeds range usually between 25 & 65, more aften around 40.

HTH.
Cheers.

1. Not sure but I don't have any other antenae to attach to the router. It probably came with plastic ones when new but no idea where they are now.

2. VPN is a pain but basically essential for client access. Doesn't seem to make much difference though. Phone and laptop showing similar speeds with one on VPN and one not.

3. Not sure I've checked recently but will do. Normally wifi via router is far quicker than phone on 4G.

4. Assume you mean antenae rather than the router itself? No, I've not messed with it but maybe I should. It was oroginally installed for a vodafone SIM by previous home owner. But it just so happens that it points more or less straight at where I know an EE cell tower is. But maybe I need to get out there and mess around with it. Is it just a case of conducting a speed test while wafting it around and trying to find sweet spot?

IanA2

2,762 posts

161 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
Gad-Westy said:
IanA2 said:
1. What speeds do you get without the Poynting? I ask as antenae don't always help.

2. My VPN sometimes reduces speeds considerably. so I don't always use it.

3. What speeds do you get on your phones?

4. Are you quite sure the router is best placed. I've found even a few inches can have a markedly reduce speed.

A two year veteren of THREE (also very rural) with a Huawei B618. Speeds range usually between 25 & 65, more aften around 40.

HTH.
Cheers.

1. Not sure but I don't have any other antenae to attach to the router. It probably came with plastic ones when new but no idea where they are now.

2. VPN is a pain but basically essential for client access. Doesn't seem to make much difference though. Phone and laptop showing similar speeds with one on VPN and one not.

3. Not sure I've checked recently but will do. Normally wifi via router is far quicker than phone on 4G.

4. Assume you mean antenae rather than the router itself? No, I've not messed with it but maybe I should. It was oroginally installed for a vodafone SIM by previous home owner. But it just so happens that it points more or less straight at where I know an EE cell tower is. But maybe I need to get out there and mess around with it. Is it just a case of conducting a speed test while wafting it around and trying to find sweet spot?
I think some have found (including myself) that external antenae have hindered rather than helped. Personally, I would just try the router in different places using a phone to gauge the signal strength.

Quality of router is important. I started with a basic Huawei and was lucky to get 20. The more expensive router (B618) was/is much much faster. You could get a new router from Amz and send it back if there's no improvement

Gad-Westy

14,521 posts

212 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
IanA2 said:
I think some have found (including myself) that external antenae have hindered rather than helped. Personally, I would just try the router in different places using a phone to gauge the signal strength.

Quality of router is important. I started with a basic Huawei and was lucky to get 20. The more expensive router (B618) was/is much much faster. You could get a new router from Amz and send it back if there's no improvement
Cheers.

Just to be clear. The only antennae attached to my router is the external one so moving the router should not have any affect but I guess if I go with the new router option, I could experiment then.

I guess the B818 is replacement for the B618?

IanA2

2,762 posts

161 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
Gad-Westy said:
IanA2 said:
I think some have found (including myself) that external antenae have hindered rather than helped. Personally, I would just try the router in different places using a phone to gauge the signal strength.

Quality of router is important. I started with a basic Huawei and was lucky to get 20. The more expensive router (B618) was/is much much faster. You could get a new router from Amz and send it back if there's no improvement
Cheers.

Just to be clear. The only antennae attached to my router is the external one so moving the router should not have any affect but I guess if I go with the new router option, I could experiment then.

I guess the B818 is replacement for the B618?
Crossed wires methinks.

I have no external antenae connected to my router. I did try one but disconnected it (reduced signal) and moved the router around on it's own until I found the best signal.

That's what I'm suggesting you do, ie try finding the best signal with the antenae disconnected.

Yes the B818 is the latest version. I would give it a whirl, you can always send it back if it doesn't suit.

FunkyGibbon

3,781 posts

263 months

Friday 5th March 2021
quotequote all
Gad-Westy said:
I guess the B818 is replacement for the B618?
Yep and for me it works best with its own internal antennae rather than the Poyting one I have.