Three UK - 4G Home Broadband - any users here?
Discussion
When you chaps have been moving the kit around to try and get the best speeds have you noticed significant drops when powering the devices off and back on again?
I've had mine in a less than ideal place from an aesthetics point of view for a while now but was getting a consistent 30mb which has been more than enough for what we do, previously with it on the floor right in the middle of the house I peaked at 80mb.
So this morning I ran a quick test in the usual spot and got 35.1mb, I then moved it upstairs to my office which theoretically faces the mast, it dropped to 16.8, then 11.3, then 4.86.
So, with work to do, I unplugged again and put it back where it was to begin with, since then the max I've been able to get is 14.7 with other results of 5.31, 6.26 and 11.8 coming in too.
I guess I could do this testing with a massive extension lead and a 30m CAT5 cable so I don't lose connectivity to my servers etc but I was just curious if anyone had seen similar behaviour and if it needs time in the chosen spot before the proper numbers come in?
Still a bit befuddled by things today, the AI Cube is now struggling to provide a decent WiFi signal and my phone keeps switching to my mobile provider.
I only realised this when I ran a speed test and it was 80Mbps, I was excited for a moment but it was EE 4G giving me that and not 3 4G
HiLink "Best Position" check is up in the blue so not sure I can do much currently, maybe it's the weather.
Anyway need to stop being obsessive, it's working reliably, something Virgin rarely did and its half the price. Day to day Internet, work etc is OK even at these speeds.
I only realised this when I ran a speed test and it was 80Mbps, I was excited for a moment but it was EE 4G giving me that and not 3 4G
HiLink "Best Position" check is up in the blue so not sure I can do much currently, maybe it's the weather.
Anyway need to stop being obsessive, it's working reliably, something Virgin rarely did and its half the price. Day to day Internet, work etc is OK even at these speeds.
I'm really struggling with things currently, initial speeds were great but it's been woefully bad for about a week now. Tried the AI Cube in various places, all right up on the max in the "best position" app but this pretty much sums it up...
Three:
EE 4G a minute later, same location:
Three:
EE 4G a minute later, same location:
C350 said:
Just found out from the mrs that she knows someone on Three that has no problems at all in our area, so I’m tempted to just go for it now.
Also realised I was looking at mobile broadband not home broadband, and now found the B311
You can add an external aerial to the B311 too so if your indoor speed needs help you might be able to boost it. Also realised I was looking at mobile broadband not home broadband, and now found the B311
Sadly the AI Cube (B900) has nothing of the sort, just a fairly lacklustre speaker and a cut down version of Alexa.
Slushbox said:
That's a bummer. Can you log into the router with a web browser and check the stats? There'll be a signal strength figure somewhere. Also try 3G only?
The lengthy ping time coupled with a fast upload speed looks very odd. Urban area with a busy mast? Faulty AI Cube?
None of it makes much sense. The lengthy ping time coupled with a fast upload speed looks very odd. Urban area with a busy mast? Faulty AI Cube?
On the web interface 4G fluctuates between 8Mbps and 20Mbps, 3G is sitting between 30 and 110Kbps (and 4Mbps down).
Yet...
The top 2 are with it locked to 3G, the bottom two 4G.
The mast is in a built up area about 0.75km from me, coverage maps and mastdata.com show us to be ok.
Slushbox said:
Them new fangled Sainsburies TP-Link Gigabit £18 Powerlines are working well, the Amazon Firestick likes the £6 ethernet adaptor I bought it and is altogether snappier.
Did you manage to get some of those heavily reduced TP-Links? I only realised they were on sale when you posted and my local had none I need to update mine though, they're a bit long in the tooth now.
Interested to know which ethernet adapter you went for on your Firestick, that's another area I need to address despite having the WiFi extender I was forced to buy pretty close to the TV.
In other news had an interesting support chat with Three this morning, apparently there is an issue with my local mast which could explain why my speeds have been awful, still not 100% convinced I don't have a faulty AICube though as the auto switching from 3G to 4G and the WiFi both seem crap.
£15 credit given and promised a call from their support team within 48 hours re the mast issue - they run a slick support chat feature even if they don't actually fix things
ashleyman said:
Have you got a link for this? I've had to set up a TP Link Travel Router plugged into a power line for the fire stick to connect too. I didn't even realise you could get something like this for the stick. It would stop the thing from buffering every couple minutes!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07NL5YC5P/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_l52jDb7AR72HMThere's also the official one and various others like this it seems.
dragonflyjade said:
This thread is great - educational and humorous at the same time!
Following a recent letter from the sinners who think they are Virgin, I have decided that superfast BB needs to be rationalised. The price increase to £40 a month is steep.
Time to give 3MBB an order and plan a weekend off for installation and local network tweaking. Only contention will be my toddler who will not accept buffering or a ping of more than 5ms. Kids these days...
If ping is a factor expect anything from 4ms to 2900ms at random Following a recent letter from the sinners who think they are Virgin, I have decided that superfast BB needs to be rationalised. The price increase to £40 a month is steep.
Time to give 3MBB an order and plan a weekend off for installation and local network tweaking. Only contention will be my toddler who will not accept buffering or a ping of more than 5ms. Kids these days...
Slushbox said:
^^^^
One of the users on here has the same thing and got onto Three chat, who checked and said there was a 'mast problem' and they'd get onto it. They sometimes offer a credit for slow performance.
Busy urban areas tend to be slower, I had only 6 Mb/s in Gosport the other week (17:00 hrs). I did run with 12Mbs on 3G for a couple of years, but once you've seen 45 Mb/s coming out of the router, you always want it. :-)
Yeah, I never got the promised call back within 48 hours regarding the supposed mast issue but I did get some credit on my account.One of the users on here has the same thing and got onto Three chat, who checked and said there was a 'mast problem' and they'd get onto it. They sometimes offer a credit for slow performance.
Busy urban areas tend to be slower, I had only 6 Mb/s in Gosport the other week (17:00 hrs). I did run with 12Mbs on 3G for a couple of years, but once you've seen 45 Mb/s coming out of the router, you always want it. :-)
I definitely think there's something weird going on though, I've seen several people reporting the same initial run of great speeds followed by slow to ~14Mbps speeds from then on. Usually after the 14 day cooling off period but then I'm a conspiracy theory kind of chap
I continue to move mine around at different times of the day to see what happens, it's not for going over 20Mbps again it seems but continues to be perfectly usable for what I need currently.
Slushbox said:
14 Mbs? Luxury!
Currently have El Sparks ripping out the fusebox, so have the 3G Mifi plugged into a phone charger battery. 10Mbs. :-)
The laptop is running off a Honda generator in the garden. It's a bit like the End Times when you don't got no power.
Up to 14Mbs Currently have El Sparks ripping out the fusebox, so have the 3G Mifi plugged into a phone charger battery. 10Mbs. :-)
The laptop is running off a Honda generator in the garden. It's a bit like the End Times when you don't got no power.
The norm seems to be around 4 day to day but it's enough, only becomes an obvious issue when trying to download a TV show on to the Sky box or move around any large files.
The WiFi on my AI Cube is so woeful that my wife has no gone over her data limit on her mobile plan because it can't hold a signal a few meters away.
Mine constantly drops and falls back to mobile data.
I added a cheap repeater (_EXT in the image above) and despite it being further away than the box and hidden behind the TV the signal is far superior.
4G is stopgap for me until BT complete the FTTP rollout they're doing and on the whole it's been "ok" but I have to constantly manually switch between 3G and 4G to get a decent speed (8MB) and the mast I'm connected to constantly has issues they never seem to actually resolve. In contrast the EE one I connect to with my phone slowed yesterday and they fixed it in 12 hours.
I'm unlucky as I know others get far better service than this but I'm in an "excellent" area for signal so expected better.
I'm still convinced my AI Cube might be faulty but getting someone at Three to work with me to check seems impossible. They're lovely and polite but script monkeys who seem unwilling to escalate anything. When they do nobody calls back.
I thought I'd be proactive this morning and contact Three about the network issues and slow performance I'm having, their website states:
"We're really sorry. There's an issue with the network in your area at the moment"
Unfortunately this is as much detail as it goes into and it's been like this for well over a week now.
The online chat facility seems to be vastly overloaded and pretends it's offline but if you persist you get through, 10 minutes in the queue found me connected to someone who then accepted my report before offering to call me. I received a call and this turned out to be him trying to connect me to another team who could help me.
I was then on hold for 55 minutes listening to the same 4 songs (Men At Work - Down Under, Clean Bandit - Rockabye, Bryan Adams - Summer Of '69 and Rag'n'Bone Man - Human) in really low quality over and over with a "you're now in the queue, please hold and our team will be with you shortly" every 20 seconds.
Eventually I got connected to... yet another "go through the motions" first line support call centre person who seemed to think the only way I could move forward would be to carry out a full reset of the device and start again. For a network issue. Their network issue.
When I originally started this topic I just wanted a reliable alternative to Virgin, not a full-time hobby.
Anyway I'm supposed to be getting a call back from "the network team" within 48 hours, when I last got promised this nobody called.
In summary this stuff is great when it works and if you're lucky enough to be in that situation it's a really good alternative to more conventional internet solutions, however if you have any issues then Three support is woeful.
So today things have degraded further for me and my Three connection, no connectivity on 3G or 4G and the Three support team won't take any calls due to "system updradation", the same applies for all departments I've attempted to get to including the one to complain about such things.
Utterly dismayed with the whole thing, especially as I'm stuck with it until next June as there isn't a hope in hell of them letting me out early despite it being unusable (in an "excellent" signal area).
I've had a few weeks where it's shown its potential, the rest of the time has been woefully poor.
Utterly dismayed with the whole thing, especially as I'm stuck with it until next June as there isn't a hope in hell of them letting me out early despite it being unusable (in an "excellent" signal area).
I've had a few weeks where it's shown its potential, the rest of the time has been woefully poor.
Edited by thetapeworm on Wednesday 16th October 18:52
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