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Author Topic: Three 4G broadband experience  (Read 26053 times)

aesmith

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #90 on: April 25, 2019, 04:44:06 PM »

Near the end of my first month on Smarty, next month should be free.  Last Friday I moved the remainder of the home network onto it.  The only thing left on DSL is the router itself, meaning that we can use the DSL for Internet access by connecting to a specific SSID.   I don't at the moment have a way to monitor DSL via DSLstats, I would love to create a separate management link from the main LAN but limitations of home broadband type kit probably make that unworkable.   I have a draft idea of acquiring another Mikrotik device to be the main core router and switch.

Back in the 4G world PRTG/SNMP monitoring of the link shows RSRP varying between -79 and -80dBm.  RSRP normally -8dB, occasionally drops to -10.  SINR is more variable, wandering around between 12 and 25dB, normally around 15.

This is still inside the house, I haven't yet had a chance to get the outdoor cable routed.
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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #91 on: April 25, 2019, 10:58:58 PM »

A friend of mine was at Heathrow recently and said he was getting well over 100Mbit on O2 using LTE+, nice for him. :p
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Broadband: Zen Full Fibre 900 + Three 5G Routers: pfSense (Intel N100) + Huawei CPE Pro 2 H122-373 WiFi: Zyxel NWA210AX
Switches: Netgear MS510TXUP, Netgear MS510TXPP, Netgear GS110EMX My Broadband History & Ping Monitors

re0

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #92 on: April 26, 2019, 12:33:47 AM »

If I was receiving 100 Mbps or more, I would wake up immediately!

Anyway, it's been a day of great disparity. Had some incosistent speeds all afternoon, which is unusual; was seeing 15-40 Mbps. Now we're into the night, I'm seeing speeds 70-75 Mbps at the top end. Throughput even peaked at around 90 Mbps after a bit of fiddling with the position.
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ISP: Gigaclear - Hyperfast 900 (up to 940 Mbps symmetrical)

S.Stephenson

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #93 on: April 26, 2019, 01:27:40 AM »

I must be best case then as I never see below 50.

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re0

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #94 on: April 26, 2019, 01:52:27 AM »

Perhaps you are less than 2km away? Less subscribers? ;)

Regardless, you are fortunate. I am yet to see more than 100 Mbps on "4G+". Even the best of my speedtests can't quite make it to 80.
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ISP: Gigaclear - Hyperfast 900 (up to 940 Mbps symmetrical)

Alex Atkin UK

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #95 on: April 29, 2019, 12:43:06 AM »

I've not seen above 50Mbit yet on Three, and everywhere I've actually NEEDED to use it has been more like 10Mbit peak with averages well below that. :(

Still, I think its more reliable than the majority of public WiFi and useful to be able to fall back onto O2 in an emergency due to using it in dual-SIM on my phone.

Will be interesting to see how it performs in Manchester and Nottingham City Centre - I forgot to test it on Saturday when I was in Nottingham until I was out of the city centre with the 10Mbit speed.  Already know it can hit 50Mbit in Sheffield City Centre, but then we have pretty decent WiFi too if you are on the main drag.
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Broadband: Zen Full Fibre 900 + Three 5G Routers: pfSense (Intel N100) + Huawei CPE Pro 2 H122-373 WiFi: Zyxel NWA210AX
Switches: Netgear MS510TXUP, Netgear MS510TXPP, Netgear GS110EMX My Broadband History & Ping Monitors

re0

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #96 on: April 29, 2019, 05:56:30 PM »

I had a poor experience back when I was on ID Mobile (which uses Three) and I think it was at Stansted (I said "think" because it could have been Gatwick; sadly don't remember). Good signal as indicated by the reception bars, but doing pretty much anything was just infuriating - slow and unresponsive. I have no clue if it has been occurring over the past few years, but one could hope the situation has improved.

Edit: I should note that this may have been on 3G inside, but it has been a while and I have got to say I wasn't really paying much attention since I was more worried about my flight.
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ISP: Gigaclear - Hyperfast 900 (up to 940 Mbps symmetrical)

re0

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #97 on: May 07, 2019, 05:33:31 PM »

I know this isn't a Three-related update, but I acquired a PAYG SIM on EE with preloaded data today which was supplied with a purchase I made.

I stuck it in the router, and it was awful. Despite having more bandwidth on 1800 MHz compared to three (20 MHz vs 15 MHz) AND having a higher RSRP and RSSI, the service was absolute junk for LTE. The RSRQ was lower, the SNR was often near 0 and in the negative figures. Speeds are sub-10 Mbps down, and just a smidge over 1 Mbps up. This is even a service with Carrier Aggregation!

Granted, I only tried a few different positions. But I was really under the impression that EE would be better than Three mobile for speeds - the only thing that seems to be better is latency from the limited testing.
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ISP: Gigaclear - Hyperfast 900 (up to 940 Mbps symmetrical)

DiggerOfHoles

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #98 on: May 11, 2019, 07:52:24 AM »

A few years ago I lived off grid up a hill with a 3 4gLTE mobile hot spot from memory.

It worked fine for a few months then went slow. TV unwatchable though it was never very watchable even when it worked at full speed.

Complained to 3. Nice lady located my hill noticed a % drop off in my direction.

Pressed some buttons to 're tune my local transmitter' bingo back to full speed.

If only life was so simple.

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RealAleMadrid

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #99 on: May 11, 2019, 07:25:14 PM »

@diggerofholes
You cannot be serious, if you actually believe that customer support can locate a reduced signal strength in a particular location and then 'retune your local transmitter' whatever that might mean, then you are in cloud cuckoo land. It just doesn't happen like that. :D
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re0

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #100 on: May 11, 2019, 07:33:40 PM »

I thought (and hoped) it was sarcasm, but I wasn't sure so I just didn't reply. :P
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ISP: Gigaclear - Hyperfast 900 (up to 940 Mbps symmetrical)

re0

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #101 on: May 12, 2019, 02:29:48 PM »

I'm probably going to make this my final post regarding Three 4G. This is just a final say, you could say. I just want to just add to my initial "experience".

First of all, today I realised that the B525-23a does work with Three's LTE CA implementation. I felt rather stupid because I bought the 65a because of that. :-[ I couldn't get it working before, perhaps due to poor positioning or because I had forgotten I had initially specified a band in the settings as opposed to setting it 4G auto. I should say I have not extensively tried to understand which bands are being used, but I presume it does indeed use inter-band B3+B20 (at least locally) - I really don't know, but may try some stuff in the future.

I have been using the 4G connection as a secondary connection for the past few months and my experience has been relatively consistent, but I have noticed that during the day the speeds have been a bit more all over the place as opposed to the times I typically use my connection (evening and night). During the height of the day up until some time in the evening, speeds are as low as 20-25 Mbps, usually averaging 30-40 Mbps, with peak being not much higher. At these times of the day, having an external antenna and good positioning makes very little difference.

I still haven't watched live streams (such as live TV) over the network because I really have no interest. But what I have tried recently is streaming games from my VDSL2 connection over the internet to my 4G connection using Steam Link (I used it on Android). From the limited testing, using the smartphone on 5 GHz Wi-Fi in the same room, I found it to be absolutely unplayable some to most of the time - at least during the day, regardless of bandwidth setting. Night time was a lot better, but there were still problems - the application doesn't say there is any frame loss in the network test, but the latency can spike sometimes. I haven't tried Ethernet, but given the improvement at night compared to during the day, I would be very confident that switching to Ethernet would make so very little difference. Perhaps it needs some tweaking, but I think it is almost as good as it will get.

So this update doesn't really change my view on using Three for broadband. I think it's still a great deal if you are getting it for £20/m or under as long as you are aware of the caveats. In general, expect web browsing to be good, downloads to be somewhat fast, but live streaming and game streaming services may be impacted by latency and varying bandwidth.
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ISP: Gigaclear - Hyperfast 900 (up to 940 Mbps symmetrical)

dee.jay

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #102 on: May 13, 2019, 11:44:23 PM »

I am currently sat inside my caravan in West Wales. I'm about 8 miles from Tenby, and on EE, 4G, I am tethered via my OnePlus 5T and always get around 65-70Mbit. Honestly, I am pretty damn impressed with that. I've been able to work my day job effectively having done many weekend maintenances for them (i.e. getting up at 2am and performing change work in our US Data Centres) etc.
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re0

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Re: Three 4G broadband experience
« Reply #103 on: May 14, 2019, 12:07:36 AM »

I don't think EE is much good in my area. Maybe I am missing something, perhaps my SIM was not properly activated? I would presume you saw my post a few days back about it since you mentioned EE?

65-70 Mbps is pretty good. I would presume it would be due to a combination of aggregated bands (as EE has a lot of bands and CA schemes) and less congestion (since EE don't have massive data allowances). What's the upstream like?

I haven't been to Tenby in many, many years. It's a shame, quite a few nice places around that area. I wanted to drive there last year, but it's a bit of a journey for a day trip. Not a lot going on out there though, probably why you get such good speeds there. :P
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ISP: Gigaclear - Hyperfast 900 (up to 940 Mbps symmetrical)
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