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[aesmith]

Does the SXT support carrier aggregation?  I didn't think it did.  Irrelevant for me as I only get B20 anyway. By the way I also started off with a B525-b23 but ended up returning it for credit.  Too many stupid limitations.

[dee.jay]

I have an EE SIM. I'm curious to try it in my area, we'll see.

[meritez]

Does the SXT support carrier aggregation?  I didn't think it did.  Irrelevant for me as I only get B20 anyway. By the way I also started off with a B525-b23 but ended up returning it for credit.  Too many stupid limitations.

No, that was the point of purchasing it, it does have a very sensitive to B3 1800Mhz antenna.

Uhh... The B525s-23a IS suitable for Three, just not Carrier Aggregation using CA_1A-3A. Three also has CA using CA_3A-20A, and I have experienced that as I previously owned a 23a. I believe CA_3A-20A is more common than CA_A1-3A is since 2100 MHz (Band 1) has not been refarmed extensively to my knowledge.

B20 is non-existent here in the centre of Northampton, VoLTE connects to B1 2100mhz LTE, seen on several Huawei and Xiaomi Devices.

[Weaver]

This has been very valuable. Any service without a guaranteed minimum performance - with the usual reasonable caveats to that, re bottlenecks - is not for me.

> Basically I'm in a heavy usage area, at night the speed is fantastic, by day, the download is appalling

That has been my concern.

[meritez]

So as my FTTC is being installed tomorrow, here are several screenshots of how the connection has performed since it's last reconnection:

From the SXTLTE3-7


As you can see the Mikrotik sees the full 15mhz B3 1800mhz bandwidth:


Grabbing the B525s-23a:
Networks available:


Network selection from a cold boot:


Speedtest on Band 20 800mhz:


Network selection forcing B3 as CA has not activated, even though 3 uk supposedly supports Carrier Aggregation of B3 and B20:


Speedtest on Band 3 1800mhz:


Network selection forcing Band 1:


Speedtest on Band 1:


Band 20 does well, but it's a piddly 5mhz bandwidth, compared to B1 at 10mhz and B3 at 15mhz.
Both Band 3 and Band 1 show the network congestion in my area, and Carrier Aggregation for whatever reason is not enabled in my area, even though the B525 supports it on B3+B20.

Edit: adding to this, if you go to www.cellmapper.net and look at the centre of northampton, the 3 UK LTE-A masts are all B1+B3.
Though I would take that with a pinch of salt as apparently I do not have B20 coverage?

I shall have to go exploring this new B20 mast location

[burakkucat]

Thank you for that further update. It clearly shows why you are returning to a FTTC (VDSL2, ITU-T G.993.2) based service.

[meritez]

Openreach Engineer due between 8am and 1pm, line already live, stats:

Code: [Select]

Line Quality
Downstream Upstream
Current Rate 61554 kbps 19999 kbps
Maximum Rate 74595 kbps 28376 kbps
Signal-to-Noise Ratio 6.3 dB 15.4 dB
Attenuation DS1 8.3 dB, DS2 19.2 dB, DS3 29.9 dB US0 4.8 dB, US1 16.2 dB, US2 23.7 dB
Power 12.6 dBm 3.5 dBm
CRC Errors in last 11 minute(s) 0 6
K (number of bytes in DMT frame) 0 0
R (number of bytes in RS code word) 12 16
S (RS code word size in DMT frame) 0.0269 0.3781
D (interleaver depth) 1205 1
Delay 8 ms 0 ms
Downstream Upstream
Super Frames 394898 171613
Super Frame Errors 0 6
RS Words 100946997 7204580
RS Correctable Errors 1291 26
RS Uncorrectable Errors 0 0
Downstream Upstream
HEC Errors 0 0
OCD Errors 0 0
LCD Errors 0 0
Total Cells 80729321 0
Data Cells 4013 0
Bit Errors 0 0
Downstream Upstream
Total ES 0 5
Total SES 0 0
Total UAS 31 31
Just need to wait on Vodafone to complete the order as there is no routing, but this Vodafone Voxi 3.0 Technicolor THG3000G is a nice piece of kit

[aesmith]

Mine seems to vary between 16 and 20meg down, and 6 to 10 up.  However just now it reads super quick for some reason

[Sonac]

I considered switching to EE. (EE is 100% the fastest mobile provider, I've tried them all).
I get 125mbps down and 15mbps up in my house and at work I can hit 267mbps down and 60mbps up. I have the Unlimited plan for £33 a month which has a soft cap of 1TB per month.

Only problem with 4G is the latency. 22ms is far too much. I could handle maybe 10ms but any more is no good for me. I use my 4G for downloads and my BT VDSL for anything ping reliant.

Note: I get MUCH faster speeds on my phone because of the MIMO 4x4 antenna inside. I have a Huawei 4G router and can only hit a maximum of about 70mbps because of the MIMO 2x2. I don't think there is any 4x4 routers/antennas yet. Only the newest top end smartphones have 4x4 (2019/2020 ones).

I live in the middle of nowhere. 7 miles to the nearest town. Fields all around for miles. And I get awesome speeds! 4G heavily depends on your equipment and carrier. Vodaphone and Three just can't hit the same kinds of speeds. The highest I ever saw when I was on Three was 111mbps. Vodaphone was considerably slower. Three has poor coverage though. And O2 is in the same boat as Three with poor coverage.

I expect it will be a few years before 5G hits my area. But with the reduced latency I should be able to finally cut the landline.

[aesmith]

Only problem with 4G is the latency. 22ms is far too much. I could handle maybe 10ms but any more is no good for me. I use my 4G for downloads and my BT VDSL for anything ping reliant.

I'm surprised you get less than 10ms latency (by which I assume you mean round trip time) on VDSL.   We seem to be around 24ms on the office FTTC, round trip time to the first ISP hop.   A customer's 300 on a Gig dedicated Internet shows around 15ms.

Out of interest, what do you do on the Internet that needs less than 10ms?

Aside from that, regarding the EE service have you come across any issues with the number of devices connected?  I'm referring to their clause "If you regularly tether 12 or more devices, we will consider this non-personal use and have the right to move you to a more suitable plan.".  I am not sure how they're detecting tethered devices, I've seen suggestions that it's by TTL indicating that the IP packet is at least on hop removed from the actual mobile device.

I'm interested in EE because that's the second fastest carrier at our house, around 40meg compared to 20 from Three or 60 from O2.

[Alex Atkin UK]

10ms to where exactly?  I've never seen lower than about 14ms out to the Internet and my trip to the ISP is the lowest I've ever seen.

[j0hn]

That depends where in the country you are really.

There's plenty users in central London with 4-5ms pings with hundreds of UK based servers giving sub 10ms round trips for them.

I couldn't count the number of sub 10ms ThinkBroadband BQM's I've seen.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Exactly, you're going to have to be next door to telehouse or something.  Anyone outside of London, you're not really going to get sub 10ms to pretty munch anything, as all the big companies are going to have their data centres in London.

I think when I was with Origin on Digital Region, which had the POP in Sheffield, my latency was still around 10ms to the Sheffield data centre of the peer Origin used for their Internet connection.  I'm practically sat on top of all that infrastructure, I've cycled past the data centre. 

Presumably even on FTTP, your latency is limited by the time slice you are allocated on the PON on top of the actual distance.

[meritez]

So,

I'm coming to the end of my Vodafone FTTC 80/20 £23 a month contract in April 2021, and I'm wondering if the mobile connection in Northampton has improved.

Looking back at my notes, any 3 UK network, 3, ID Mobile, Smarty, need a router that supports B1+B3 for carrier aggregation so:
Huawei B535
Huawei B618
TP-Link MR600
Mikrotik Chateau LTE12

ID Mobile offer unlimited data on pay as you go for £20, no contract, including 4G Calls and Wifi-Calling, though the wifi bit will be a bit useless in a router, and you can call customer support.

3 I'm not touching unless I need to
Smarty I'm not touching as it's behind Carrier Grade NAT and no customer support.

Looking at my current 4G Modem, the SXTLTE3-7 https://mikrotik.com/product/RBSXTLTE3-7 it supports both Band 3 1800Mhz and Band 7 2600Mhz, modem is capped at CAT3 100/50 but to truly see if this would work I really need to look for a carrier that supports Band 7.

According to Halberd Bastion: https://halberdbastion.com/intelligence/countries-nations/united-kingdom EE and Vodafone support both frequencies.

For Vodafone:
If I upload a blank image to Voxi's Jobseeker page: https://www.voxi.co.uk/for-now I can have unlimited data for £10 a month for 6 months, I'm aware of people doing it, but I do not want to be dishonest.
True Unlimited data from Voxi is £35, but includes 5G when available

For EE:
Utility Warehouse do Unlimited data for £20 a month
BT Mobile do mobile broadband for £45 for 15mbps max speed 24 month contract.

[aesmith]

Looking at my current 4G Modem, the SXTLTE3-7 https://mikrotik.com/product/RBSXTLTE3-7 it supports both Band 3 1800Mhz and Band 7 2600Mhz, modem is capped at CAT3 100/50 but to truly see if this would work I really need to look for a carrier that supports Band 7.

I don't believe that version supports carrier aggregation.  My "SXT LTE Kit" which is a later model does not.  The "SXT LTE6 Kit" does support CA, I know someone who's using one on Three and aggregating B3 and B20.