Three Reviews

Hi all,i would like to tell you about my experience with three broadband.it is bad,bad is not the word to describe it.it is diabolical.i've had it since april and have had nothing but trouble with it,ill give you all a warning just what you can expect,i did an speed test this morning,i hope you are all sitting comfortably.right download speed,1-48mps upload speed 5-24mps.with VPN on.download speed 4-10 mps,upload speed 3-98mps without VPN on,how's that for speed,some people on these sites say there are getting over 100s off mbps i just don't see it.on my three broadband you cannot run anything properly at the speeds i've shown you. nothing works properly at all,smart TV,PC,security cameras,and as for the customers services just don`t bother they are so bad it`s hard to describe.so i will tell you all keep clear of this company as you will regret it

Only been a broadband customer with three for one week. Previously on copper through Vodafone max at 45mbps.
Not far from a recently upgraded mast (about 200m) getting about 350mbps on 5G phones.
After installation speeds next to router are running at approx 250mbps. So far the signal seems stable and the difference in up/down speed is very welcome. The ZTE MC801A router is a sturdy piece of kit.
However I have encountered one major flaw which support were unable to help with or believe that the problem should even exist.
Trying to use any streaming services (prime, iPlayer, YouTube ) is not possible on devices such as nvidia shield, firestick or smart tv, some will kick into action with a vpn turned on (not prime with my vpn). In addition we couldn’t access gaming servers or web based email ( we are both nhs staff).
from the main forum I found some information what suggested changing apn setting to ipv4 instead of ipv4/6 as it default on the router. Then all of the above issues resolved. Without the fix I would have cancelled. Three support refused to believe this was the issue.

Moved our Broadband to 3 a couple of years ago

Was getting a solid 60mbps down 30up for £16 a month. On a 4g connection

No download limits

Area was recently upgraded to 5g and now get a solid 450mbps down 20mbps up

Still at £16 a month unlimited

So much cheaper and more reliable than Virgin Fibre

There is known, recurring, frustrating, fault with the H3G core they refuse to fix. I have a 3 unlimited SIM in a Draytek 2860Ln. I’m only about 500m line of sight across an open field from the 3 tower (I could actually sling a wire to it!) so RAN connection/signal is not issue. DL peaks up to 120Mb with 30Mb UL. All good so far. However, the issue is an ongoing KNOWN packet loss issue. Changing DNS, MTU, band, access tech (3G/4G) make little difference. However, using a VPN almost completely eliminates the problem.

I wrote an app to hit a list of 10 URLs every minute. At worst, I see over 25% failure with an average of 9-10%. It's a consistent packet loss issue. To compare, EE MBB shows less than 0.05%. There must be a serious flaw in the 3 core.

Many calls to 1st and 2nd line get 'we don’t know how it works’, ‘we can do nothing about it’ and ‘would you like to cancel?’ responses. It’s as though they view their core as some sort of magic they won’t question. Escalation requests are get 'I don’t know how to do that’ or ‘we are not allowed to do that'. They DO NOT DESERVE TO BE IN BUSINESS with that attitude. I stated MANY report the same thing, country-wide, but with no interest.

Tip - use ‘3internet’ as the APN, you get a dynamic public IP, that u can use with a DDNS service.
reached 1400 limit - See my posts in forums for more.

I’m on Sky now, but copper cables so decided to try Three 5G, as I was a past relish customer. First off the download speeds are great 50-100MB, I’m in Barnsbury near the Kings Cross 5G mast.

But the broadband is not usable. The upload speed is around 1% of the download speed. I was testing with 100% score on the built in position checker (the thing was dangling out of a top floor window) and with ethernet the upload speeds were terrible (maxed out at 5Mbps).

I’m not sure why they decided an asymmetrical speeds are usable, because as soon as anyone tries to use it for anything other than streaming it will grind to a haunt, it’s not even enough to do a video call.

Ended up cancelling and retuning on day one.

Well, I'm fairly disappointed to say the least. I moved house around two to three weeks ago and we needed broadband. After looking around and the current situation of OpenReach, I decided to trail Three's 4G home broadband option. After signing up with their non-contract, unlimited data option, I sat patiently for the router to arrive. I didn't get any dispatch notification so was a little worried it wasn't going to arrive - sure enough, it arrived as promised. So far so good.

After opening the box, sticking in the SIM card and turning the router on - we had internet! A solid 5 bars and a nice 70 down/30 up. Again, brilliant.

After using the internet for some time though, things started to go downhill. We started to incurr a minor issue wher things would need to be refreshed a second time to load. The page would begin to load but then "fail" with no error. I have to manually stop the browser and reload - the page then loads instantly.

The connection or speed can't be faulted but it's the intermittent issue that makes it unbearable to use and work with. I've tried numerous restarts, a factory reset and also a third-party router plugged into the modem but neither work.

I'm still, at the time of this review, trying to get second-level support to fix the issue and as a result will be cancelling in the cooling down period.

https://youtu.be/qa-gynCK5J4

I was so impressed with three 4G for £16 a month I made a video... as far as I can tell, this is the best value useful speed solution!! Well done three... independent review!!

https://youtu.be/qa-gynCK5J4

DuB-EnG: Huawei b535-232 4G/LTE Router and £16 4G SIM Unlimited Data on UK Three Network best speeds

https://youtu.be/qa-gynCK5J4

Initially worked well, still does off-peak. When I started seeing very low peak d/l speeds and queried it, they wasted lots of my time fiddling with settings even though I made it clear I knew it was a peak bandwidth issue. Had one utterly unpleasant call with someone quite foul from the call centre, who did actually acknowledge the problems.

I left it a while, then started querying it again and asking when they would upgrade the network. I was given conflicting information, confused denials, just rubbish really. In my latest call centre episode, they did fully admit they couldn't provide the service promised (9-10 mbps minimum) and that there was nothing they could do, but refused to give me a higher contact or escalate it for me (rep pretended she was senior staff, which was just silly).

I'm left without a landline and unsure whether to go ahead ordering streaming services, as not sure it I'll have the network performance.

I'll be complaining and going to media bodies - this shouldn't be allowed to happen.