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Three 5G - Brilliant download speed, but upload speed not so much?

TheJackah

Member
Three recently launched 5G in the area, and I've been using a Huawei 5G CPE Pro router for my home broadband.

Download speed is brilliant, reaching over 400Mbps. But the upload speed is slower than what I got on 4G (15 to 20 up), and at just looks abysmally slow. Is this normal? Should the upload speed be faster? What could be the problem there?

Three-5G-Speed-test.webp
 
It happened to have the same problem until two weeks ago. When I order three 5G broadband I was nearly close to he coverage area. Recently, a lot of work is happening around my area and I see the engineers installing new 5G antennas.

Now when I search for 5G coverage it shows my house fully covered.

My traffic changed, I get better upload speeds and better ping.

May I ask where do you keep your router? Is it close to the window?

Your ping seems alright but a bit high. I start using an app called smokeping which pings Google or any other website every 5 mins. I can see how stable are my speeds or not.

Sometimes I even get pings of 8ms and a jitter of 3ms. During peak times my ping is around 15-20ms.

Try moving the router as close to the windows as possible, and when you try to find the best spot use a laptop and ping Google for e.g. and check the ping. That's how I did with mine to find the perfect spot.
 
I too have the same issue, downloads of 400+ but uploads sometimes at 0-1, however, when I connect to my VPN Service my upload speeds get close to 25-30mbps. Unfortunately my VPN provider doesn't have the right protocol for me to install it directly onto the ZTE MC801A so I have to use an old android phone as a tether. My download is affected with my solution (VPN and tether) but I still manage 200-250mbps and upload is maintained at 15-20. not an ideal fix because there is compromise. In my case its better than not having usable internet.
 
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If you have the ZTE MC801A and are using a Three sim it is possible that you can fix poor uploads by locking to a better 4g cell.
There are two towers near me, one supporting bands 20, 3, 32 and 5g(78), the other supporting bands 1 and 3 only. Left to AUTO the router usually locks to the second tower's b1 with CA on b3, and n78 from tower 1. Sometimes it'll lock to the first tower's b20.
The first listed band is used for upload. Neither of the above defaults give uploads as good as tower 2's b3, and tower 1's b20 is awful. Three supports n78 agregated with a different tower, so I lock to tower 2 b3, forcing that cell to be used for upload. Tower 2's b1 additionally gets agregated with tower 1's N78. I typically get around 300mb/s down and around 20mb/s up.
 

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I'll post the screenshots later. I want someone to tell me I'm wrong and upload is purely on 4G but it simply doesn't tie up with what I observed.
 
Three do do NR upload, though it depends on circumstances at the time (scheduling/signalling etc) as to how much UL goes over the NR bearer
This would explain why download speeds appear to be unaffected by the limited upload speeds. They're probably doing ACKs on 5G so that download can run full speed even when upload is heavily loaded.
 
This would explain why download speeds appear to be unaffected by the limited upload speeds. They're probably doing ACKs on 5G so that download can run full speed even when upload is heavily loaded.
Don't think their capability is that granular, I can't imagine them doing _just_ the TCP hand shake over 5G and leave the rest for 4G. Not even sure it's possible to begin with.
 
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Next time I'm able to I'll collect some NSG logs in a couple of locations of UL while on 5G - it's not something I have first hand experience of observing tbh
 
Upload speeds can be variable on 5G, 4G is generally being used for upstream, but sometimes if you’re connected to 5G you can get very good upstream, I have seen it in the region of 100-120mbit/s, but that’s normally when your fairly close to the cellsite.

Faster than the upstream I get at home on Virgin.
 
Hello all,

I have given the Three 5G Home Broadband offering a try as well, intrigued by the speeds it seemed to offer to other users. After I got it set up, the same seemed to be true for me as well, on popular test applications/sites I am getting anywhere between 300-500mbits/s.

The problem is with the actual actual download speeds, not from test websites, which I measure at about 30-40mbits from reputable, bandwidth-rich websites such as Apple or Microsoft for larger files or any other reputable location for that matter. Basically all other websites that do not measure the download speed.

Either something funny is going on with my setup or Three are manipulating their QoS / speeds, prioritising such websites to show you how great their offering is when in reality, you are getting something completely different. All my tests are literally next to the router, so wifi connectivity is not playing a role here.

What is your experience? Happy to learn otherwise but this is what I've seen after a couple of days of use.
 
Hello all,

I have given the Three 5G Home Broadband offering a try as well, intrigued by the speeds it seemed to offer to other users. After I got it set up, the same seemed to be true for me as well, on popular test applications/sites I am getting anywhere between 300-500mbits/s.

The problem is with the actual actual download speeds, not from test websites, which I measure at about 30-40mbits from reputable, bandwidth-rich websites such as Apple or Microsoft for larger files or any other reputable location for that matter. Basically all other websites that do not measure the download speed.

Either something funny is going on with my setup or Three are manipulating their QoS / speeds, prioritising such websites to show you how great their offering is when in reality, you are getting something completely different. All my tests are literally next to the router, so wifi connectivity is not playing a role here.

What is your experience? Happy to learn otherwise but this is what I've seen after a couple of days of use.
when you are positioning your ZTE...go into advanced settings, network info and you can see the 4G signal strength. Try to get that as close to zero as you can....-70 is stronger than -80. Subtle twists and movements of the router can make a big difference to the signal. I believe it has different inbuilt antennas for 5G and 4G...so angle / position is very important. The stronger your 4G the better your upload speeds will be.
 
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It's probably worth clarifying that that's with n78 (3500Mhz) 5G. In the distant situation phones simply can't 'shout' loud enough for the site to hear them clearly enough, so the UL over the 4G bearer is preferred. For a lower band 5G (i.e. other providers who are deploying lower frequency 5G) the UL may go over the 5G bearer at a greater distance from the site.
 
i face almost the same problem
I have a ZTE MC801A router with a 5G sim inside
Speedtest from a smartphone (in flight mode) connected via wifi to router reaches till 70+ mbps upload speed, with the 5Ghz band of router.
But in the same time, same place, (4 meters away from the router) as the smartphone, my desktop (with a Asus PCE-AX3000 WiFi 6 adapter) cannot reach more than 15 mbps upload speed. I tried any combination possible, turned off even firewall, no apps running in background etc. Does anyone have any idea, any solution, it is really very strange.... (Same speeds in upload I face with a brand new Laptop)
 

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I attached 2 more photos, from hardware and properties i played with
 

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What about the next option down, the ax wireless mode which is the one for wifi6? Does flight mode on your phone make much difference to the speed? I never use flight mode on my mobile but I wouldn't have thought it would alter the results by much.
 
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