Three 5G Broadband vs Voxi 5G (Central London)

[noway103]

I've decided to put two horses against each other. More details below in case you're interested or if you have thoughts and suggestions.

I had the Three 5G broadband for about a year now. My block is weirdly not connected to fiber or high-speed Openreach broadband, hence the only solution was to go with a fixed wireless solution. This is all in the Bayswater area in London.

It has done a good job so far, especially considering the Huawei 5G CPE Pro H112 had a pin for a Panorama DMM-7-38-2TS9 antenna. On good days and with the external antenna pointing in the right direction, I was able to get up to 400Mb in download. Some issues though with frequent disconnects from 5G, resets required, and unstable/terrible upload speeds at 5-15Mb which caused many issues with video calls.

I decided to take a H122 and a Voxi sim card to see if Vodafone could perform better. After one day, I can already say that even without an external antenna (not supported by the new model), the download speed is quite good (200-250Mb) and upload around 35-45Mb.

Because of the higher/more stable upload speeds which are good for all the VCs I have those days, I'm very tempted to stay with Voxi and drop Three.

What do you folks think? Any watch-outs I should have?

Here's the two Huawei friends, one next to the other

 

[TTJJ]

I think you'll find Vodafone more reliable. The speeds might be lower but I would expect them to be stable around those speeds most of the time and won't have such dramatic swings in performance.

An antenna likely wont be necessary as the general issue is network congestion on the mast or the network itself rather than signal.

 

[zakir1988]

I am too on Three broadband my post code does not have 5G yet but accross the street it has 5G but im getting 5G.

The speeds im getting are 60mbps to over 100mbps its connecting to a mast that is 10 to 15min away if by September if i dont see any improvements im moving to Voxi. Vodafone coverage says i get very good 5G coverage when i called Vodafone they said i can expect speeds up to 400mbps in my area.

 

[noway103]

Meanwhile, I also have a PAYG sim card from EE and decided to give it a go in the CPE Pro 2. Because it's PAYG, it will not connect to 5G, but quite some impressive results over 4G.

Really impressed by the download and upload speeds that this modem is able to get on EE. With an iPhone 12 I wasn't able to get above 90 in download and 80 in upload (which were already impressive numbers in 4G).

I'm very tempted by their business account, even if the FUT is at 1tb/month, that should be enough. Does anyone have that?

 

[Lucian]

That's a nice speed. 5G NSA is based on 4G.
Three has more spectrum, but don't seem able to service it properly judging by what people post on this forum. I wouldn't expect too much.

 

[zakir1988]

Im very tempted to move to voxi what nat type does vodafone use tho Three network are not doing it right

 

[Bubblesthefish6]

Im very tempted to move to voxi what nat type does vodafone use tho Three network are not doing it right

You just asked that on your own thread

 

[dabigm]

Those are pretty good speeds and about what you'd expect from a 40MHz site. AFAIK all UK 5G is NSA and most deployments around the world are. Nice diagram here to show the differences

 

[GavinAshford]

Apparently the use of DSS will essentially allow existing infrastructure to broadcast NR over same bands as LTE simaltaniously

Yes, it does use existing infrastructure, providing the mast radios are modern enough to support it (and/or be software upgradable to do so) - however in most instances the hardware is likely old, and need replacing to be able to achieve DSS - which begs the question, if they're replacing the radios, why not just install hardware capable of 5G on n78.

As I mentioned in another thread, while DSS is allowing Vodafone to 'deliver' 5G to more users (they'll see the 5G symbol on their phone, it comes at a cost that DSS delivers ~30% less capacity versus using the same spectrum bandwidth for 'normal' 5G, plus it reduces the capacity for 4G only users in that band too.

 

[Bubblesthefish6]

My guess is that the hopes are for extra spectrum they could win and also re-farm could cover the boost and the losses by doing such changes.

The obvious reason in my eyes is to put the 5G symbol in the corner of the most devices in more places first, technology of this nature has become a joke, but I test it so I can be impartial to my opinion.

Personally I'm a bigger fan of just bumping 4G bandwidth up as high as possible, I've achieved speeds as fast as and faster than the 5G sample above just using 4CA in the past.

I kinda agree. Most people think that when the 5G symbol is showing it will be ultra fast however as I've seen myself that is far from the truth. I also have seen better speeds on 4G than 5G. This is still probably because the technology is still in its infancy and most people don't really understand it that well