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Three broadband dropping speeds

groenator

Casual Member
Hi,

Recently, I decided to get a 4G home broadband from Three with unlimited data. I got the B535 router, connected my sim card and run a few speeds tests. I wasn't very happy with the speeds, I was getting between 40-60Mbs. I know it sounds bad, usually these speeds are very good. But, hear me out. I have another mobile contract with unlimited data on Three. When I run a speed test, from the same location to the same tower cell on my mobile. I am getting speeds between 100-150Mbs. I was happy to see these speeds. This is also a reason why I choose 4G broadband. I am getting double the speeds comparing with my BT broadband.

So, I tried to reconfigure the router to match the same speeds as my phone. Eventually, I manage to get up to 130Mbs. What really did bugged thou, is how unstable were the speeds.

Whilst on my phone the speeds stayed the same, on the router, the speeds drop after using the Internet for about 30-40 min. Usually, it happened when I use YouTube or play video games on Stadia. Eventually, to recover the speeds back I have to restar the router every time.

I want to know if there is a way how to keep the speeds consistent without restarting the router all the time? Do I need to use a VPN? I read on this forum that the providers are usually throttle the traffic. Is this true?

Regards,
 
I believe what your seeing is just everyone's experience of Three's 4g network in action. Over time contention is increasing as more people join Three and share your local mast and instead of investing in more bandwidth and new mast tech three are taking the cheaper route and using harsher traffic management.

Try downloading anything over 10GB and watch how long it takes to flatline. Reboot the router and it might last an hour before dropping out again. Trying to download anything of size means rebooting your router lots of times per day.

I was getting over 100Mb/s nearly all day last year, a few hours a day I see 50-60mb at best now and most of the time 20-30mb. In the evening it can drop to less than 10mb nowadays and it buffers You-tube in 720p, making it impossible to watch. Regardless of the time of day, every time I run a speed test I get different results which can be between 20mb in each direction.

Then on top of this we have the problem Three insists isn't real, but everyone on the network notices where sporadically webpages take ages to resolve or don't and your browser just hangs there regardless of what DNS server you use.

We need to set up a Three home-fi owners club on here..... hang around car parks and discuss our shocking experiences. It'd be a bit like cars and coffee but with a different sort of unexpected crashes when everyone leaves.
 
I believe what your seeing is just everyone's experience of Three's 4g network in action. Over time contention is increasing as more people join Three and share your local mast and instead of investing in more bandwidth and new mast tech three are taking the cheaper route and using harsher traffic management.

Try downloading anything over 10GB and watch how long it takes to flatline. Reboot the router and it might last an hour before dropping out again. Trying to download anything of size means rebooting your router lots of times per day.

I was getting over 100Mb/s nearly all day last year, a few hours a day I see 50-60mb at best now and most of the time 20-30mb. In the evening it can drop to less than 10mb nowadays and it buffers You-tube in 720p, making it impossible to watch. Regardless of the time of day, every time I run a speed test I get different results which can be between 20mb in each direction.

Then on top of this we have the problem Three insists isn't real, but everyone on the network notices where sporadically webpages take ages to resolve or don't and your browser just hangs there regardless of what DNS server you use.

We need to set up a Three home-fi owners club on here..... hang around car parks and discuss our shocking experiences. It'd be a bit like cars and coffee but with a different sort of unexpected crashes when everyone leaves.

Man! I got excited for nothing. Three are a bunch of liars and I am so annoyed with myself that I choose them to be my mobile provider. I only took a month to month contract with them because I was not sure if they can deliver a good service. On the other hand my mobile contract is for two years and I have to wait until it expires next year. I will test it for another week or two but with this kind of results I will ditch them.

The three customer service and support team are awful. They BS non-stop and don't know **** about their technology.

Thanks for sharing your story.
 
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Man! I got excited for nothing. Three are a bunch of liars and I am so annoyed with myself that I choose them to be my mobile provider. I only took a month to month contract with them because I was not sure if they can deliver a good service. On the other hand my mobile contract is for two years and I have to wait until it expires next year. I will test it for another week or two but with this kind of results I will ditch them.

The three customer service and support team are awful. They BS non-stop and don't know **** about their technology.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Pretty much all the networks do it though and say they don't. EE significantly throttle downloads etc. but give full rates to speed testers so no one notices. Vodafone have also been known to do the same thing. O2 still edit every picture that goes over the network and significantly reduce the quality to save on data.
 
Pretty much all the networks do it though and say they don't. EE significantly throttle downloads etc. but give full rates to speed testers so no one notices. Vodafone have also been known to do the same thing. O2 still edit every picture that goes over the network and significantly reduce the quality to save on data.

So the solution here is to use VPN? I read on this forum when using VPN the traffic is not throttled.
 
The VPN helps when the connection is being artificially throttled down (i.e. if you're in an area which normally has very good speeds).

It doesn't work so well when the mast is genuinely congested and the speeds are low.

With Three its a mix of the two as they're by far the cheapest so the network is hammered disproportionately for data and that on top of their somewhat janky traffic management systems.
 
My 4G broadband speeds are bad I only get around 20mbps to 30mbps during non peak times and during peak time its around 10mbps I'm in east London E3 area my local mast always has a fault they need to increase bandwidth its the cheapest network that's why people jump on to Three network only to find speeds are very bad and stuck in a contract we can't get out of.

My parents are lucky enough to get 5G broadband from Three Broadband on threebroadband.co.uk website when I enter my parents house post code it's still says 4G but they get over 100mbps nearly 200mbps.
 
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My parents are lucky enough to get 5G broadband from Three Broadband on threebroadband.co.uk website when I enter my parents house post code it's still says 4G but they get over 100mbps nearly 200mbps.

Because Three Broadband operate in that area it's likely there's many less people using the standard Three network for their home internet which is likely why the speeds are significantly better.
 
The VPN helps when the connection is being artificially throttled down (i.e. if you're in an area which normally has very good speeds).

It doesn't work so well when the mast is genuinely congested and the speeds are low.

With Three its a mix of the two as they're by far the cheapest so the network is hammered disproportionately for data and that on top of their somewhat janky traffic management systems.

I am in a good area, well, I think I am. I am getting good speeds, like up to 150Mbs. My only problem is I have to reboot my router most of the time. Specially, when I play video games or stream. I will try out with VPN and see how will behave.

Thanks for your advise.
 
From what I read here 4G broadband is not worth it. Unless you are in an area where your mast is not overwhelmed with connections. But even when you are in a good area your connections are throttled by your mobile provider. I don't know much about 5G, hopefully, with this new technology things will improve. I think I will stick with my BT broadband for now and maybe try 5G in a few years.
 
I agree. The technology might be up to the task but both the amount of spectrum and the pityful amount carriers are prepared to invest in mast bandwidth makes home mobile totally unsustainable currently IMHO.
 
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I'm afraid to say you maybe have your expectations set too high.

Take Three for example
Back in Sept 2019 they previously said that their mast upgrade program will run to 2023 (though expect that to ve delayed now with both Huawei hardware restrictions and covid19).

And in January they said they'd be spending £2billion in mast upgrades (unknown timescale, or what exactly the upgrades were, presumably not dissimilar to the plan from Sept 19 abovr).
So, if they're considering upgrading 8,000 of their masts (think they have ~16,000 total), that's only £250k per mast to cover hardware, labour, backhaul rent, etc... i.e. it's not much.

Then in Feb/March some of their top level employees left, so who knows how plans have now changed.


Then obviously whatever investment they put in they expect to be able to get a return on that - they are a business after all. And with the prices they charge customers (£20pm unlimited everything), that leads to a low ARPU (average revenue per user), so getting a return on the costs they've invested will take longer, which usually means they're less willing to spend big up-front, rather go for a slower, longer rollout to spread the investment cost over many years.
 
Found this conversation via Google. It is October 2021. The end of my 2 year mobile broadband contract with them. Same situation as with topic starter groenator. Two SIMs one excellent one throttled. Called to cancel and gave them a chance to connect me to the technical team. My speeds were 1.5MBps at worst (0.6Mbps upload) and 15Mpbs at best throughout the contract. My other Three contract is voice with unlimited data - I constantly and reliably get 50-60MBps on 4G. Back in 2019 I quickly gave up fighting Three, accepted I would be paying 20 quid a month for two years and gave this SIM to my daughter until she started chatting to her friends (£0.65 a minute!).

Frustraitingly todays conversation with three different technical people and two from the "Customer Choice" (Cancellation) team showed more lies, more sales pitches, lack of knowledge of technology, etc. One of the engineers said two interesting things: 1. setup for broadband and for voice customers is "completely different" 2. there are works going on in the area until 7 Nov (coincedentally the end of my billing cycle!) and that affects my speed on my broadband SIM (not on my voice SIM - "completely different"). I mentioned compensation for poor service due to "works". He said he could apply compensation from today to the 7th of Nov. (not from 2019 to Nov'21!) And you know what? They will be crediting £20 (my entire monthly payment) to my last bill. Got it cancelled in the end. Some satisfaction at last! I could only manage the to squeeze the compensation because I threatened to cancel which I couldn't do until now (and then did cancel anyway, catching them on their admission of poor service).

I feel bad about it. I feel lied to, cheated. I bought broadband from Three only because my data on the first contract was fast. Under false impression that two SIM cards from the same provider can't be different. How naive. I also feel bad because I want to keep the first main contract and I will keep supporting this unethical company. No technical issues with voice SIM - good coverage, fast speed - my two kids are on pay as you go from Three too and they call me for free. So if I move in with some other network that would be a bigger issue.
 
I am lucky and get consistent speeds on Three, but they have upgraded the mast I connect to and gave much improved speeds for 3 weeks before reducing the power of Band 3 so the SNIR has dropped to become unusable. So I still have Band 32 download only uplift but have to couple it with band 20 not band 3. Result is back to the same speeds as before the upgrade. What was the point ?

FTTP is due before June 2022 so have swapped my second 4G router from Voda to EE and improved on Voda's 25mb to 70mb from EE. First to go when FTTP comes is Three, I will then use EE as backup until its contract period finishes.
 
I have just inserted the broadband SIM into iPhone12 (5g) and I get around 300mbps. (both SIMs get that). Back into Huawei Cube router (4G). - back to 3-4Mbps. Checking with Ookla Speed Test to various UK test servers. It is either three 4G infra issues or the router. Puzzled. Will see if iPhone can be fixed for 4g only and report here.
 
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Totally confused:

Broadband SIM in Huawei Cube 4G router: 8Mbps
Broadband SIM in Huawei P10 4G phone: 8Mbps
Broadband SIM in iPhone12 4G locked: 60-70Mbps
Broadband SIM in iPhone12 5G auto: 300-400Mbps

Is it because they haven't yet detected it on the new iPhone?
 
Totally confused:

Broadband SIM in Huawei Cube 4G router: 8Mbps
Broadband SIM in Huawei P10 4G phone: 8Mbps
Broadband SIM in iPhone12 4G locked: 60-70Mbps
Broadband SIM in iPhone12 5G auto: 300-400Mbps

Is it because they haven't yet detected it on the new iPhone?
It’s because the router cannot fully support the newer local frequencies aired for Three, and uses low bandwidth connections.

The iPhone is fairly new and designed to pull the best speeds available, utilising most available frequencies and aggregating them (pairing for better connectivity)
 
Totally confused:

Broadband SIM in Huawei Cube 4G router: 8Mbps
Broadband SIM in Huawei P10 4G phone: 8Mbps
Broadband SIM in iPhone12 4G locked: 60-70Mbps
Broadband SIM in iPhone12 5G auto: 300-400Mbps

Is it because they haven't yet detected it on the new iPhone?
The phone is higher CAT, that's why it's faster. The cube is rubbish.
Get a 5G router or at least LTE cat 12+ and you'll get better results.
 
You guys must be right and I am wrong blaming Three. The "good" voice SIM in the P10 4G old phone gives me same slow speed as the "bad" broadband SIM. The Cube gives me bad speed on both cards too. It is the equipment after all. I will think about 5G new router. It is some substantioal chunk of money. If I could test one before buying... If I get 300-400mbps on it on 5G here I will seriously think ditching VirginMedia £55 340Mbps. It is very reliable and fast but Three is less than half price.
 
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