dmo
Casual Member
I bought a 5G phone a few weeks ago to use with my sim only contract on Three. My speed at home according to ookla had been a consistent ~900 download and 130~ upload as I live about 200m away from a 5G tower. My internet always felt snappy and just worked.
Three sent me a notification to change contract as the previous 24 month term had passed. I went on their site to see what was available and noticed they do 5G hubs for the home. I thought, if my phone can do these speeds then maybe one of their hubs can replace VM as my main connection because it has been off and on a lot just lately and tethering my home network to a phone hotspot is not ideal. I decided to take out a second contract for this home broadband because surely it would work similar to my phone?
The ZTE MC801A hub was delivered next day after ordering and although it booted up straight away and appeared to be working fine initially, I cannot seem to get the same speed or stability as what I have on my phone. When it's actually working properly, it averages at ~900 download and saving files from sites is super fast but I only have ~10 upload and sometimes it falls as low as ~3 upload. When it's not working properly, I'm sat around waiting for sites to load and it doesn't feel like broadband at all. I can pick up my phone while the hub connection isn't responding and the phone connection works perfectly, at full speed.
When I switch the hub to 4G mode then sites don't seem to stall quite as much and the upload speed goes to ~25 but the download speed is all over the place, sometimes going over 200, which is about what my VM connection does on an average day, but often dropping back down to less than 100 download.
I've tried uploading and downloading large files on sharing sites to see whether ookla was accurate and it seems so. Whether in 5G or 4G mode, sites tell me I'm transferring at whatever speed the 192 status page says, which was the same values ookla showed during speed tests.
After some testing I found that both my mobile and the hub are connected to the same 5G tower. I tried using the debug JS script on chrome while accessing the 192 status page to set band, cell lock etc. but nothing seems to raise the upload or stabilise the download.
I noticed that the connection keeps switching between LTE-NSA / ENDC and also the bands keep jumping between LTE BAND 1, LTE BAND 3, B1, B3 on MAIN and then CA is a mixture (or sometimes a single) of B1, B3, B20, B28 and n78. My signal strength is about -65 dBm but sometimes the number changes to — — for a few seconds. I have line of sight with the 5G tower and the hub is on an upstairs windowsill, directly facing it.
The hub auto updated to firmware B09 the first time I powered it up. After doing several factory resets while testing various things, the hub decided to update again but ended up on firmware B04, which seems odd. This hasn't affected the speeds at all.
Speed test on hub 5G
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13386474304
Speed test on hub 4G
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13386479052
Speed test on phone 5G
https://www.speedtest.net/result/a/8514888740
Does anyone have any ideas that could help me stabilise this hub?
Three sent me a notification to change contract as the previous 24 month term had passed. I went on their site to see what was available and noticed they do 5G hubs for the home. I thought, if my phone can do these speeds then maybe one of their hubs can replace VM as my main connection because it has been off and on a lot just lately and tethering my home network to a phone hotspot is not ideal. I decided to take out a second contract for this home broadband because surely it would work similar to my phone?
The ZTE MC801A hub was delivered next day after ordering and although it booted up straight away and appeared to be working fine initially, I cannot seem to get the same speed or stability as what I have on my phone. When it's actually working properly, it averages at ~900 download and saving files from sites is super fast but I only have ~10 upload and sometimes it falls as low as ~3 upload. When it's not working properly, I'm sat around waiting for sites to load and it doesn't feel like broadband at all. I can pick up my phone while the hub connection isn't responding and the phone connection works perfectly, at full speed.
When I switch the hub to 4G mode then sites don't seem to stall quite as much and the upload speed goes to ~25 but the download speed is all over the place, sometimes going over 200, which is about what my VM connection does on an average day, but often dropping back down to less than 100 download.
I've tried uploading and downloading large files on sharing sites to see whether ookla was accurate and it seems so. Whether in 5G or 4G mode, sites tell me I'm transferring at whatever speed the 192 status page says, which was the same values ookla showed during speed tests.
After some testing I found that both my mobile and the hub are connected to the same 5G tower. I tried using the debug JS script on chrome while accessing the 192 status page to set band, cell lock etc. but nothing seems to raise the upload or stabilise the download.
I noticed that the connection keeps switching between LTE-NSA / ENDC and also the bands keep jumping between LTE BAND 1, LTE BAND 3, B1, B3 on MAIN and then CA is a mixture (or sometimes a single) of B1, B3, B20, B28 and n78. My signal strength is about -65 dBm but sometimes the number changes to — — for a few seconds. I have line of sight with the 5G tower and the hub is on an upstairs windowsill, directly facing it.
The hub auto updated to firmware B09 the first time I powered it up. After doing several factory resets while testing various things, the hub decided to update again but ended up on firmware B04, which seems odd. This hasn't affected the speeds at all.
Speed test on hub 5G
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13386474304
Speed test on hub 4G
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13386479052
Speed test on phone 5G
https://www.speedtest.net/result/a/8514888740
Does anyone have any ideas that could help me stabilise this hub?























