EE 4G PAYG Mobile Broadband

I found 4G to be pretty decent with EE but ultimately I missed my unlimited T-mobile data and switched back.

With EE on the outskirts of cities I can pull quite easily a good 30Mbps. The highest I got was 54Mbps. In the centre of cities it's much less. On Oxford Street, it was literally packed I was getting around 4Mbps, outside Selfridges I was getting 3Mbps. On 3G I could only get around 0.7Mbps in these areas...

On Vodafone 3G I was getting 2133ms ping and 0.1Mbps so EE was outperforming that by far on 3G and 4G.

In Westfield, where my 3G would not work at all (the network was that busy) & on 3G I couldn't even send a Whatsapp, 4G here gave me 7Mbps. So clearly 4G has it's advantages but in the city centre, yes it might be 5 times faster (as advertised) but 5 times faster than 0.7Mbps is only 3.5Mbps so it was still nothing to shout home about. On the whole it drained my battery faster and I was rapidly going through my 2Gb allowance.

I used to manage on 1Gb data a couple of years ago but I ate up 1.1Gb in under a week so it was a no brainer to head back to unlimited T-mobile.

The upload on the 4G was always over 10Mbps in all locations.

I would say if the 3G connections doing what you need, stick with it.

Edited by deleted (Mon 26-Aug-13 01:20:52)

Give it a go, sounds like you've carefully considered it.

I have personally had bad experiences with 3 and I wouldn't go back unless it was the only network offering a good deal (even then I'd probably just get ripped off and go elsewhere). I need a phone that works, a phone that can stay connected to calls as I drive and ride on trains, I cannot have it losing reception mid call, sadly 3 didn't fulfil that criteria. Good 3G coverage but it to often goes to No Service and having no 2G fallback is absolute pants. I was always being cut off mid way through important calls, constantly having to ring people back - only for the phone to cut me off again 2 minutes later when it lost service yet again.

It often said 'call failed' even though it claimed I had reception too. It also often made a really weird noise when I tried to make calls with low reception. It sounded like crazy interference. It just annoyed me.

It's extremely rare for me to get cut off with T-mobile and even rarer on o2 (in fact almost never). Although o2 is often 2G signal whereas T-mobiles virtually always 3G (so I personally prefer my T-mobile handset).

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 26-Aug-13 01:32:27)

Not a rip off. Everybody assumes 3 is the cheapest and that EE is much more expensive. Truth is often networks are all about the same if you shop around properly.

Edited by deleted (Mon 26-Aug-13 14:09:29)

Happens a lot, there's often only one LTE mast covering a large area whereas there can be multiple 3G masts around. So the LTE mast can end up slower. Also in a lot of places the masts do not have a fibre link direct to them just yet (so the signals go mast to mast which slows things down). Overtime there will be more masts that are LTE enabled and there will be more direct fibre links. Also LTE attracts the heavier users. As I said on Oxford Street in London I was barely seeing 3Mbps via LTE.

On other networks such as Vodafone and o2, as they are currently largely 2G networks, LTE will be a god send as it should get LTE to where their 2G currently reaches. So people will go from 2G in some areas to LTE.

Comparing it to 3 is a tough one, largely because 3 doesn't have the customer base using all the bandwidth. If 3 had the Orange T-mobile and EE customer base it would perform worse.

LTE isn't as amazing as everyone made it out.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 26-Aug-13 14:34:24)