3: The one plan

Ok so I have signed up for the £18 1 month

Been with O2 for years and do have a good deal with O2 but for internet use is now outdated.

So on O2 I have for £13.99 month. 800mins, unlimited landlines call free bolt on (so these dont use mins). daily web addon (this was up until earlier this year effectively unlimited internet for £1 a day., the £1 a day isnt charged when dont use it, the £1 a day is a max charge if you used 150mB or more that day).
O2 started enforcing throttling of speeds earlier this year after 150mB, that was already in the t&c's they could do that but they never did it in previous years, they just let things slide. As always in most cases when isp's throttle its all but been cutoff, everything is unusable except pings.
Earlier in the year also O2 had their own unlimited package (but not sure if allowed tethering), this is now gone. I almost moved to that package but opted to stay where I was.

Given O2s financial situation and does appear they not investing in capacity to match internet growth, as my dsl was down 2 days ago, I realised I want something better 3G side, as after I watched one single 240p youtube video I was effectively cutoff until midnight. I have now ordered a 1 month dongle with three, when I used to use their dongle in my laptop speeds were extremely dire, I am hoping it was an issue with the dongle and the sim will perform better, so will be testing it in my S2 phone. If it works ok, then my plan is to port my O2 number to three and use the same plan but the 12 month version.
The plan has 2000 mins which I hope is enough to make up for the loss of unlimited landline calls, 2000 text which to me is odd as usually everything is unlimited text now days, but i cant see myself using up 2000 so is ok.
I ordered the normal sim since its been used in my S2 initially and then will move to my S3 if I ditch O2, I wish now tho I just ordered the mini from the start used ti with adaptor in S2 and then easy to put i S3, as three are saying if I switch to the 12 months I wont get a new sim, they expect me to take it to a shop for it to be cut, seems cant just order blank/new sims from them like on O2.

Others are generally happy with three? signal reliability and 3G speeds?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Others are generally happy with three? signal reliability and 3G speeds?

Yes, they're very very good around here. I used them for voice services for 10 months, and then moved back to T-Mobile as I needed 2G coverage for work in areas where there was no 3 signal, but for data they are a "no brainer".

That was in 2010, and now in 2013, I would probably go back to Three as the areas I had coverage issues in are now solved by having better handsets with more sensitive radios.

Edited by deleted (Fri 22-Nov-13 20:00:06)

Been with 3 for about 3 years have recently moved and service is fair, i get 15mbps round the corner or on the beach, and nothing int he house, well didn't till this week, phoned them up had a chat with someone from support department, and they have now sent me a home signal box so get a signal indoors too. Was paying £25 a month for the one plan, but noticed they were doing it for £15 so they have dropped it to that for agreeing a new contract.

so the sim is here.

it seems the dongle was an accurate representation of the speeds.

running a speedtest on the phone in 3g got me 300kbit/sec down yes 0.3mbit. It timed out on the upload test so the test in the end failed.

so I guess their policy hasnt came about from spending on their network to allow more usage but just selling and cramming everyone in.

is there noone else apart from 3 who allows tethering without been a millionaire to fund it?

tethered to my pc I can complete speedtest, here is result.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3120290196

The difference is the connection is useable for basic browsing like this site. I can ssh to servers but extreme lag.

However thats it really since the speed is so low, multimedia is out of the question.

Whilst O2 is pretty fast, but unusable when I hit their daily limit.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 23-Nov-13 13:07:06)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

running a speedtest on the phone in 3g got me 300kbit/sec down yes 0.3mbit. It timed out on the upload test so the test in the end failed.

Bizarre, here on 3 I can get 10megabit/s download and 1.1meg upload normally, all across town with. What is your signal levels by chance?

Whilst O2 is pretty fast, but unusable when I hit their daily limit.

O2 here on mobiles is around 1.5megabit/sec download on a good day with a following wind. (ie never). On an iPad SIM I've seen 7megabit.

I wonder where in the UK you are?

I am in leicester.

Just got back, so driven around in a car, the speeds only became useful basically outside the city and also outside the outlying suburbs, had to be halfway to loughborough before speeds got in the mbit range.

3's signal checker has my area as excellent coverage and on the phone I have 3 bars indoors and 4 outdoors (but no speed difference outside).

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 23-Nov-13 18:19:12)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I am in leicester.

Just got back, so driven around in a car, the speeds only became useful basically outside the city and also outside the outlying suburbs, had to be halfway to loughborough before speeds got in the mbit range. 3's signal checker has my area as excellent coverage and on the phone I have 3 bars indoors and 4 outdoors (but no speed difference outside).

Yikes. That pretty much smacks of congestion. No way to tell if its 2100mhz congestions (ie more users than channels) or if the backhaul is congested. LTE will help, but 3 only has around 9 million customers across the country so they only bid for a smaller amount of spectrum in the 4G auctions.

An interesting test would be an EE PAYG SIM as the mast will be in the same location but different radio network would show if its 2100mhz congestion - as I believe the EE backhaul would be shared (ie, multiples of 100 or 1000 megabit circuits).

Edited by jchamier (Sat 23-Nov-13 18:22:32)