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Been with O2 for years and do have a good deal with O2 but for internet use is now outdated.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

I am considering relying on giffgaff for emergency internet use (after I hit O2 throttle point) but with giffgaff there is no offline ordering system.

So it looks like my scenario will be go online with O2, order giffgaff gigabag, and then immediatly turn the O2 off and start using the giffgaff bandwidth but its still pretty pricy that way but I guess have to do for emergencies.

It looks like we are pretty backwards in the uk with mobile internet, the usage tiers I see from everyone except 3 are extremely restrictive and its as if they stuck in a timewarp and they think 1 gig is a huge amount of usage in 2013 (giffgaff 20p per meg payg prices £10 to watch 10min 480p youtube video). This has probably led to everyone going to 3 like a magnet and hence the congestioh. Giffgaff on their unlimited goodybags apparently have some kind of automated tethering detector which then bars you, I could try to evade it, using specific apps may or may not work no idea.

My phone isnt an LTE phone and buying a new phone is out of the question.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 23-Nov-13 18:30:47)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I am considering relying on giffgaff for emergency internet use (after I hit O2 throttle point) but with giffgaff there is no offline ordering system.

So it looks like my scenario will be go online with O2, order giffgaff gigabag, and then immediatly turn the O2 off and start using the giffgaff bandwidth but its still pretty pricy that way but I guess have to do for emergencies.

Bizarre. On EE and Three SIM only mobile broadband plans you can top up using the connection - bsasically they let you access their own website but nothing else until you've paid.

It looks like we are pretty backwards in the uk with mobile internet, the usage tiers I see from everyone except 3 are extremely restrictive and its as if they stuck in a timewarp and they think 1 gig is a huge amount of usage in 2013 (giffgaff 20p per meg payg prices £10 to watch 10min 480p youtube video). This has probably led to everyone going to 3 like a magnet and hence the congestioh. Giffgaff on their unlimited goodybags apparently have some kind of automated tethering detector which then bars you, I could try to evade it, using specific apps may or may not work no idea.

EE will sell you 8GB on a SIM only mobile broadband plan for use in a MiFi or tablet for £26/month on a rolling contract, or on PAYG you can buy 24GB for £120. Three used to offer 15GB but now only seem to offer 12GB on their PAYG and rolling contract plans.

O2 and Vodafone don't have the network capacity (until they roll out 4G) except in limited areas. Here in Farnborough town centre on a weekday lunchtime my friend with an S4 can get 4megabit downloads, on my work Vodafone on an iPhone 5 I can get 6meg, and on EE/T-Mobile 3G I was able to get 11meg - and on 4G EE I can get 25megabit. Outside the town centre both Voda and O2 are on GPRS or EDGE and even Apple iMessage doesn't work reliably. O2 generally is better around here, their 2G actually transfers data, but Voda 2G stops iMessage and even notifications working, including one person still on Blackberry. Voda 2G data here is broken.

Nobody is yet selling mobile broadband to replace fixed broadband. They're selling mobile broadband for those who travel (e.g. corporate road warriors stuck in [censored] hotels) and those who want to use tablets away from WiFi.

EE might sell from next year a suitable 4G /LTE based home broadband solution, using the Cat6 carrier aggregation using 2600mhz and 1800mhz ganged together. This should offer over 300megabit of possible throughput, and with an external antenna on a home, pretty seriously good coverage. I would expect to see usage limits around 400GB a month or so.

My phone isnt an LTE phone and buying a new phone is out of the question.

I bought an LTE MiFi in Sept from eBay as it handles lots of mobile protocols including all the UK/EU LTE freqencies. Sadly it doesn't do the USA frequencies - and the MiFi concept is stating to die due to too much WiFi saturation in hotels and other semi-public areas. So I'm going for an EE PAYG sim in my new iPad when it arrives.

Edited by jchamier (Sat 23-Nov-13 20:17:07)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

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.

Do you do twitter? If so you could tweet the 3 UK team about the speed issues. There could be a fault. (or its the virgin media syndrome that Leicester was famous for back in 2002 on the NTL newsgroups. Too many students downloading the internet).

I used T-mobile on an unlimited plan, restricted to 4Mbps but I could easily watch Netflix for hours on end via it. I often used around 5Gb a month, some months higher, some months barely anything. This was taken out around April 2013 and I upgraded to 4G around August (so lost unlimited). Worth a shot.

It's important to note that backhaul may be shared but more often than not it's not that simple. It's usually that 3 have a transmitter on the same pole as T-mobile do. The cable to the fibre backhaul may be the same but the backhaul rented can be extraordinarily different.

Usually the T-mobile site is a fair bit higher up on that transmit pole, usually having 2, 3 or 4 cells (all pointing in different directions) and usually the transmit power from the T-mobile site is significantly higher than the 3 one.

3 are usually low down on the pole, with only 1 transmitter, renting less backhaul (less customers) with the only thing really shared being the pole and even then it's not like for like.

Then EE also kept plenty of Orange sites (as these are often much higher than T-mobile sites were) and have much better range (often being 30 - 40m high). These sites very often do not feature 3 what-so-ever and are unlikely to even when EE upgrade the orange equipment. The Orange signal is nearly always better than T-mobile in hard to reach areas and this is entirely different too (although in time it'll essentially become a T-mobile site).

Then there's a fair few T-mobile sites where 3 chose not to be as the sites not placed ideal for them.
So all in all the EE network becomes worlds apart from the 3 network despite the agreement between T-mobile and 3 for mast sharing.

I cant see them jumping to 400 gig month (for a reasonable price) even if they were capable it seems that they find it more profitable to sell each gig of data at a premium.

Regarding leicester and students yes its entirely possible, or just the area been bad in general. Although I have found stories on the net about 3 been bad in cities.

Regarding giffgaff and topping up without credit, maybe it is possible I just assumed it isnt but I dont like using web browsers on phones.

I will check into it, also since BT is my landline isp I need to check into the apparent free wifi I have, maybe that will work fine.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

It's important to note that backhaul may be shared but more often than not it's not that simple. It's usually that 3 have a transmitter on the same pole as T-mobile do. The cable to the fibre backhaul may be the same but the backhaul rented can be extraordinarily different.

I thought it was one landline-telco providing a physical connection, but then two logical connections for each mobile telco (ie, EE might have 1Gbps, and Three might have 2x100megabit/sec) to their respective core sites.

Usually the T-mobile site is a fair bit higher up on that transmit pole, usually having 2, 3 or 4 cells (all pointing in different directions) and usually the transmit power from the T-mobile site is significantly higher than the 3 one.

That is interesting, I've seen different effects on two devices side by side.

3 are usually low down on the pole, with only 1 transmitter, renting less backhaul (less customers) with the only thing really shared being the pole and even then it's not like for like.

If they're only sharing the pole its not a RAN share, and MBNL was set up as a RAN share, unlike Cornerstone between VF and O2.

Then EE also kept plenty of Orange sites (as these are often much higher than T-mobile sites were) and have much better range (often being 30 - 40m high). These sites very often do not feature 3 what-so-ever and are unlikely to even when EE upgrade the orange equipment. The Orange signal is nearly always better than T-mobile in hard to reach areas and this is entirely different too (although in time it'll essentially become a T-mobile site).

Around here its the Orange sites that are being killed, coverage in 3G only areas is back to what it was like with T-only before Orange was added. Granted most of those sites were pretty shockingly slow for 3G (2meg or so) but it was better than GPRS :-/

Then there's a fair few T-mobile sites where 3 chose not to be as the sites not placed ideal for them.
So all in all the EE network becomes worlds apart from the 3 network despite the agreement between T-mobile and 3 for mast sharing.

Yes, I gathered that 3 isn't everywhere that T is.

I assume it will be another 12 months minimum before the dust starts to even settle on a lot of the changes.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I cant see them jumping to 400 gig month (for a reasonable price) even if they were capable it seems that they find it more profitable to sell each gig of data at a premium.

You're thinking of them as a mobile telephone provider - if you think of them as an IP connection supplier, with sufficient capacity, why can't they compete with BT Infinity and suchlike?

Regarding leicester and students yes its entirely possible, or just the area been bad in general. Although I have found stories on the net about 3 been bad in cities.

Its been forever blamed for the poor cable performance, and some bad decision making by the first cable company that was there (can't recall the name).

Regarding giffgaff and topping up without credit, maybe it is possible I just assumed it isnt but I dont like using web browsers on phones.

They might have an app, but I mostly used the web browser to visit sites such as ipchicken.com

I cant remember the first ever cable company now either, but it was NTL prior to VM. Leics was one of the first parts of the country cabled up, it happened whilst I was in secondary school which was about 22 years ago now. I would hazard a guess the earlier rollouts were the worser ones as back then broadband wouldnt have been on the radar.

Whilst students may have pushed up the utilisation figures I suspect they were somewhat a scapegoat to cover up bad infrastructure. eg. July still had dodgy performance and no students at that time of year.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 23-Nov-13 23:45:34)

Virgin £15 no limit for calls, texts and unlimited data.

which network do virgin use? although their policy on cable capacity is putting me off a bit.

I tested the speeds again last night on the phone before going bed at 1am, speeds were up but by an inconclusive amount, only up to about 900kbit.

either I have a pretty bad signal issue in an area considered excellent by three, or the congestion is so so severe it doesnt even let up at 1am. The latter is of course possible tho given how low the speeds are.

O2 2G data test 360kbit/sec. almost as fast as Three 3G

Edited by Chrysalis (Sun 24-Nov-13 09:56:38)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

which network do virgin use? although their policy on cable capacity is putting me off a bit.

Virgin Mobile is an MVNO on EE. I believe they have a 4megabit/s max rate on the majority of their plans. (obviously 4megabit is a lot higher than you're getting right now!).

I tested the speeds again last night on the phone before going bed at 1am, speeds were up but by an inconclusive amount, only up to about 900kbit.

either I have a pretty bad signal issue in an area considered excellent by three, or the congestion is so so severe it doesnt even let up at 1am. The latter is of course possible tho given how low the speeds are.

Pretty scary, by 1am any traffic management etc should be relaxed. Peak is generally 8pm through to midnight I thought.

O2 2G data test 360kbit/sec. almost as fast as Three 3G

That's great 2G speeds - EDGE working very well.

browsing this site now on 2G.

The question is do O2 measure usage on 2G same as 3G or do they not bother as they think its so slow noone will bother using it for data.

latency wise its worse than three 3G, but it is useable for light sites like tbb and ssh command line.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

browsing this site now on 2G.
The question is do O2 measure usage on 2G same as 3G or do they not bother as they think its so slow noone will bother using it for data.
latency wise its worse than three 3G, but it is useable for light sites like tbb and ssh command line.

all networks measure all data usage the same on all speed signals.

I don't have any credit on my 3 chip at the moment, or I'd do a speed test and post results.

but for comparison, from my front room, some 4G and 3G tests on my EE 4G connection - tethering my iPhone 5s using a USB cable to rule out WiFi interference. (as 2.4GHz here is congested).

4G - 4 bars out of 5 shown on phone screen
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3122490125

3G - 4 bars out of 5 shown on phone screen
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3122494365

The iPhone doesn't give me a 2G on/off switch, only the ability to disable 4G. This is apparently by design - it affects all EE brands on the 5/5s/5c handsets even if you are not on the 4G price plan. Doesn't bother me.

GPRS and EDGE speeds in the past (when I've seen them) have been around 100kilobit/sec for GPRS and 150kilobit/sec for EDGE. Often the phone switches to 3G pretty quickly.

HI,

I also facing the same problem. Please suggest effective solution.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Post deleted by MrSaffron

3 have kept me on for free since I gave them notice. But I will have to start paying again if I dont contact by mid february.

For me the situation is still the same.

O2 not great speeds but useable, however limited usage until a throttle kicks in which then makes it unuseable.
Three congestion thats so extreme only basic light sites such as tbb work.

when I tried to use the Three dongle on new years eve (when I had no dsl for half a day) tbb wouldnt even load, the congestion had got worse.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 04-Jan-14 15:22:08)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

when I tried to use the Three dongle on new years eve (when I had no dsl for half a day) tbb wouldnt even load, the congestion had got worse.

Around here (GU14) and at my parents (near Gatwick) the Three signal is still strong but data is amazingly slow. Down to as slow as 1.1megabit, compared to the nearly 8meg they used to get. So I'm pretty sure Three have either oversold, or have some big congestion issues to fix, might explain why they're being so slow with the 4G rollout.

I'm up in Manchester. My house seems to attenuate all 3g to next to nothing, so I got Three to send me a home signal box.

For those wondering if these will help: no. They connect via Ethernet to a home broadband router and use that for backhaul. So they only help you in the case where you cannot connect to their main network well, but do have a usable fixed line connection in the house (for those interested, a voice call uses around 45MB of data per hour, give or take. The device itself uses a few meg of data per day. There's barely any overhead added to any 3g data I use, too).

So if you have only your 3 phone in your house and are using that for internet, a 3 home signal box will be of exactly zero use to you.


I've noticed around here the 3g speeds on Three dropping, however I don't use them like some of the posters here. I've got alright ADSL2+ at home (10 down, 1 up with PN Unlimited). My main reason for being with Three is the unlimited internet so that I can stream music in the car. My requirements are therefore only around 1-2mbit, but that needs to be reliable. Far better that than having 10mbit but only now and again. When I was shopping for the phone I wanted the Galaxy S3 (it was the flagship then!) with unlimited data. Three were the cheapest of the bunch and, at the time, were getting rave reviews so I took the plunge.

For me? I'm still happy. However if I were trying to use their 3g for my only internet access I might be a bit disappointed by the speeds dropping to 3-4mbit from 6-7mbit a year ago. I appreciate that my situation is far different to some of yours however!

It's funny you say you notice the speeds dropping as down Oxford Road I've seen much improvement in the lead up to Christmas and more so around the city centre.

Is there actually much signal strength in The Oxford or the hospital yet? I'm more toward the Northern Quarter, it's not specifically bad here (3-4mbit), but not racing away either!

There is, that's where I noticed the most improvement (mainly because it was non existent at times before hand)

Not I have a solid 3-5 bars the entire journey from Withington to the centre.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Spammers always get caught - goodbye

Edited by MrSaffron (Tue 21-Jan-14 16:57:34)