Three 4G in Portsmouth

I'm still awaiting a landline for BB after just moving and I've survived the last 2 weeks tethering my LG G2 on Three. I'm just down the road from Southsea common (I can hear the hovercraft) so I'm in the coverage area for Three's 4G service.

So far, I've found it to be rather disappointing. It really slows down in the evening. Totally useless for gaming and the upload speed is really slow. http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Edit: And another test at 21:15 - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
Edit2: Around 8am - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Admittedly, the signal strength isn't great but it seems much less congested during the morning. Is this the future of the tech or is Three's implementation of it here just not very good?

Is there anyone in the area using this or other Three 4G users that would like to share their experience? I'm curious.

Edited by deleted (Mon 11-Aug-14 08:03:16)

In reply to a post by Benjanyan:

Is there anyone in the area using this or other Three 4G users that would like to share their experience? I'm curious.

Three 4G in Farnborough is only on one transmitter, and generally its slower than 3G when doing speed tests. In the middle of the day it might be the same speed. It is lower latency and seems more responsive however. I'm using a Moto G 4G with a 3 PAYG SIM.

Compared to EE's 4G its early days, and I suspect Three could get congested quickly on 4G and leave 3G faster for a couple of years as they increase roll out and gain the second block of frequency they've bought from EE (due end of 2014 I think).

If they are only just rolling it out there, give it a while - when they did it in Exeter and Plymouth. the first few weeks it was very patchy, but after a few weeks, it's now very good coverage and speeds are excellent.

Of course performance is very variable - all the networks will and do have this issue, for all kinds of reasons, some perfectly legit, some less so (as in they could fix easily)

Thanks for sharing, James. I too have found 4G more responsive under poor conditions although 3G doesn't even seem to load pages here half the time in the evening.

No idea how many base stations there are here on 4G. Not many, I presume.

I've just spent 9 days at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London and I was entirely reliant on 3's 4G service for my Internet connectivity. I used 1GB a day and browsing speeds were like home broadband. Speed tests indicated at least 10/10. In comparision, 3's 3G service in Central London is always congested during normal office hours.

If you are seeing congestion in a recently 4G activated area then it is likely 3 have not yet upgraded the backbone connection coming out of your area.

4G signals appear to be weaker than 3G but that does not seem to impact on data throughput on 4G.

Signal (in terms of what you see on-screen) rarely has much accuracy and isn't real time anyhow, but in my experience, you can get poor speeds with "full signal" and amazing speeds with "practically none" in that sense - the signal meter's are a basic guide, but they don't directly correspond to speed/latency etc.

In reply to a post by Yves:

3's 3G service in Central London is always congested during normal office hours.

That's pretty much the case on all networks I find in Central London - it's certainly unlikely you'll see the major headline speeds (and even EE's speed is rapidly falling as the capacity is used up - nobody seriously believes those headline figures are real world long term performance figures).

IME you're lucky in some parts of London to get a call or text through half the time, let alone data.

I'm often in the Portsmouth area and 4G is very much still being rolled out (slowly but surely) so it often can be very slow.

Three have a very ambitious plan to roll out a lot of 4G coverage by the end of 2014 (I can't see them meeting their plan)

I made a may a little while ago that shows how their planed coverage compares to current 4G from EE ad others:- https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zOAnXJFLQ...

The BIG problem Three has is they lack the frequency.

EE is able to use 20MHz channels and therefore offer up-to 60Mbps in double speed areas ~20Mbps average in reality and often falling short of this where the network is busy.

Where as Three don't have enough frequency so their speeds will never match what EE can do, hence why Three were only claiming average of 14Mbps for 4G compared to 12Mbps average for DC-HSPA+.

Three's rollout is some what different to EE's it seems.

Three seem to light up a town / city with one cell and then fill the coverage in, in the coming months.

EE only announced a town or city having 4G after it had 70% 4G coverage. Big difference really.

I must say I tried an EE sim in my iPhone 5s and the coverage is excellent. I'll be more than tempted to jump ship when my 3 sim only ends.