EE Mobile broadband - speed ok but not that responsive

Hi all,

I don't live in a fibre area (despite it being a new-build estate of ~100 houses in a largish city - crazy!), so I am stuck with ~4mb/s ADSL. It is the sub 1mb/sec upload speed that is the real killer though.

So I use EE mobile broadband for uploading 1GB+ files for work and some web browsing. However, despite speeds being fine (30mb/s+) it always seems a bit "sluggish" compared to the ADSL.

Been doing some speed/ping tests, here are the results:

ADSL:
http://www.pingtest.net/result/151722612.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/5623019963.png

EE 4G Mobile Broadband:
http://www.pingtest.net/result/151723977.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/5623043911.png

So, the pingtest says the connection is fine - weird.

However, pinging 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS) from the command prompt shows vastly different results:

ADSL:

Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=57
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=57
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=57
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 27ms, Maximum = 28ms, Average = 27ms

EE 4G Mobile Broadband:

Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=117ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=67ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=53
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 67ms, Maximum = 117ms, Average = 88ms

Quite the difference! Pinging other sites shows a similar difference.

Is this normal, nothing can be done?

Cheers,

Gareth

The ping test is testing against a Maidenhead server and likely the Google DNS and the majority of sites are not at that location.

Picking a London server may be more representative of where more sites servers are located.

Fixed line services are often more stable in terms of latency than wireless services, so would expect to see less variation on ADSL (if in an area with no congestion issues)