Virgin Mobile down much slower than up

I have been using a Three SIM in my Zxyel LTE7410 and getting upto 60Mbps down and around 30 up. I recently replaced it with a Virgin SIM and now I only get around 20 down but still around 30 up. OpenSignal tells me the Zyxel is pointing at the mast so I am wondering what could be the issue here. The Zyxel is about 6m up so getting on a ladder to pull out the sim and test with a phone is not top of my favourites list....

Anyone have any thoughts?

Could be the amount of users on the mast is much higher than that of 3.

We have thousands of O2 users/phones in the building where I work, and in the day you find that download might only be a couple of mbps, however upload can often be 10-20mbps. Come late evening the speed can be 50-60mbps or higher.

Virgin is a virtual network on EE so doesn�t get the full capacity. It�s why they�re cheaper.

Not according to their website....https://store.virginmedia.com/virgin-media-mobile/our-mobile-network/fast-4g-data-speeds.html

...although the cynic might argue that this performance would only be achieved at 4am with noone else connected to the mast!

No, there's something wrong. Even if I wasn't pointing the antenna directly at the mast, about 1km across a river valley in a very rural area, I would expect faster speeds. Heck I get 40Mbps on my (3) iPhone indoors...

Can you get an EE sim in a phone to test with?

In reply to a post by TooUnCool:

Not according to their website....https://store.virginmedia.com/virgin-media-mobile/our-mobile-network/fast-4g-data-speeds.html

From that link, �Legal� section:

4.1 Availability: We will try to make our Services available to you at all times but quality and availability could be affected by factors outside of our control, such as the weather, or faults in the Network or any other networks used to provide the Services to you.

(By the way, not leaving a space before the https makes it unclickable, just like putting a full stop at the end does).

Also note that they claim to be faster on average than Vodafone, Three and O2, but don�t list EE. As Virgin did not buy any �Mobile spectrum� when it was sold to providers, and haven�t subsequently bought any from one, they must be leasing space on one of the four that did ....

You have one guess left .

That link says maxed at 70mbps. I�ve seen a friend of mine max out at 60.
I�m with EE and in the same location have managed 150mbps.

It�s a non issue because most places can�t achieve these very high speeds.

The point I was making is that VM buy space on EE�s network, so of course they don�t get all the features. You can�t make 4G voice calls, or use WiFi calling to help when no signal indoors. (4G voice calling helps indoors, as you can connect to the lower frequency band)

MVNO�s are second tier providers. Hence cheaper.

Separately the EE and Three transmitters on the mast may not be in the same place. You may get better service from Three for geographical reasons.

In reply to a post by biohead:

Can you get an EE sim in a phone to test with?

Testing data speeds is generally hard, as you quickly hit the 30 Mbps speed cap that EE has on PAYG. My own experience with a Virgin Media PAYG SIM last summer showed it was limited to 3G, did not even connect to 4G. (in a Google Pixel handset).