HomeFi 3 Connection Issues

I've had 3 HomeFi for about a month now, for the first 3 weeks it was great, even with no antenna my B311 was receiving around 30/35 up and down.

I noticed a week ago that speeds dropped to 15/20 and I began having issues.

Websites would load fine but embedded video would not load/play. Twitter would load tweets but pictures and videos took an age to load. Streaming would be stuttery from various sources, iplayer, netflix etc. My cloud storage will not connect, thats from google and microsoft.

I have an ID Mobile sim for my phone which runs on the 3 network, when I switch off WiFi and use mobile data, it has no issues loading all of the above. When I turn WiFi back on, the issues return.

This had led me to think it's a router issue. It's as if there is a bottleneck in connecting to certain sites, I don't know if it's security or firewall but something is restricting connection.

I will phone 3 tonight when I am home, I did check their network connection page and it is saying 'There's a problem with the network in your area' but the fact ID mobile has no issues is confusing.

Would any of your experts on here have an ideas? Anything I can try myself before calling 3?

Have you tried putting your ID sim in to the router and see if it acts the same?

I notice on my B525 that when it first connects I get a much higher signal strength (5 bars) however performance is poor. After a couple of minutes the signal strength normally drops (down to 4 bars) however now the performance is much, much better. I think it's swapping bands and using carrier aggregation and thus the lower signal but better performance.

If using a phone plugged in to the router I find that it will not return to the 'better' band. I have to then turn the router off and sometimes that doesn't work (so i don't use a phone anymore.

I have found by logging in to the Huawei router page you can on the front screen turn mobile data off. I find that by turning data off for a minute or so, and then back on then gives the carrier aggregation back (4G+).

Must be something odd in the firmware that causes this as you would assume turning the router on and off would work better, but alas not always, so might be the same on the B311?

My 311 has been playing up too, and I was thinking it was dying. It would suddenly stop loading anything even though it claimed to be internet connected and so did all devices.


It has the SIM in that comes with it, and I have the unlimited everything SIM-only in my phone. No problems at all with the phone or with the devices if I used the phone as a hotspot for them.

I had to keep re-booting the 311, possibly three or more times a day.

Then I thought - it's in an upstairs room and my bedroom is 25-30 degrees even overnight. Not only that but my room faces north, the room the router is in faces south. So yesterday which was very hot I had the window open in the router room (not just my bedroom) and all was well.

It seems to be behaving today too. So I suspect they are very heat sensitive, as I never had trouble with DSL modems and routers.

I have not tried the ID sim in the router, I will try this tonight. If the issues continue then I will know it's the router and not the general connection from the mast.

Temperature is fine in the room.

I'll still give 3 a call when I am home to have a chat.

That was gary's suggestion. Mine was that the B311 may simply have been overheating . Is/Was it hot in that room?

My Netgear Aircard would overheat then shut down and restart, especially if lots of wireless devices were connected, so is a distinct possibility with how hot it's been recently.

Update on this.

After an hour on hold (really) I finally spoke to the HomeFi team.

The B311 is awaiting a software update which is 'coming in the next few weeks'.

The issue was the Network Search, by default this is Auto. He made me switch to 3G only. Seems there is an issue with 3G/4G switching.

This has fixed my issues but speed is reduced which I am not happy with.

I'll be contacting them in a few weeks to ask for an update as I'm paying for a 4G connection, I am within a 4G area, yet having to use 3G only.

Why not select 4G only? This is what I am using? Unless, of course it's the 4G network that is knackered.

When this happens, does it usually happen while "4g+" is active? I have had weird, if not similar issues in the past.

I tried 4G only and the above issues were present.

He was quite clear that this was a router issue.