Is Three�s network struggling at the moment or is it just me

I switched from FTTC to using Three for my home broadband about a year ago, using a Mikrotik SXT LTE.

It is worked really well for much for the last year and I�ve never had to fallback to the Plusnet FTTC line I�ve still got as a backup.

However, the last couple of weeks has been pretty awful. I don�t believe that my connection to the Three mast has got any worse, signal strength has been incredibly consistent over the year:

https://toop.microsign.co.uk/fud/lte/localdomain/loc...

And over the year speed has been reasonably reliable (with the odd bad day when it dipped a bit):

https://toop.microsign.co.uk/fud/lte/localdomain/loc...

But the last couple of weeks have not been good, this is typically what I�ve been seeing from speedtest.net:

https://toop.microsign.co.uk/fud/lte/localdomain/loc...

To me it seems to be parts of Three�s network not coping, as when it is bad the speed from different places can be totally inconsistent. I�ll do a TBB or speedof.me speed test and get a solid 80/30 then immediately after do a speedtest.net on that gets sub 30/10 (and the repeat both to see the speedtest.net is still very slow).

Or news.bbc.co.uk will be loading fine and facebook isn�t, or YouTube will load without buffering, report 45MB+ bandwidth in the nerd tools, and yet at the same time Prime Video will buffer.

Oddly though it isn�t connected to peak times, it is bad this morning at 10:30 for example, well out of any peak times.

But I've not seen lots of other people complaining about recent deterioration of performance, which makes me wonder if it is a problem specific to me on the mast I'm using.

It could of course be my Mikrotik, I broke my ankle a couple of months ago, so haven�t been able to swap out my spare one to test that. I've tried to check against Three on my phone when there have been issues, but that has been inconsistent (sometimes the phone is also slow, sometimes is isn't).

Anyone else having problems with Three like this ?

It has never got quite bad enough to drive me back to the 25/4 MB Plusnet FTTC line, but I'm definitely going to be investigating EE when I get a bit more mobile again.

It seems to happen to all of us for a few weeks, then clear up. Believed to be to do with major upgrades to their network.

Mine did exactly what you describe for 3-4 weeks in the second half of last year, on both my phone when at home and the HomeFi, and I got quite worried. Often only getting H+ on the phone. The HomeFi stayed on LTE but lousy and very variable throughout.

Then one day it cleared up on both and has been rock solid ever since.

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

, , , but I'm definitely going to be investigating EE when I get a bit more mobile again.

Nice pun!

Mine's been poop for last couple of weeks too. Most of the time the speeds have been reduced to 10mb or so, however I've also seen times when speed test is fine yet Youtube and websites fail to load or load partially or glitches for now apparent reason

Network upgrades have been completed on my local mast 2 weeks ago but the service is clearly oversubscribed again in my area. Must be all these cheap deals finally coming home to roost as 2 masts cover a large population area.

When working from home the other day I noticed around 3pm - 4pm that the speed was not even 1mb, so tried testing speed at similar time and seems to be a common issue so must be the school children

Mine does definitely not correlate with load on the mast.

Some nights it has been rock solid during peak streaming times. Some nights it has been awful even in the early hours of the morning. Overall the slowness has been incredibly inconsistent both in the times it occurs and the actual parts of the Internet that it impacts.

It has been particularly bad this afternoon. I'm switching to "three.co.uk" from "3internet" to see if that has any affect (it being pretty much the only network level thing I can tweak).

Yes, its been absolutely shocking all last week for me, from last Thursday to today its been really unreliable too. The issue appears to be a lack of bandwidth at their end causing them to be traffic shaping, but at times it gets so bad available bandwidth is down to 56k modem speeds. I've seen times when I can't even get up google or thinkbroadband because the routers connected yet there's nothing there! It appears three is definitely throttling you-tube.

Rebooting the router can help, as your are assigned a new IP address on the network each time, but unfortunately it don't last long before it returns to "Pants" levels of bandwidth again.

Strangely when I turn on a free VPN trial it returns to full speed however on all those websites, so they're obviously having problems if they're limiting bandwidth to such an extent.

Another weird thing I've noticed is my mobile on 4g (on three, on the same mast) seems to work fast than my three router. So they're selectively throttling routers on their network, not mobiles.

Three do not seem keen to report network issues publicly when they have them, so they are not helping themselves much.

Edited by deleted (Tue 11-Feb-20 19:40:43)

I agree with what everyone has said, it has been dire especially at peak times and it does appear to be traffic shaping as far as I can tell, as at times my 4Mb adsl line was better in the evenings.
I have already put in a cancel notice for mine and Ill be left with my 100Gb mobile broadband one until FTTP/Gigafast comes along which is likely under two months away.

I will say though it has for 95% of the time saved me from being in internet hell for the past 14 months for which im grateful, but roll on 900Mb+500Mb Fibre services, cant wait.

Yep, same here too,. we have some rather heavy downloaders in this area and then performance has varied from just about acceptable, to, well, shyte.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15804211481...

That's on 4G+ (supposedly).

Also has anyone noticed how 3 block ICMP on the new 'cloud' network?

Edited by bsod (Tue 11-Feb-20 21:58:46)

Things haven't been to bad since I switched to three mobile broadband last November until this last week.

Latency is apppalling:

Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=2131ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=870ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=3059ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=1842ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=2922ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=883ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=355ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=536ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=1863ms TTL=52
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=1647ms TTL=52

my 'normal' ping has been 30-40ms.