In reply to a post by planetf1:

Tempted to call three and cancel that 'enhancement' ? Since I'm on unlimited data anyway

Sounds similar to the legacy traffic management those on the now discontinued "One plan" used to suffer from. The original "unlimited" plan.

Unless 5G rollout is fast, and people move to it, I can see the "unlimited" 4G plans becoming a problem again.

Tried ringing to complain, got nowhere, she said the name was wrong i was giving! checked the bill, they have my surname down twice and as my middle name! doh.

So fired off an email to the exec office instead

Yesterday lunchtime I had a webchat with three.

They were insistent there was a known problem, but couldn't elaborate on what was effected, or had any ETA. True? Possibly - but I doubt they have the details. They also said they'd add me to notifications by text, but I'm sceptical - no confirmation on the BB sim nor main contact.

Anyway I pushed to get 'GoBinge' disabled which they seemed to think wouldn't help, but at the same time were ok to comply.

I think GoBinge may have had restrictions - whether still valid I can't be sure: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/07/three-...

I then restarted the router (just in case)

Many have seen a connection reset clear the issue for a few hours. in my case though previously it came back in hours , but so far
no stalls (I'd still like to see for longer, but looking more hopeful)
'fast.com' speedtests have gone from around 2 Mbps up to near line speed. (see https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/07/three-... for caveats at the time, but no idea if these have changed)
- no pauses etc for netflix, youtube etc

It's perhaps the latter that's most interesting from a netflix perspective.

The router's heading back to it's home in a few hours, but if anything changes will update here

NOTE: My contract is unlimited, so GoBinge offers no financial benefit. If not unlimited it can be a significant cost saving, and I don't know if they'll put it back on again after, so tread carefully.

I can also add briefly I tried vodafone in the router -- speeds about double in this location, but worked well. It's my plan B if I can't get 3 working.

Edited by planetf1 (Sun 01-Mar-20 10:47:53)

These issues are present on Smarty, so doubt gobinge has anything to do with it. Go binge is likely just a flag on the intermediary system between billing and network to prompt billing system to zero rate.

Turning router off has helped in my case on Smarty for very short periods of time then is back just as bad as ever. Been flicking between 4G and 3G when peak time as 3G is much quicker than the poor 4G speed.

You shattered my optimism !

Seriously that's a good datapoint ... I may go to smarty anyway... and as you say no GoBinge there


That being said I did hit 2 issues - initially the pauses. Subseuently a few netflix glitches. the latter may be explained.

Out of interest how quickly after a restart do you tend to see issues?

In reply to a post by planetf1:

You shattered my optimism !

Seriously that's a good datapoint ... I may go to smarty anyway... and as you say no GoBinge there


That being said I did hit 2 issues - initially the pauses. Subseuently a few netflix glitches. the latter may be explained.

Out of interest how quickly after a restart do you tend to see issues?

Anything from 10 mins to an hour or so. I find the router is connecting to my preferred cell (band 3) and then has been flipped to another band when I check out of frustration that everything on Youtube is 240p / blocky. I'm finding all 3 of my in range cell sites totally lacking performance. The very regular stalling and not doing anything until videos are paused or websites refreshed is really starting to annoy me. Speeds are slow on 3G but this stalling issue isn't visible.

Best case I've seen for the last 2 weeks is 20-30Mb/s and average 15-20Mb/s with 70ms latency at all times of the day/night. I've noticed web streaming to be most impacted with choppy and stalling playback. It appears Three are limiting bandwidth or throttling it in some way, especially Netflix and you-tube.

I can't have the Xbox one downloading an update and watch you-tube at the same time, if a phone in the house is watching you-tube and I try on the PC it just buffers constantly. Same goes for anything downloading on the PC and I try and watch you-tube on the Xbox One at the same time. Utterly pointless.

I'm also seeing times where webpages take ages to load or just don't come up at all, even thinkbroadband.com won't load up at all during these times. manually changing DNS servers don't make any difference as the latency is so poor. I have forgotten what a brisk browsing experience is these days.

Lastly for some reason I can't fathom, my desktop PC is wired to the B535 and every single time I turn on the PC, the router refuses to issue it an IP Address (even though DHCP is on). I have to pull the power plug on the router or "Troubleshoot" windows 10 network settings to reset the Ethernet connection. Sometimes I need to do it twice to get the router to connect. I've raised this one with three and they say I just need to reboot the router, like its nothing out the ordinary. But I'm resetting the router up to 20 times a day just to get a half-decent service. (I've even factory reset the B535 but that made no difference either.)

The first few months of Three broadband I experienced was brilliant 50-60Mb/s 24 hours a day and I had no complaints at all with the service, since January the quality of service has plummeted IMHO. Whilst I believe it's to do with the Three 5g roll-out being implemented really badly, the lack of "keeping customers informed" has just made the situation worse.

Its obviously a lack of backbone bandwidth to Three's broadband service since the 5g rollout. I get that they're traffic shaping the service whilst they load balance 5g, but the way they've gone about it has impacted existing 4g customers massively at the expense of a fast service for their new 5g customers.

I'm seriously considering ditching Three at this point.

Edited by buggerlugs (Sun 01-Mar-20 14:23:58)

Juts an update -- no further issues noted.
The router is now in another location so will only have second-hand reports until the end of the week.

I am now seeing a much more stable connection than a couple of weeks ago. The trouble is that it is really slow.
Uploads are half the speed they used to be, downloads about a third the speed. Latency is just as awful as before.
It seems that my contract with Three runs until early May. Well, it looks like they have about one month to sort themselves out (I doubt they will) and then I'll be getting myself a nice shiny new EE sim.

Hmm. Frying Pan, meet fire!

I was using EE a year or so ago, and it was excellent. But Three was far cheaper, and good enough. So I switched to Three. All good until the middle of February, when overnight it became slow and unreliable. A few weeks later, it is still slow, but no longer unreliable.

Three Support don't seem to have any idea, so I ordered an EE sim. It arrived today. It's about 40% more expensive than Three, but that's OK.

What isn't OK is that it is slower than Three. Yes, the latency is markedly better, but the speeds are worse. And there is some issue with IPv4.

My VOIP connections are hopeless with EE, fine with Three.

So after a few hours, I've cancelled the EE sim. What a pity. I had high hopes.