Ah. Point taken .

It does however also explain why your connection is so poor on Three, which is likely to have the least capacity on 4G. And probably where you are also on 3G. Many others in your area will be hitting it hard too. Particularly during what I read is now the peak time, 6-8 pm. I thought it would be longer than that and for you it almost certainly is.

EE is generally the best, with Vodafone also getting some good reports here in contrast to their fixed line service. O2 seems to me to be highly variable for available speeds depending on location.

You could do similar to what I did before ditching my perfectly satisfactory FTTC on cost grounds and went for the 2018 Three Black Friday Unlimited everything deal. I was on a 4G EE low allowance deal for it previously as I didn't really need mobile broadband in those days and had ditched O2 because of its uselessness even for voice and texts in various places I visited. Particularly but not just wide areas of Cornwall.

I bought a £1 Three PAYG SIM from the papershop and stuck a fiver on it for a few days, then took the plunge for my mobile and dropped my FTTC. At the beginning of Jan 2019, having survived the Christmas heavy period, I gave notice on the landline itself. Total saving compared to landline + FTTC + EE contract £49pm.

Since then I bought internet connected security cams so bought the Three HomeFi, as tethering those obviously wouldn't work when I was out of the house! I'm still quids in .

Can you get Three on both 3G and 4G, or do they only have a 4G signal where you live?

If you can get a 3G signal from Three, there's a good chance EE will be available from the same mast as Three with a stronger 4G signal and more bandwidth. In the meantime it may be worth setting your network connection to 3G only mode, because Three's 3G signal is often a lot less congested than 4G.

If you can only get Three on 4G you're in their 'supervoice' coverage area which is just marketing speak for 'rubbish data speeds'. If you're in the West, try a pay as you go sim on Vodafone and EE to see if they work any better. If you're in the East, try O2 and EE.

I am about a 1 hour drive south of Glasgow(East Ayrshire),we can only get 3G & it is setup for that mode.
So it is a bit of a nightmare for us here & talking to three is a waste of time & stressful.

Edited by elvisarron (Sat 21-Mar-20 16:07:32)

Has the network stabilised or I am talking too early?
My 4G has not dropped or traffic blackholed since 2 days now. Just checking with rest of you.
Earlier used to get speed in the range of 40-45 down, now its 20-25M though, which might be increase in users or people home working? Also I have not removed GoBinge the speed is still good on fast.com
Will be good to check others thoughts?

Maxing out at 14mb here.

Well last night it dropped about 5.45pm to 1.77mbps,shocking.

Tonight dropped to 1.63MBPS,consistantly s.h.i.t.hope three looks at these forums.

Edited by elvisarron (Wed 25-Mar-20 21:38:26)

Mine used to be 100+ but has dropped to 80+ still good though.

Speedtest

So after 10 years with three I’ve completely had my fill. Other than my terrible experience with their joke of a CS department, the service is beyond bad now.

I’m fairly rural but it used to be pretty good. I can only pick up 2 bands (forget the which ones now) but one is a strong signal but slow, the other is not so sting but was always pretty fast (I have an 525 and have to use LTE inspecteur to force it to the fastest band). Last few weeks it’s been shocking, unusable a lot of the time. Looking to switch to Vodafone, but anything is can try before I do?

In reply to a post by autopilot:

So after 10 years with three I’ve completely had my fill. Other than my terrible experience with their joke of a CS department, the service is beyond bad now.

Be aware that Three's CS is in India, and that country is on severe lockdown.

Many areas of the UK are under extreme load for mobile data services, my normal EE 100 Mbps at home is currently running at about 9 Mbps.