Three Broadband - Fast on Mac / Throttled on iPhone

Hi all, I'm new to the forum so I'm sorry if this has been asked before.

I've had Three Broadband for the last 6 months or so. Overall I'm happy with it, though that's mostly because the only alternative option is a 1Mbps copper connection through BT.

My wife and I spend most of our time using broadband on our phones through wifi and since Coronavirus I've been working from home for the last month using my MacBook Pro.

When I browse throughout the day or connect with my colleagues on Zoom I never have any issues at all with broadband on my Mac. It works very well and I don't have any issues.

When I use my phone the broadband is very hit and miss. That's the best way to describe it because I'll be browsing fine and I'll click a link, often on the same site, and it just goes to a blank screen with a spinning loading wheel. Or, I'll load a site like BBC and all the text will load instantly but none of the images will load. It sometimes feels like media such as photos and video are being throttled on the phone but document text isn't being throttled.

When we hit one of these issues and a site / photo isn't loading we turn off wifi and the phone falls back to 3G / 4G and loads instantly. We both use Three as our mobile phone provider so this feels a little strange.

It's a shame because we've invested in an Eero Pro mesh network setup to provide coverage throughout our house but we're mostly just falling back to our Three mobile SIM card.

I'm a web developer so the first thing that comes to mind is that Three is looking at the user-agent string and throttling certain requests from certain devices. I also believe it's throttling because we have Three Broadband and Three Mobile so we must be hitting the same tower. There aren't many around here, but our approximate location is Claverton, just outside Bath.

Has anyone else observed something similar?

Edit: To add, we're on a Huawei B535 Router

Edit again: I installed Huawei Monitor on a PC from advice on another thread. Here are some stats if it means anything to anyone: https://imgur.com/a/LJVHQt5

Edited by deleted (Tue 14-Apr-20 21:45:27)

I was getting very similar issues on my B525 but via Smarty. The speedtests would show a decent enough speed (although still much lower than they had been historically from February onwards).

Like you say, you would click a link and then nothing happens. I could then press back and press again and it'd work. I would get sometimes same on YouTube and Netflix, but it was mainly browsing. This happened mainly on phones.

No idea what it is/was, but I've knocked 4G on the head and are about to sell my B525

Unless you are browsing lots of non HTTPS websites then Three can't be "user-agent string sniffing".

The user-agent header is part of the encrypted data in an HTTPS connection, Three has no access to it.

I'd really consider the dangers of using of Zoom at the moment and use something more secure instead.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2020/04/13/5...

Not to mention traffic is routed through servers in China. So your company must have no corporate espionage worries at all.

https://telecoms.com/503550/zoom-security-flaws-and-...

Seems "Chinese government run companies" are setting up in the states to give them protections associated with this.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/04/14/ch...

Very worrying times. It looks like the tide is now turning on China.

Edited by deleted (Wed 15-Apr-20 10:33:38)

Thanks, but that's quite a bit off topic.

Zoom is only one example. FaceTime, Skype, and Slack video work equally well on my desktop.

Have you tried changing your B535 apn from 3internet to three.co.uk? I would try myself but not currently facing the constant need to refresh. I'm sure the issue will pop back up in a few hours for me and will try it then.

Yes I did go off topic, I got a bit carried away with my current Anti-Chinese government sentiment....sorry.

And whilst the 3internet APN will work you will get problems with NAT over xbox.

Edited by deleted (Wed 15-Apr-20 14:49:34)

In reply to a post by woodmass14:

Have you tried changing your B535 apn from 3internet to three.co.uk? I would try myself but not currently facing the constant need to refresh. I'm sure the issue will pop back up in a few hours for me and will try it then.

This has made a difference! Since yesterday evening everything has been loading smoothly without timeouts on my phone.

I think I read elsewhere that my IP might change more frequently, which will be a pain as I have to whitelist my IP to access some remote servers for work, so I'll have to evaluate the cost / benefit but for now this seems to be helping.

Don't quote me on this but i think using the three.co.uk apn defaults you to CG NAT. Whereas 3internet gives you an ip address. CG NAT causes a host of issues for online gaming, surveillance cameras etc.. I know that much. And probably for folks like yourself working from home. Maybe someone more versed in this stuff could explain further as i know little to nothing about CG NAT. If you have trouble connecting to remote servers, you can always change it back. Who knows, it might be fine.

There was a reason i didn't try the three.co.uk APN after these issues cropped up and was due to troubles with online games and strict NAT.