In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

when I tried to use the Three dongle on new years eve (when I had no dsl for half a day) tbb wouldnt even load, the congestion had got worse.

Around here (GU14) and at my parents (near Gatwick) the Three signal is still strong but data is amazingly slow. Down to as slow as 1.1megabit, compared to the nearly 8meg they used to get. So I'm pretty sure Three have either oversold, or have some big congestion issues to fix, might explain why they're being so slow with the 4G rollout.

I'm up in Manchester. My house seems to attenuate all 3g to next to nothing, so I got Three to send me a home signal box.

For those wondering if these will help: no. They connect via Ethernet to a home broadband router and use that for backhaul. So they only help you in the case where you cannot connect to their main network well, but do have a usable fixed line connection in the house (for those interested, a voice call uses around 45MB of data per hour, give or take. The device itself uses a few meg of data per day. There's barely any overhead added to any 3g data I use, too).

So if you have only your 3 phone in your house and are using that for internet, a 3 home signal box will be of exactly zero use to you.


I've noticed around here the 3g speeds on Three dropping, however I don't use them like some of the posters here. I've got alright ADSL2+ at home (10 down, 1 up with PN Unlimited). My main reason for being with Three is the unlimited internet so that I can stream music in the car. My requirements are therefore only around 1-2mbit, but that needs to be reliable. Far better that than having 10mbit but only now and again. When I was shopping for the phone I wanted the Galaxy S3 (it was the flagship then!) with unlimited data. Three were the cheapest of the bunch and, at the time, were getting rave reviews so I took the plunge.

For me? I'm still happy. However if I were trying to use their 3g for my only internet access I might be a bit disappointed by the speeds dropping to 3-4mbit from 6-7mbit a year ago. I appreciate that my situation is far different to some of yours however!

It's funny you say you notice the speeds dropping as down Oxford Road I've seen much improvement in the lead up to Christmas and more so around the city centre.

Is there actually much signal strength in The Oxford or the hospital yet? I'm more toward the Northern Quarter, it's not specifically bad here (3-4mbit), but not racing away either!

There is, that's where I noticed the most improvement (mainly because it was non existent at times before hand)

Not I have a solid 3-5 bars the entire journey from Withington to the centre.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

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Edited by MrSaffron (Tue 21-Jan-14 16:57:34)