I would agree but I have just run some tests on my smarty sim in a Samsung S10e and wasn’t getting much above a few meg using the ‘three.co.uk’ APN but when switching to ‘3internet’ APN I immediately got a boost up to 20-30mbps ....

I seem to have a hostname too, but not sure if this is just CGNAT.

Made no difference to me on Smarty whichever APN I used. You certainly couldn't get shut of the CGNAT from their service. I tried lots of things over the year I had it too.

Three network is unpredictable and temperamental recently. You should change back and see if it drops again. Could just have disconnected the data service momentarily leading to you hitting a different frequency band that was near capacity.

You know you're on CGNAT if your assigned IP address in the router is different to your publicly visible one.

Edited by gary333 (Thu 09-Jul-20 14:52:12)

Three's network certainly is an odd ball!

So I have the Smarty sim in my router now on test, its performing much better than the three sim that came with it did..... hoping it will hold up for a while, the EE sim is great but the limit of 1TB and 12 devices is problematic and I might upgrade to a 5G phone with EE so gonna need that sim.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Three's network certainly is an odd ball!

So I have the Smarty sim in my router now on test, its performing much better than the three sim that came with it did..... hoping it will hold up for a while, the EE sim is great but the limit of 1TB and 12 devices is problematic and I might upgrade to a 5G phone with EE so gonna need that sim.

If you’re using a router you are only using one device technically lol. Don’t worry about that anyway its only a clause to allow them to kick the pee takers using it for business / commercial use on their network

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Three's network certainly is an odd ball!

Built cheap, sold cheap! Now trying to increase investment and discovering it takes years. Remember with Smarty you have a (old railways) 3rd class ticket. Lots of things are unavailable to you to get the lowest price. Smarty, along with Voxi (from Vodafone) were intended for handset use by the younger generation whom seem to use social media for a living.

So I have the Smarty sim in my router now on test, its performing much better than the three sim that came with it did..... hoping it will hold up for a while, the EE sim is great but the limit of 1TB and 12 devices is problematic and I might upgrade to a 5G phone with EE so gonna need that sim.

The fact you are getting faster doesn't mean the Three SIM was slower, just that it is faster right now.

Radio internet is not as predictable as wired. The sun can come out and your speeds shoot up because half the coverage area has gone to town / beach / shops / out for food (etc)

Yes, tested this and correct...

I've put the EE sim back in now, also behind CGNAT no bet, Smarty performed ok until about 5.30 and then it couldn't cope.

Well aware of the differences, when I say speeds however, I mean headline speeds, if EE tops out at 50MB in the afternoon its likely to still be hitting 20mbps in the evening...

if Three is topping out at 40 in the afternoon I'm likely to be watching freeview in the evening.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Well aware of the differences, when I say speeds however, I mean headline speeds, if EE tops out at 50MB in the afternoon its likely to still be hitting 20mbps in the evening...

if Three is topping out at 40 in the afternoon I'm likely to be watching freeview in the evening.

Interesting. Before the pandemic, here I could get 100 to 150 Mbps on a Saturday lunchtime, and then 60 Mbps in the evenings. Now in a day lunchtime, good to hit 40 Mbps, and in the evenings around 10 to 15 Mbps. Mast is in the centre of a large residential estate, which had for years poor service from VO2, so EE got a lot of customers. This mast has two carriers of B3 transmitting, but would need new panels to transmit anything additional, so I'm not expecting any hardware upgrade until 5G arrives.

Which given the pandemic, I've put back to 2025. And we were quite early on with EE's 4G (launched in 2012) and this mast was upgraded around spring 2013.

Huawei kit in the mobile network could also be a brake on 5G rollout.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Huawei kit in the mobile network could also be a brake on 5G rollout.

Could be a problem for all networks, but I gather Three was on a major switch from an underperforming vendor to Huawei for both 4G and 5G. Other networks have a mix of manufacturers but a large amount of Huawei.

This on twitter from earlier this week, thread starts with BBC's Rory C.J, and then this :
https://twitter.com/PedroClarke1/status/128117221335...