In reply to a post by jchamier:

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.

I can say I've noticed similar with the speeds pre and post lockdown.... I also noticed EE changed the PCI on all the cells in my area, not sure why they did that, assuming a software change somewhere.

I'm in a similar situation, also on a housing estate however all networks masts along the outskirts of the estate to the one side, and with the geography of the land it makes indoor signals terrible, this estate also going through regeneration so lots of new housing being built along the side nearer the masts, can only assume this will have a detrimental impact on the network performance.

This situation with Huawei kit will sure being interesting, specially for networks heavily built on Huawei.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

I can say I've noticed similar with the speeds pre and post lockdown.... I also noticed EE changed the PCI on all the cells in my area, not sure why they did that, assuming a software change somewhere.

Possibly, or a change of radio unit or an item in the cab to enable additional bands. If you're getting usable Band 7, then it may be the second B3 carrier was added, or the second Band 7.

I'm in a similar situation, also on a housing estate however all networks masts along the outskirts of the estate to the one side, and with the geography of the land it makes indoor signals terrible, this estate also going through regeneration so lots of new housing being built along the side nearer the masts, can only assume this will have a detrimental impact on the network performance.

With new builds people come with their existing phones which are in contract, so it takes time to see the load increase on the networks that are better in that geography. Many people jump network for price and handset deals, rather than coverage or speed.

This situation with Huawei kit will sure being interesting, specially for networks heavily built on Huawei.

Even if the Govt said they would buy all the Huawei products, I assume the others in the industry wouldn't be able manufacture enough, fast enough, to meet the global demand.

And does the Govt mean ALL Huawei items, from the FTTC & G.Fast modems, to the ONT's in FTTP areas, to the antenna panels, remote radio units, and cabinet items? This is a LOT of kit, many billions of pounds.

I can see the wrong communication causing lawsuits that goes straight to the Supreme Court.

Hmm, possibly added an an extra band 7!

Visually I don't see any new panels or additional panels, but possible they added the 15mhz addition of 2600, possibly also preparing to refarm an aditional 5mhz into B3 from 2G.

A good upgrade would be refarming some B1 too but I don't think its required personally,capacity seems good but the mast as a whole currently seems to be struggling to stay alive for some reason, currently using a B3+B3 (MBNL) mast 1.3KM away at the moment.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Hmm, possibly added an an extra band 7!

Visually I don't see any new panels or additional panels, but possible they added the 15mhz addition of 2600, possibly also preparing to refarm an aditional 5mhz into B3 from 2G.

For an addition of a band already transmitting there wouldn't need to be any panel changes, and sometimes this can be done by software update remotely, depending on the hardware in the cabinets.

A good upgrade would be refarming some B1 too but I don't think its required personally,capacity seems good but the mast as a whole currently seems to be struggling to stay alive for some reason, currently using a B3+B3 (MBNL) mast 1.3KM away at the moment.

It may not make sense in all areas, given EE (and Three) don't have any 900 spectrum, if there are a lot of people with older 3G only devices in your area, they will want to keep this going. I haven't seen B1 around here. I suspect the 3G usage is still too high - most likely phones handed down to teenagers.

Hmm, this is true, this area probably still pretty reliant on 3G due to signal strengths, I've seen B1 in mostly shopping areas so makes sense.

Hopefully they refarm an additional 5mhz into B3 on the MBNL mast I'm currently connected too, will make for more reliable connection and just focus the router and potential external antenna on it.

Ordered Sky Q last night as streaming linear TV on Now TV is becoming a ball ache, also when I factored the cost of netflix being covered and the cost of Now TV the offer I got was pretty good, and I'm using a satellite currently to get Premier Sports.

Would love to know if anybody has any experiance using the Poyntin XPOL1 with a B535 though.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Would love to know if anybody has any experiance using the Poyntin XPOL1 with a B535 though.

Most people on here who have tried using that antenna with a B525/B535 have reported it made hardly any difference. It probably would make more difference if it didn't have a 5m cable on, but it cannot be removed so if you shorten it you'd be out of luck in future.

In reply to a post by gary333:

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Would love to know if anybody has any experiance using the Poyntin XPOL1 with a B535 though.

Most people on here who have tried using that antenna with a B525/B535 have reported it made hardly any difference. It probably would make more difference if it didn't have a 5m cable on, but it cannot be removed so if you shorten it you'd be out of luck in future.

I did reckon it would suffer from the cable but as long as it no worse I'm up for getting one.

I'm wanting to relocated the router to the utilities cupboard in my porch, I've got this connected with 2 CAT6 cables to main switch in the house ready for when Openreach pull there finger out and finish the FTTP rollout in the area.

However signal will be near non-existant however putting an antenna outside on top of the ajoining garage will most likely be fine based on signals phones get outdoors.

I tried Smarty. Cheaper than Three, so why not?

Well, I know why not now! The IP is a natted one, not a public one. But never mind.

The routing was all over the place and latency was even worse than with Three, but hard to debug because most hops don't respond to pings.

What really pee'd me off was that the IP changed after 30 to 90 seconds, to the next IP up, leaving ssh or sftp connections hanging until they timed out. Then another half minutes later, the IP switched back. So they timed out again.

Smarmy support told me that "we don't guarantee a fixed IP" and "we recycle unused IPs" and wouldn't investigate at all, so I don't know if I was seeing a fault or if it is always that awful.

In fairness, when I cancelled there and then, they promised a refund, which did eventually arrive. Six weeks later.

I had tried various APN settings in Smarty, but all clearly used the same APN.

However, when I left the Smarty APN set and put a Three sim back in, it was just as awful, until I switched to a Three APN. Then it was back to perfectly fine, immediately.

So it looks as if Smarty ignore the APN you set and use their useless one.

In reply to a post by hoopla:

Well, I know why not now! The IP is a natted one, not a public one. But never mind.

Very few networks give public IP, on Vodafone and EE you are always behind carrier grade NAT unless you are a business.

I had tried various APN settings in Smarty, but all clearly used the same APN.

Whatever you configure ignored, which reduces support calls.

However, when I left the Smarty APN set and put a Three sim back in, it was just as awful, until I switched to a Three APN.

Three have two APNs, and I guess you're using their public IP one, originally intended for mobile broadband.

So it looks as if Smarty ignore the APN you set and use their useless one.

Not surprising. Look at the price!

So I'm looking at my connection using PingPlotter, pinging pingbox1.

I'm losing 50-52% packets on two internal looking IP's (10.124.**.***) before hitting EE's servers where I'm losing 3-4% before losing 6% at LINX...

This is with my EE sim, I also saw issue with Three but though "meh its three" is this normal thing to see?