LTE situation

Hi I stumbled on these forums when researching routers and it is a great source of info. As people on here seem to know way more than I do, I was going to see if anyone else experienced similar behaviour.

Basically until the 'Unlimited' SIM deal were out this method of broadband was a no go due to family household traffic would gobble the data allowance within a day. I live in a rural area and its so bad the old copper wire ADSL tech can only deliver 5Mb down and less than 1Mb up.

Around March I borrowed a router to test and got the Smarty unlimited mainly because you can drop it after 30 days so no big investment lost.

The first three months were actually really good, I was getting 25Mb down and the same Up with numerous devices sharing the tp-link MR6400.

Then just over 3 weeks ago, the connection has been awful. I started complaining to Smarty and in particular it was the regular HTTP web pages affected the most - taking 10-20 seconds or even timing out.

Streaming on some platforms like Disney+ or Netflix seems to work but it has definitely degraded somewhat. Over time I was told the usual - reboot the device, insert SIM again etc but all I was after was acknowledgement that it was their DNS servers or something that could not cope locally with the demand.

On three seperate occasions know they end up defaulting to 'unscheduled maintenance in your postcode' which they wont expand upon. Then to rub salt in, they ask is it any better now, and after reset and reboot etc the delay and lost packets are still present.

I am wondering if it is the local masts at fault, I did pop in the Wife's EE sim and it wasnt much better, but I could order another router in case it might be the hardware thats not right.

Any help appreciated.

Hiya

I've mentioned the webpage issues on Smarty here https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/mobilebroadband/f/...

I think it's also been mentioned here: https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/mobilebroadband/f/...

Sounds similar to what you're saying there although I've not noticed degradation with streaming. For me, that's still ongoing although I ramped up my efforts through support a couple of days ago. Their network team hasn't come back yet. It's been much better behaved today, if I'm honest.

As for your router question, is it be possible to drop the SIM in a phone, turn on hotspot and see how that goes? I don't think it's likely to be the router at fault personally.

Apoplogies for the delay, I thought I had it sussed by downloading the latest router firmware and it seemed to work for half a day.

Next port of call this time I got a 3 SIM direct from them with the half price for 6 months offer. However I am still getting bad web page response times so I think it is the 3 network.

I do have lots of devices in the home so I was also contemplating on getting a router that can bridge mode, install a pfsense box I can use from an older desktop and then control the wireless devices and wired so that it cant be over burdening the connection.

I notice some routers will state maximum number of devices, but to be honest I test when all the family are out or are all in bed and still poor speeds.

It sporadically gets decent bursts but there is no pattern from what I can tell.

Yeah, unfortunately the performance on Smarty has been pants for a little while now, I don't think Smarty is the best bet for Mobile Broadband, I feel like they may be trying to reduce this sort of usage on the network.

Three's network to which they're based off of isn't great for 4G anyway, its very low on spectrum to use meaning it gets congested very quickly.

I've just completed a test at home using 4G instead of Cable broadband, unfortunately despite having the best available to me, it would seem coverage issues crossed with a potential equipment or mast fault has lead me to conclude my testing as not fit.

It was the same experience on the Three mast I was on. It worked really well for 10 months, but then there was a few weeks of poor performance before Christmas last year.

From the start of the year the periods of slow loading/failing websites gradually got worse. It was just establishing connections that was suffering, streaming video/audio on an established connection always worked fine.

Lockdown didn't help and I eventually gave up and switched to EE from the same mast, which so far is working fine.

Ok so on their site in their check your area I get this:

https://postimg.cc/JshfpJLw

Edited by deleted (Tue 21-Jul-20 19:23:36)