In reply to a post by essex_man:

so 4G or 4G+ will be great.

4G+ may not be faster than 4G. which is why some vendors and networks don't show the plus sign.

Basic transmissions are one carrier, think a normal road, one lane each way. In many cases + means carrier aggregation is in use, e.g. multiple transmissions joined together to make a road with 2 lanes each way, or upto 4 or 6 lanes each way.

However having more lanes doesn't mean you are the only car on the road, you could quite easily be on the M25 or the M6 in a 20 mile tailback not moving. Plenty of capacity but all used up

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Radio communications is hard to predict without a lot more technical info.

You are right, everything else is guesswork. There are plenty of AT commands to query the LTE modem for more detail, such as cell info and carrier aggregation info.

Unfortunately telnet/ssh does not come as a standard on the ZTE box, but there are some reports in Polish and Finnish user forums that people have succeeded to get telnet to work.

In relation to Three vs. IDMobile, it would be interesting to find out whether EPS bearers have different QoS/QCI configured, depending on the provider. If IDMobile used QCI settings with lower priority than Three, then in a congested scenario, Three customers would get better performance.

Using the SIM in my phone and the Tower Collector App, I observed that on the Three network, my location appears to be covered by three different cells, from different eNodeBs, but all using the same EARFCN (in Band 3).

On EE my phone picks up signals from four different cells (2xB3, 1xB7, 1xB20), all from the same eNodeB, which would suggest that EE has better coverage around here.

In reply to a post by essex_man:

You are right, everything else is guesswork. There are plenty of AT commands to query the LTE modem for more detail, such as cell info and carrier aggregation info.

Good you've got those commands, depends whose chip is inside the modem. If you have a rooted Qualcomm modem android handset the NSG application is amazing, but complex.

Unfortunately telnet/ssh does not come as a standard on the ZTE box, but there are some reports in Polish and Finnish user forums that people have succeeded to get telnet to work.

There are so many custom firmwares provided for various telcos around the world, its almost impossible to find updates.

In relation to Three vs. IDMobile, it would be interesting to find out whether EPS bearers have different QoS/QCI configured, depending on the provider. If IDMobile used QCI settings with lower priority than Three, then in a congested scenario, Three customers would get better performance.

I don't know if this is exposed but it is possible that a host network would ensure its own customers had better performance than a virtual network, given the differences in price.

Using the SIM in my phone and the Tower Collector App, I observed that on the Three network, my location appears to be covered by three different cells, from different eNodeBs, but all using the same EARFCN (in Band 3).

On EE my phone picks up signals from four different cells (2xB3, 1xB7, 1xB20), all from the same eNodeB, which would suggest that EE has better coverage around here.

Not unexpected, Three was the newest "kid on the block" in terms of masts. My town only has the single EARFCN on Band 3 for Three for most of the town except the new "pole of wonder" that has 5G and other carriers enabled outside Morrisons.

EE has more customers, the data on Wikipedia which is extracted from the annual reports implies that EE and O2 have around 25/26 million customers each, Vodafone has around 13 million, and Three has 10 million. I assume those numbers include virtual networks.

Three do a free data sim limited to 200mb per month, 200mb won't last long but will give an indication if the ID download is being limited on the mast.

https://www.three.co.uk/Free_SIM_MBB/Order

Order our Data Reward SIM and enjoy 200MB of free data every month.
Just what you need to stay online when there's no Wi-Fi.

Just played around with different APN settings on the ZTE MF286D:

Using the ID Mobile SIM, I tried "3internet" "three.co.uk" and "id" as APN names. All these APNs work, but none of them dishes out a public IP address, it is always a private IP address on 10.x.x.x (occasionally 100.x.x.x).

So, I was wondering whether the router either pulls the APN name from the SIM card or the network simply ignores the APN selected by the user and enforces a default APN based on what is stored in the HSS for my IMSI.

Hence, I invented an APN "void" and tried that, surprise - it still worked.

I selected PDP Type IPv4v6 for all these, but never got an IPv6 address assigned. I tried one of the APNs with PDP Type IPv6 only, that resulted in a connection failure, so at least PDP Type seems to be sent as selected by the user.

Anyone out there who got IPv6 to work on Three (or got a public IPv4 address assigned)?

In reply to a post by essex_man:

the network simply ignores the APN selected by the user and enforces a default APN based on what is stored in the HSS for my IMSI.

The network / virtual network can certainly do this. You will find that a real Three SIM gives different service on those APNs, and fails to connect with an invalid APN, but the ID network appears to override your input. (I read Smarty overrides as well)