Which network has the fastest 4G network?

Cromulent · 7 Dec 2019 at 14:06

I was just curious which network had the fastest 4G network? I have contracts with Virgin Mobile (I got it for free when I signed up to their business broadband) and Vodafone (they give me a signal in places Virgin Mobile does not work).

I have unlimited everything on Vodafone and am using it as a mobile hotspot while being in hospital but I seem only to get a maximum of 3MB/sec, which seems a bit slow to me. Is there a network with faster 4G?

I realise that 5G is soon going to be upon us, but I doubt it will be ready in any of the areas I go to regularly, so it isn't worth considering.

GMac11 · 7 Dec 2019 at 14:20

Are you sure the Vodafone contract isn't one of the ones that cap your download speeds? I have seen it various guises from 'Vodafone Basics' to 'Vodafone Unlimited Lite' amongst others. Any 4G network provider should be getting 20-30mb/sec easy.

Cromulent · 7 Dec 2019 at 14:23

GMac11 said:
Are you sure the Vodafone contract isn't one of the ones that cap your download speeds? I have seen it various guises from 'Vodafone Basics' to 'Vodafone Unlimited Lite' amongst others. Any 4G network provider should be getting 20-30mb/sec easy.

Hmm. I have no idea. I'm not sure I still have the information. I'd be pretty ****** off if it was limited as I'm paying £30 a month for this contract which is not cheap.

LiamJ · 7 Dec 2019 at 14:28

4G speeds depend more on your location than the network itself. The better your signal the better your speed, so the network with best coverage in your area is usually the best bet.

Richy888 · 7 Dec 2019 at 15:20

LiamJ said:
4G speeds depend more on your location than the network itself. The better your signal the better your speed, so the network with best coverage in your area is usually the best bet.

^^ What Liam says.

Really depends where you are and definitely so once you go rural. Time of day probably makes a difference too. So many variables.

GMac11 · 7 Dec 2019 at 15:47

The quality helps for sure but I have 1 bar of 4g on both O2 and Vodafone where I live and I still get 15mb/s at an absolute minimum, usually between 20-30 as mentioned above. I also have Three home 4g broadband which flits between 3-4 bars and I get around 30-40mb/s on it.

I guess what I'm getting at is no matter how poor your signal may be you'd have thought it would be well north of 3mb/s?

I don't want to fall foul of citing other forums but if you google 'vodafone cap 2mb/s' you'll get some interesting reading.

Cromulent · 7 Dec 2019 at 18:48

GMac11 said:
I guess what I'm getting at is no matter how poor your signal may be you'd have thought it would be well north of 3mb/s?

I don't want to fall foul of citing other forums but if you google 'vodafone cap 2mb/s' you'll get some interesting reading.

Hmm. Thank you for posting this. I'll do some research. If that is indeed happening I'll be really angry as I'm paying £30 a month for something that is basically useless to me. I really need fast internet to be able to do my work.

Scrutinize · 7 Dec 2019 at 20:17

EE gets 50-80mbps, o2 I tried recently for a few days to see if worth switching gets 2-10mbps in exactly same locations.

Django x2 · 7 Dec 2019 at 20:35

It's also important to use a proper download tool rather than aggregated "Speed checker". SpeedOf.Me is the only sensible choice for checking your download speed.

Cromulent · 7 Dec 2019 at 20:57

Django x2 said:
It's also important to use a proper download tool rather than aggregated "Speed checker". SpeedOf.Me is the only sensible choice for checking your download speed.

I'm going off the GOG Galaxy 2.0 beta client for my download speed. It seems to be pretty accurate but I agree with your point. I should be careful about what I use.

Bluecube · 7 Dec 2019 at 22:22

Depends where you are. I get great download speeds with Three in the sticks of Scotland. Went to London and I’ve never experienced such atrocious speeds in my life...

Teledude · 8 Dec 2019 at 19:43

Ive seen 200mb+ on EE and Vodafone

LiamJ · 8 Dec 2019 at 22:23

FWIW, even in low signal areas, EE has always been fast enough to watch 1080p or 1440p content whether it's YouTube, Netflix, Sky Go etc.

I don't speedtest ever for that reason I suppose, it's never been slow enough where I need to look, so I couldn't tell you how fast it gets.

ping8781 · 10 Dec 2019 at 08:50

It depends on contention and network congestion, i work in London and the '3' network speed is very good in places but when at the office where the corporate network is '3' the speed drops off considerably despite good signal due to the hundreds/thousands of '3' phones on the local mast

mrk · 12 Dec 2019 at 23:04

Cromulent said:
I was just curious which network had the fastest 4G network? I have contracts with Virgin Mobile (I got it for free when I signed up to their business broadband) and Vodafone (they give me a signal in places Virgin Mobile does not work).

I have unlimited everything on Vodafone and am using it as a mobile hotspot while being in hospital but I seem only to get a maximum of 3MB/sec, which seems a bit slow to me. Is there a network with faster 4G?

I realise that 5G is soon going to be upon us, but I doubt it will be ready in any of the areas I go to regularly, so it isn't worth considering.

3MB/s is a connection of 24Mbps which seems fairly usual for the majority of tariffs available. Vodafone tariffs are similar to EE in that they throttle the download speed of your connection unless you buy the higher end tier. See the bolded text on these packages as an example The package details will outline what speeds you get. EE for example have the Go Faster addon which unlocks the full 4G+ potential but even if you don't have the addon you will still get a maximum of around 100Mbps (12.5MB/s) as I discovered after trialling with and without the addon so the extra £2 a month is only if you absolutely must have a connection of over 100Mbps which I can't see the point of really on a phone.

Virgin Mobile have a throttle too but don't offer anything faster. The good thing is their max download speed is 85Mbps...

Overall all the networks use congestion throttling, so during peak times you are unlikely to get full 4G+ speeds if you're in a larger city.

xb8browney · 12 Dec 2019 at 23:07

I've pulled over 200 on EE many times.

Terminal_Boy · 12 Dec 2019 at 23:13

Scrutinize said:
EE gets 50-80mbps, o2 I tried recently for a few days to see if worth switching gets 2-10mbps in exactly same locations.

O2 have been in last place as far as the U.K. is concerned for years. Any talent left went Telefonica bought them and started stripping any and all profit from O2 UK (and O2 DE) to bail out their loss-making home network.

chaparral · 13 Dec 2019 at 10:04

What do people need stupid high speeds on a mobile phone for ? :confused:

Terminal_Boy · 13 Dec 2019 at 10:06

chaparral said:
What do people need stupid high speeds on a mobile phone for ?

They don’t, but telecommunications marketing has convinced people that they need to be able to use up their monthly data allowance in under 30 seconds.

Liquid_Entity · 13 Dec 2019 at 10:10

ping8781 said:
It depends on contention and network congestion, i work in London and the '3' network speed is very good in places but when at the office where the corporate network is '3' the speed drops off considerably despite good signal due to the hundreds/thousands of '3' phones on the local mast

This definitely.

I work in Croydon and when I wait at East Croydon station I have full 4 bars of data signal but my actual speed is less than 1mb which is abysmal. 30 seconds on the train outside of the station and it's back to about 20-30mb. It's perma-congested at East Croydon.