O2 4G Slow download speeds

Strikeforce

Strikeforce

Strikeforce

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Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
701
I've just ported to an o2 business plan from EE. I've got great 4G signal however, speed wise it's dire. Downloads speeds a less than 1Mbps, uploads are ok at around 7Mbps. EE was great speed wise, I was hitting 50Mbps most days.

How is everyone else finding of 4G speeds?
 
Where i live I've always found O2 to be the slowest yet most reliable mobile provider. Now when I say slow I'd say I was getting speeds consistently between 20-30. I recently moved to Virgin (who use EE) and I could get anything from 5-55 depending on what time of day I test it.
But to actually answer your question 1mpbs seems unusually slow, especially if you're getting 3 or 4 bars of signal.
 
When I was on O2 and then giffgaff before, in London where it's congested their 4G speeds was always very low (easily dipping under 8mbps). Some areas it didn't work at all when there was too many people. Moved to BT Mobile who uses EE and I'm usually above 10mbps in these peak areas now.
 
Also with o2 on work phone and 4G is consistently dire both in speed and stability. Personal phone is on EE and honestly have no idea how o2 are still in business.
 
Rimsy said:
Also with o2 on work phone and 4G is consistently dire both in speed and stability. Personal phone is on EE and honestly have no idea how o2 are still in business.
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A lot must depend on geography. Here in NI O2 and Vodafone really are the only two networks to choose from as their coverage is much much better. EE and Three are pointless here because of their poor coverage. What they do have on their side is that where you can get good signal the speeds are unrivalled.
 
Thanks for all the replies. I'll give it a few days to make sure it's no local problems and go from there. It's a shame because the call quality is better, I found EE to be hit and miss with calls, sometimes the calls sound like garbage randomly until you redialed.

I've managed to improve the speed slightly this evening by using the Bypass APN.
 
You can have excellent coverage/signal strength indication on your phone and still have zero connectivity as the base stations broadcast a special pilot/beacon channel solely for the purpose of giving mobiles a stable signal datum for each cell.

You can sit within rock throwing distance of a cell site, but if it has no spare radio resources, it can’t give you a data pipe to send all those lovely 0s and 1s to you through.

O2 has particularly poor capacity despite having decent coverage for a number of reasons.

1. It has the 2nd lowest amount of frequency spectrum in the U.K. after Three*. Lack of frequency = lack of capacity.
2. The Spanish owners of O2 (Telefonica) have consistently under-invested in network upgrades and have a nasty habit of funnelling profits back to Spain to shore up their ropey home network.
3. Having the customers of 4 MVNOs (giffgaff, Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile and Lycamobile) all using O2’s network resources means that O2 has a very congested network.

* Three “gets” away with not having old 2G spectrum to migrate to 4G by having a network sharing arrangement with EE.
 
Strikeforce said:
Thanks for all the replies. I'll give it a few days to make sure it's no local problems and go from there. It's a shame because the call quality is better, I found EE to be hit and miss with calls, sometimes the calls sound like garbage randomly until you redialed.

I've managed to improve the speed slightly this evening by using the Bypass APN.
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Have you tried 3?
 
Strikeforce said:
How is everyone else finding of 4G speeds?
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At times I have to force my phone to use 3G because O2 4G is so congested.

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Few, I'm facing the same problem. Came from EE and have found the data speeds, way too slow. Even on 5g,its way too slow. What's the point in having unlimited data, when the speed is so bad.
 
I'm surprised people choose O2, their data service has been a long running joke. EE and Vodafone are the 2 that are best for data connection, I'm on Vodafone and can hit 200Mbps down on good day.
 
smokedog said:
I'm surprised people choose O2, their data service has been a long running joke. EE and Vodafone are the 2 that are best for data connection, I'm on Vodafone and can hit 200Mbps down on good day.
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Where I live your choice is O2 or Vodafone and they mast share so speeds and signal are pretty much identical. I have a Vodafone unlimited sim for my home Internet and O2 (well giffgaff) on my phone and they are both 20mpbs.
 
I always have signal with O2, that's why I stay with them. However in the city centre I have full bars of 4G but get speeds of less than 1mbps - Nothing loads, not even Google.

I have to manually drop my connection to 3G where (I assume) it's less congested, and then websites load. No luck watching YouTube though.
 
Same here. I travel all over the country a lot (or did before everything went to ****) and my personal phone is with O2 but I have had work phones on Vodafone and EE, currently on Vodafone. I consistently find O2 to be the most reliable for me at the places I've been visiting but they're certainly not the fastest for data.

At home it's dire, I get around 5Mbit on 4G speed tests at best and 3G can be faster at times. Obviously that doesn't matter so much since I have wifi but it is still strange to see. In O2's defense however, all the networks seem to be awful here - even EE rarely seems to get above 10Mbit and I'm not exactly in the middle of nowhere.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
You can have excellent coverage/signal strength indication on your phone and still have zero connectivity as the base stations broadcast a special pilot/beacon channel solely for the purpose of giving mobiles a stable signal datum for each cell.

You can sit within rock throwing distance of a cell site, but if it has no spare radio resources, it can’t give you a data pipe to send all those lovely 0s and 1s to you through.

O2 has particularly poor capacity despite having decent coverage for a number of reasons.

1. It has the 2nd lowest amount of frequency spectrum in the U.K. after Three*. Lack of frequency = lack of capacity.
2. The Spanish owners of O2 (Telefonica) have consistently under-invested in network upgrades and have a nasty habit of funnelling profits back to Spain to shore up their ropey home network.
3. Having the customers of 4 MVNOs (giffgaff, Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile and Lycamobile) all using O2’s network resources means that O2 has a very congested network.

* Three “gets” away with not having old 2G spectrum to migrate to 4G by having a network sharing arrangement with EE.
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Just addon what you said its going to get worse when Virgin migrate over to them from EE next year.
I do agree with what you said and the only plus O2 have is that they have the most 5g spectre.
 
Strikeforce said:
I've just ported to an o2 business plan from EE. I've got great 4G signal however, speed wise it's dire. Downloads speeds a less than 1Mbps, uploads are ok at around 7Mbps. EE was great speed wise, I was hitting 50Mbps most days.




How is everyone else finding of 4G speeds?
Click to expand...



hi,

I have been with O2 for two years and in Birmingham I don’t get 4g speeds higher that 1.2-3mbps. It’s absolute awful can’t wait for my contract to be up. My partner with a different provider pays a third what I am paying and gets speeds up to 78mbps. I complained to O2 but they are in denial.
 
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