Three UK, anyone noticed that they are not as good as they used to be.

Given all these comments about the Three network, I thnk I might jump over to Voxi when my current Vodafone monthly runs out. 60GB for £12, but also comes with unlimited data on social media and music sites so it doesn't eat into your data on the plan..
 
Hi All - I have been with Three 5G since October 2022 and I am trying to get to the bottom of why my speeds have changed so dramatically. I have posted the below on Three community site and thought I would post in some dedicated 5G forums to see if anyone else is experiencing the same, I know they are as the Three community site is getting new posts weekly about this -

Three are refusing to admit they are throttling connections yet multiple users have posted on the community site about this and stating they can not only hit 120mbps download when they used to hit much higher, these are different people in different parts of the country, being impacted exactly the same. My response I posted was this -

Hi All, just to say I am in exactly the position. I live right next to the 5G mast in my area, literally 30meters away. When I first went with three 5G broadband in October 2022, up until November 2023, I was hitting anything from 600 to 900mbps download, all the time, even peak hours, I still have all the results recorded on my ookla speed test app/account.

In November, Disney plus stopped loading on my TV stating I was out of region, nothing I did/changed could get it to load so contacted three, who advised they had made some changes to my account and restart my router and try again. Sure enough disney loaded, but from that point on my download speed is stuck at 120mbps, won't go any higher. It jumps to 400mbps when the speed test starts and then quickly drops down to 120mbps and stays there, clearly they are throttling and limiting the download speed.

I contacted them on multiple occasions over the next few months and they were giving me all sorts of excuses and said they had changed settings and to try again, and another said they were working in the area but it would be back to normal in a month. I speed test every week and nothing has changed, stuck on 120. I have had a month refunded and a month half price but all this time they are still claiming they do not limit the download speeds which is obviously absolute rubbish.

As someone else has mentioned, when I do a speed test on my phone, and I'm also with three, I still hit the usual 500mbps, nothing has changed with my phone, just my broadband from November onwards.

At the time I googled and couldn't find any posts on this so thought it was just an issue in my area, but after a speed test earlier, stuck on my 120, I googled and found this. Now I know this is happening to others I am going to contact them again and keep up the fight!

For those that want to leave three, due to the speed decreases, who are stuck in contract, they agreed with me that I could leave with no charges due to the change in service. When you first sign up, you get 30days no quibble trial to see how it works and what speeds you get and you can send back if you not happy. So, if the speeds you are getting now, do not match the ones when you first got it, you can argue this and say you want to leave without a charge!

A further update to this - I made three send me out a brand new replacement router, so I could rule out that being an issue. I have a new router, new sim card, and nothing changed. exactly the same stuck at 120mbps. You can clearly see in the screenshot below of my speed tests, the moment they made the changes at their end on the 14/11/23, and from this point on my speed has been throttled to 120mbps. I have also added a screenshot of speed tests from Feb 2023, compared to speed tests from Feb 2024 and the differences are striking. My speed used to vary, as non throttled speeds should between 400mbps up to 900mbps depending on the time of day as you would expect. Now, my download speeds have no variation at all, 7pm on Saturday evening at peak times, 120mpbs, 3am on a Sunday at the quietest time, 120mbps.

I would like someone from Three to respond and admit that they are throttling speeds on the home broadband now.




Speed Tests showing the dramatic drop in speeds the day Three changed the settings on my account at their end, and from this day forward (14/11/23), I am now stuck on 120mbps.


Three Throttling.jpg




Speed Tests from Feb 2023 when my download speeds were not being limited and extremely impressive!

Screenshot_20240219_001054_Speedtest.jpg



Speed tests from Jan/Feb 24 showing download speeds limited to 120mbps, up to 6 times slower than they were 1 year ago!

Screenshot_20240219_001112_Speedtest.jpg



Does anyone have any comments of thoughts on this?
 
I just want to chime in and say that I signed up for Three 5g broadband last Feb and was getting very good speeds upwards of 800mbps. I'm less than 200 metres from the 5g tower and get a perfect 5g signal, this is the exact reason I signed up for this service. Now I am experiencing exactly the same issues nearly word for word as has been previously posted, and I am now limited to 120mbps max. I have obviously called them and they have reset everything and my speeds will jump back up to what they were for 24 hours and then drop off to 120Mbps again so it is not a network issue and is definitely a deliberate speed limit put in place by Three when in the contract I signed there are zero mentions of a speed limit. Anyone experiencing this, I would urge you to just drop an email or call Ofcom to let them know that Three are not honouring their own contract terms by doing this and trying to blame it on "network issues" when it is clearly not the case. I am in the midlands for reference.
Here are my speedtest results. You can see the times when (07/02/24) I have contacted customer support and had my connection reset, and it jump up to expected speeds for 24 hours then get limited again, this has happened a few times now. Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
 
My port away from id (3) just happened half an hour ago - into 1p.
Already looks better, 5g vs 4g at home. Long train trip tomorrow, will see if it's any better. There were large dead spots on my 3 coverage.
 
I have something really interesting to share with regards to this. As I am with Three for Broadband and mobile, I thought I would do some tests today and swap the sim cards over, and the results are not what I was expecting!

Test 1 -
Broadband Sim Card in Phone - I removed the sim card from the router, and put it into my phone, ran a speed test and guess what, I’m hitting normal speeds with my 5G Broadband Sim in my phone, I ran 2 speed tests, the first at my desk, still hitting 354mbps, and the 2nd I stood at the window where my router is and hit 740mbps download! So, the problem doesn’t appear to be with the sim card itself and there is no limit when using in my phone.

Test 2 -
Phone Sim Card in Router – I removed the Three sim card from my phone and put it into the router to see if the issue is with the router. Speed Tests 576mbps & 617mbps. So, the problem does not appear to be the router directly.

Test 3 -
Broadband Sim back into Router – Now, I was really hoping that things might have just sorted themselves out and gone back to normal after my swapping sim exercise, but I was wrong. Speed test with the Broadband Sim back into the router = 118mbps & 119mbps, back to being limited again.

Mattyk66_1-1708447619462.png


There is clearly something that has been set at Three's end to limit the download speed of the broadband account when the sim card is in the router, but it only limits it when it is in the router!

I have passed all this information on to the moderator who messaged me today to say he is going to help and look into this, so watch this space!
 
uvarvu said:
Do you reckon a factor in the slowdowns are due to the gradual take-up of 5G?
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I would say a likely scenario is they have over sold and are seeing over saturation and are now limiting those with the fastest speeds, even though they still advertise as having no speed limits and there are zero mentions of any speed limits in the contract I signed with them.
 
fashric said:
I would say a likely scenario is they have over sold and are seeing over saturation and are now limiting those with the fastest speeds, even though they still advertise as having no speed limits and there are zero mentions of any speed limits in the contract I signed with them.
Click to expand...
I think you might be right. Someone else posted on the Three community that they cancelled their contract today where they were stuck on 120mbps and went to the Three store and got a new contract with router and they are back up to their quick speeds again. It almost like they give new users the quickest speeds available to tempt them in to a contract and then decrease them hoping they don't realise!
 
When my contract runs out in 6 months I am going to switch to Smarty I think. I am paying £16.50 a month for 100gig, that seems okay but it's not the best and they removed the free Feel at home roaming and charge a daily fee now too.

I get zero signal at work, 1 bar at home. I think it has got worse over the years. Been with them for 20 years.
 
I've been on Three for the past year and a half but I've noticed that I so often have either weak signal or no signal at all. Contact ends later this year and definitely going to be switching to another network. Seems like most people have good experience with EE? Will need to shop around to see if I can get any good switch deals.
 
Throttling Tests & Resolution with APN Change

Hi All – I spoke again to technical team on 21/02/24, who were useless like usual, who passed me through to the complaints team again as they said they could not work out why my connection was maxing out at 120mbps and why it had changed and were still adamant they don’t limit or throttle connections! I’m being more convinced now that the technicians truly believe the connections aren’t being throttled, but there is something going on higher up above them doing this, that they have no control over!

Anyway, after I had finished with the complaints team, I did a little more digging around and went into to the router settings to check the APN Access Point Name) which there are many posts about and has been mentioned on here. The APN was set to automatic and was ‘3internet’. On reading up it seems ‘3internet’ is the standard one used for broadband. I changed to manual rather than automatic APN and used ‘three.co.uk’ instead, and then did a speed test and 584mbps!! After all this, for me all that was needed changing was the APN, and I should have checked this earlier as other posts suggested.

I tried the following APN’s and all of them worked without a download limit apart from the ‘3internet’ one which is clearly being throttled-

3internet – 120mbps
three.co.uk – 543mbps
3broadband.ie – 567mbps
3ireland.ie – 532mbps
open.internet – 578mbps

So frustrating that no one from the Technical know this or could have suggested changing the APN and even more frustrating that everyone from Three are still adamant there are no speed limits and they don’t throttle – it’s obvious they do, and even more so from the further testing I did below!

Before I realised that it was just the APN that needed changing, I said to the complaints team the only thing left is to cancel my current contract and start a new contact with a brand-new sim card to see if that fixes the issue, as it has done for others, to which they agreed. This is the only plus point I have out of this whole charade as I was going to be paying full price for the next 8 months and I now have a new contract, 6 months half price, and I also ordered via TopCashBack and have already had the £102 cashback confirmed, will be payable in a few months!

So, I ordered a new contract, and a brand-new router and sim card were delivered the day after, so I started testing! My current or old router as such is the Zyxel NR5103e, and the new router they sent me was the updated version of this Zyxel NR5103eV2. I will call them V1 and V2 moving forward.

So first off, I tried a speed test with the new router (V2) and new sim card, and on checking the APN was automatically set as ‘3internet’. Speed test was pretty normal with a very high upload speed 472dowload/110upload. I then put my old sim card into the V2 and ran the same test and the results were just as with the V1 – 119download/61.9upload!! I replicated these tests using my old router (V1) and had similar results with the speeds being unlimited on my new card, and limited to 120 download on the old card when accessing via the ‘3internet’ APN.. If this isn’t clear evidence that Three are throttling connections on certain accounts I don’t know what is?? Three has clearly throttled my old account when using the APN ‘3internet’ but my new card hasn’t been throttled, YET, so I can get varied and what appears to be unlimited speeds. When I use any of the other APN’s on either sim card the results are all similar with no throttling.

As an additional test, I put the broadband sims in my mobile, and changed the APN from three.co.uk, which is the standard for mobile devices to ‘3internet’ and the results were identical to above. Old sim card throttled to 120mbps, new sim card no limit!

I am collated all of the information and speed tests I have and will reporting this to Ofcom next week as Three are still advertising their 5G with no speeds limits, which clearly, for many people, is not true!

NR5103e VS NR5103eV2 Testing

Whilst I had the opportunity, I went deeper into testing the two routers to see which one I wanted to keep for my new contract. The new router is much smaller which is a plus point, it is also worryingly much lighter, does that speak for the quality of the components?

I placed each router in the exact same space on my windowsill where I get the best signal. It didn’t take long to notice that the NR5103e (V1) had a better and much more stable signal than the newer NR5103eV2 (V2). I will refer to them as V1 & V2 moving from now on.

The V1 would be at a constant 87-89 RSRP, 15 SINR, 2/3 RSRQ and it would always be on a continual 5G connection, rarely dropping to 4G.

In comparison the newer V2 was so temperamental with the signal. It would generally stick at around 93RSRP but occasionally dip to 88 at random, then up to 96 and moving around all over. SINR 13, RSRQ was worse at 11. But what was really noticeable was the constant jumping between 5G, 4G+ and 4G. There was rarely a moment when I was looking at the signal where it was on 5G constantly and would change every 30 seconds or so and would dance about between them all, which can’t be great for a reliable connection surely?

The speed tests were actually ok for both. The download speed was noticeably quicker on the V1 which regularly would hit 200mbps higher than the V2, this could simply be down to the fact the signal was more reliable. But to put in perspective, even the lowest download on the V2 was still 300mpbs. The highest on V2 was 575, highest on V1 was 860mbps! One thing where the V2 did sometimes shine though was the upload speed. At times the upload speed would be 90-110mbps on the V2 where as the V1 could only manage 75-85mbps. The V1 was a constant upload speed though with no dips, whereas the V2 dropped as low as 60 sometimes. All I can think of here is the V2 is better at handling uploads compared to the V1, so when it has a strong, constant signal, it will achieve a higher upload speed. Either way 60 being the lowest recorded upload speed, it still incredibly quick and more than enough!

Overall, either router would probably work fine for most people, although this depends on your signal and how close you are to the mast. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am very lucky, that although I don’t have clear line of sight to the mast and there are a couple of houses in the way, it’s almost irrelevant as I am approx. 50m away from it. For me, the extra 20mbps that I sometimes get on upload with the V2, is negligible in comparison to the constant reliable signal that the V1 gets, and the extra download speeds it regularly achieves over the V2 are more useful. There have been a number of posts backing up my findings on the V2 that the signal is all over the place and not reliable and drops out, and for that reason, I am sticking with the trusty V1 for my new 24-month contract.

I hope you find my post useful!
 
Mattyk66 said:
Smarty are cheaper and the free roaming is great, but don't they use the same network as Three? So your signal won't be any better
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Smarty does piggy bank off the three network. I switched to Smarty months ago from o2 and never looked back. £10 for 100gb data a month, i can only get 4g speeds where I live but these are decent and had no issue with signal. I tested the 5g whilst on a weekend away in Liverpool and the speeds were great.
 
Mattyk66 said:
I hope you find my post useful!
Click to expand...
Jumping between bands is most likely by design to conserve power as well as optimise traffic. It’s probably capable of traffic analysis and seeing which band (5G 4G+ 4G) has the best speed.

Did you ever experience any drop out with the V2.

There are suggestion on Reddit that V2 drops connection however not sure if that’s meant to be V1 or not.

Also I think there is a setting in the router which you can specifically tell the router to only use certain 5G bands rather than the default “automatic” which might result in less signal noise and stability in staistics.

I think ultimately as end user long as you are getting a stable and fast connection, whatever the router is doing in the back end you don’t have to worry about.

Similarly with CPU these days, they will jump between C states constantly with variable frequency. So it’s not something you ever notice while using a PC.
 
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