Forum Discussion
Bandwidth/data speed slowdown.
Recently… since December 25 I’ve noticed that as the day progresses the data speed slows to a crawl and at times becomes so slow accessing the internet is impossible. This usually happens from 14:00 onwards and only starts to pick up again after 19:00 varies from day to day and is perhaps worse at weekends.
I’m interested to know if everyone is experiencing this as in it’s network wide or if it’s just in specific areas perhaps pointing to a cell tower being at max capacity.
Equipment wise I’m using a 3 router, sometimes if I hard restart I get full speed again, sometimes I get full speed followed by a slowdown and sometimes I’m straight back to square one with very low speed.
Location wise I’m connecting to what I’d call the gun club cell tower just off the Wootton Road Abingdon adjacent to the A34.
I don’t expect a lot but I do expect there to be sufficient bandwidth to allow general usage say 3mb to 5mb per second.
Ultimately if it doesn’t pick up I’ll ditch this and move on.
7 Replies
Still waiting for Smarty or 3 or Voda to fix whatever is broken on the Wooton Road cell tower in (or just outside) Abingdon. Turning into a sh!tshow being with Smarty who obviously don’t care, anyone considered legal action against these people, a nice spread in the papers would pretty much wipe them out.
Todays laughable speeds 1.25Mbps up 0.23Mbps down.
I just want it to work.
It’s been good if not very good the last few days almost like someone at Smarty read this thread and tweaked something but 17:00 today 2.08Mbps down 1.08Mbps up… doesn’t really cut it.
I feel you might be right about them "being a victim of their own success" if we're going to be kind. Hilares you had to switch to EE to post ... 😵💫☺️
From looking through many posts on here about coverage/speed etc I don't know obvs but I think it's likely that although Smarty promise not to slow or throttle speeds Three's "active management" at busy times definitely does and I think they may well prioritise their own direct customers over Smarty. Although how they'd do that I don't know.
In short at present it looks to me like there's not enough to go round. Other networks have to cope with congestion and if you read comments here from users eg in London the comparisons with Smarty often don't look good.
I don't want to get reprimanded by some Smarty " guru" or "pioneer" for not being on message but even though it seems to work for some (or used to) I don't think it's consistent, reliable or good enough for everyone. Yet. Maybe once they've finished tinkering with masts re 3g n merging with Vodafone but I suspect Three will still prioritise their own customers re too many users not enough capacity if that's the right word. If I'm wrong about that be good to hear from someone who definitely knows otherwise.
* meant to say 4mbps or less
Had Smarty SIM for approx 6 weeks now. At first pleased with it. Use in midlands and southwest. Says on various coverage checkers good indoor and outdoor signal. In the southwest the speed is totally inconsistent. Had it at 20mbps then usually back down to 4mbps so virtually unusable even to load a webpage or article on a page as so slow, particularly later in the day. I don't understand this extreme inconsistency and continual useless speed. I'm on unlimited data which Smarty promise they never slow or throttle. If I was out of range of a good or "excellent" signal Id say fair enough. But I'm paying £18 for an inexplicably unreliable and unusable service that I heep being told is good. Other people have the same problem on here to which there never seems to be an explanation other than someone, somewhere must be "doing works in your area". I just don't think that washes anymore with me. I'll give it a few more weeks then probably trying elsewhere.
Thank you for replying Poppy, that does rather answer things.
I can only assume that they have become a victim of their own success, perhaps they have a bandwidth limit imposed on them by 3 so now they have many people on unlimited data at peak times there just isn’t enough to go round.
Today it has been fine and at this very moment is doing 30Mbps down and 6Mbps up, there are times when I get 70 down, 90.8 being the record and that’s only on 4G but within a moment it could be so slow that nothing works.
The oddest thing was that for the first 12 months Smarty was faultless, truly superb but as soon as the 12 months were over the speed/bandwidth started going up and down like a whores drawers, hard to pin it down to one particular thing but when the schools kick out it slows then rush hour slows it further until everyone is home when the speed climbs again, random days too sometimes perfect other times (Sod’s Law says you really need it) it’s flat as a pancake.
I was tempted to invest in a better router or external aerial but why throw £500 at a problem that isn’t just mine and is shared across the network.
Thanks again 👍
…and now just an hour or so later just after 5pm it’s slowed to an unusable crawl 1.75Mbps down 0.33Mbps up.
Amusingly I’ve had to switch to EE to post this.
Smarty have updated the service status for this area saying there’s a problem.
