What is going on with SMARTY 4G bandwidth?

Question

So we live in Perranporth in sight of the mobile mast.

There's usually a slight dip in 4G bandwidth during the tourist season but nothing significant.

Since about April though the SMARTY 4G bandwidth has become progressively worse and is reaching the point of un-usability (the other half says we should swap providers).

To illustrate the issue, currently both our mobs have a strong 4G signal and yet the SMARTY login page took 45 seconds to load. I'm on an unlimited plan, my wife on 100GB.

So what is going on? Are THREE MOBILE restricting SMARTY customer bandwidth? Is the THREE MOBILE network failing? The SMARTY network status checking reports no issues.

doppleganger · Answer

. . . and the results of a speed test . . . (I'd post the screen shots but image posting for me is failing on this forum);

Source: speed.cloudflare.com Aug 03 15:22

Download: 350kbp

Upload : 73.4kbs

Latency: 1.20s

Jitter: 2.50s

Network Quality Score: Video Streaming; Online Gaming; Video Chating - Bad, Bad, Bad

My wife's mobile produces similar results.

doppleganger · Answer

. . and as a corollary, I’ve now downgraded my plan to 100GB/month as a precursor to us migrating elsewhere – no point in paying for something we're not receiving. A shame as the SMARTY approach was intially very good.

doppleganger · Answer

So on Monday morning I went up the road to Truro and the 4G on my mob was superfast, I could browse, stream and video chat. Conclusion? - the mobs are fine, the issue is with SMARTY Mobile 4G at Perranporth. Network monitoring must be automatically flagging this issue up - but it seems nothing is being done to resolve it. Reading through some of the other posts SMILEY (ie THREE Mobile) 4G is an issue in other parts of the country as well. Disappointing.

msf · Answer

doppleganger&nbsp; Surely there will always be parts of the country where the 3 signal is poor. Doubtless the other networks have similar issues.I'm not sure what Smarty can really do about it since they rely on 3 and are part of then group. I think this is a UK based problem since it is possible to get really good signal in remote places in Europe e.g. Norwegian Fjords.

doppleganger · Answer

"Surely there will always be parts of the country where the 3 signal is poor" - this area TR60 AX is designated by Three Mobile as an area of Excellent 4G service. And it used to be very good but this year is has progressively become poorer almost to the point of un-useability.

Yes, SMARTY Mobile and THREE Mobile are both trading names of Hong Kong based Hutchinson Telecom. If SMARTY Mobile really have over a million customers as they claim then that gives them considerable clout in the UK. I'd expect them to look after their customers by demanding a better network service.

I suspect personally however that the coming merger between THREE mobile and VODAPHONE will result in more service disruption as staffing levels are 'rationalised' and resources reallocated. I don't have high hopes that customer service will be a high priority in many peoples' minds when their roles are at stake. We'll probably migrate our mobs to GifGaff (O2) - I have neighbours using O2 and they still have good 4G bandwidth.

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What is going on with SMARTY 4G bandwidth?

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