4G network speeds ridiculously low

[EmilGroz_458136]

Recently the quality of the data speed is very poor. As a solution, I tried to force my phone to use only 3G and the speed is a lot better. On the 3G network I'm having 10-15Mbps, while on 4G most of the time it bearly reach 2Mbps. 

So at the moment - I'm staying on the 3G until they switch it off. After that I will have to switch to another provider as the Three mobile network seems to throttle/suppress the speed for the smarty customers. 

[MSF]

@EmilGroz_458136 The 4G may improve once they turn the 3G off.

[EmilGroz_458136]

I hope it will improve. Otherwise it would not be usable and smarty will loose a lot of customers. Smarty was arguably the best value for money in the mobile services. Although I get to the point of frustration where I would rather pay more to another provider and have a reliable network service than keep with the cheap poor quality.

[MSF]

@EmilGroz_458136 The thing is that, if everything works well for you - and it certainly does for many people - then Smarty is a good value mobile solution. If not, then you do need to look round and this is the beauty of not being tied into a long contract.

The other thing is to check any network that you intend joining first before you jump ship - it may be worse in your area!

[IvanHor_2603106]

I'm having similar issues with the network in Crewe.

Typical internet connection speed on my mobile is 1-2Mbps download and I've had as low as 0.1Mbps (that was 2 days ago). Upload speed ranges from 0.1 - 0.01Mbps. It's so slow that often pages time out before loading and is essentially useless.

This isn't just an issue indoors, as I've tried in various positions outside at both the front and rear of my house.

Additionally, calls are highly unreliable, with about 1 in 3 dropping at some point and most have occasional dropouts in audio. My phone is fine in other locations, this issue (for me anyway) has been limited to where I live in the southern part of Crewe.

I contacted Smarty support and was told that the issue was "congestion" for the local tower, but that makes no sense, as my speeds are so low, that the "congestion" would have to be of such magnitude that the tower is massively (inexcusably) oversubscribed. Additionally, my issues occur at any time of day, even the early hours of the morning, when traffic on the tower would be at its lowest level.

At the time I contacted Smarty about this (April) I was told that there was work being done to address the problem, but 5 months later there has been no improvement and doing a network check on the Smarty site there is still a message saying the following.

"We're working on the network in this area at the moment. We're sorry for any disruption this may be causing.
We hope to be finished working on these improvements as soon as possible."

5 months is a awfully long time to be working on this.

Before signing up with Smarty (which is when I moved to Crewe) according to their network checker, I would have good 4G reception and be on the edge of 5G outdoors. There was no "We're working on the network in the area" message at that time, so it seemed safe to switch to them from O2.

So my only option is to leave Smarty and find another provider, something I would have done a long time ago, if it wasn't for various things at the time making switching inconvenient. But once those things are out of the way in a couple months, I'm out.