Forum Discussion
Strong 4g Signal - Poor Download Speeds
Hi Chalkychap - I just used the basic Smarty coverage checker and signalchecker.co.uk. The advantage of 3 is you can test without entering into a 2 year contract - so I’m happy however it goes. What I can’t get my head around is the major speed performance for ‘upload’, my last test was 0.6 download 17.8m upload… it kinda speaks to a congestion problem as download is utilised more, so my good signal is reflected by the good upload results??
Okay Davlon, there's around 85 million mobile customers in the UK, and the big four networks market share is approximately:
Three UK - 9.3m customers, 296,000 cell antennas, 31.5 customers/antenna
Vodafone UK - 16.9m customers, 383,000 cell antennas, 44 customers/antenna
EE - 26.1m customers, 490,500 cell antennas, 53 customers/antenna
O2 - 31.3m customers, 490,100 cell antennas, 64 customers/antenna
These crude statistics suggest Three should perform well, but Three utilise something they call TrafficSense™ to manage demand on their mobile network. Here's what Three UK currently say about this:
It’s the way we manage traffic on our network to give you the best possible experience. We’re always making sure to meet network demand in the right way, so our approach might change. Right now, here’s how TrafficSense™ works.
We’re here for you, which means we want your experience to be seamless. In times of high congestion or network issues, we might need to take steps such as rerouting bandwidth from quieter places to places with higher demand. It’s only to make sure things are running smoothly across our network.
Nothing there to explain how this could impact one's experience with mobile data down/up throughput. Network congestion, due to large numbers of concurrent users is no doubt a factor.
My take on it Chalkychap - the bandwidth is available on my device it’s just biased towards upload. Some guy has been sent to the mast I use to improve Wi-Fi calling and got a little too enthusiastic.
I’m at the caravan tomorrow - so part 2 soon! 🙂Thanks Davlon. Pretty sure provider's Wi-Fi Calling service is not delivered via cell towers in their mobile network.
The Wi-Fi Calling service uses a Wi-Fi network as route to wider Internet, and the network provider's application gateway servers, which handle the traffic to your Wi-Fi network.
Good luck at the caravan park 🍀
Hi Chalkychap - performance at the caravan was great. Steady 28m download 20 upload - works a treat.
Dave…
