topic Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights? in Mobile Broadband

Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Littlesorn — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 21:39:47 GMT

We live in a rural location and we took out a 2 year broadband deal with EE in Sep 23. We were given a basic 5G router and we have had pretty unreliable service with download speeds varying from 2-50 Mbps depending on time of day and upload speeds of 0.5 Mbps. (We get 5G EE mobile signal at home)
Typically signal drops out a lot roughly at the same times each day ~10:30 and 15:30. (Typically when you are on an important teams call!)

We have had several calls with EE tech help desk and we were told to do a hard reboot as there was nothing else they could do. They advised they couldn’t provide us with a better router or external aerial, and in not so many words, just have to live with the issue!

Does anyone have any advice as to what we should do next?
Cut and run or should EE be supporting us more ?

thanks

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Rach_H — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 11:56:40 GMT

Hi @Littlesorn

Welcome to the Community!

We know how important it is for you to be able to stay connected, so it's disappointing to hear about the trouble you've been having, and I'd love to see what options we have available.

Were the team able to look into moving you to a fibre broadband plan, or is this not available in your area?

Rach

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

bristolian — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 12:57:08 GMT

Can you elaborate on what you mean by the signal "dropping out"?

Do you mean that your devices lose coverage completely? Or that they have coverage displayed, but data isn't usable?

Do your devices fallback to 4G when there's a problem with 5G?

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Chris_B — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 13:29:48 GMT

@Littlesorn have you tried to relocate the router to elsewhere within your property ?

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Littlesorn — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 15:00:07 GMT

We are very rural and fibre isn’t available, that’s why we took mobile broadband.

tech support team suggested the problem was with the router having a poor aerial in it compared to a mobile phone.

When broadband drops, phone still has a functioning connection

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Littlesorn — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 15:03:11 GMT

Broadband router drops signal completely, no 4 or 5G signal at alll. Phone with is also EE (iPhone 15) remains connected and works perfectly well.

drops out fairly regularly, 6 times Wednesday and more on Thursday. I work from home via a VPN and it’s massively frustrating. It’s just for a few seconds but due to the VPN it takes a couple of minutes to get back on line.

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Littlesorn — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 15:03:43 GMT

Moved it several times, doesn’t seem to make any difference at all.

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

bristolian — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 15:49:09 GMT

@Littlesorn wrote:

Broadband router drops signal completely, no 4 or 5G signal at alll. Phone with is also EE (iPhone 15) remains connected and works perfectly well.

Is the router otherwise in "fringe" coverage?

Can you put the phone & router antenna in the same location, and compare?

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Littlesorn — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 20:02:50 GMT

Even in the same place, the router will be showing no signal ( no light or red light) but the phone works flawlessly

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Ali_A — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:30:04 GMT

Hi @Littlesorn

Have you tried testing your router SIM in your mobile, and vice versa? This would help rule out any SIM card/account issues (if the signal still persists on the router only).

It's worth asking the Customer Service tech team if they can tell you the approximate location of your best suited mast, which may help you with router placement in the home.

If the router is dropping out completely intermittently, there is the slight possibility the router is trying to connect to a non-ideal mast, where as your mobile is sticking to the one with best signal.

(The other way to test this would have been to take it near a mast- easy with a mobile phone, no so much with a router!)

Ali

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

bristolian — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 14:50:58 GMT

4G & 5G networks operate across multiple frequency bands, so there are valid reasons why different devices may display coverage differently in the same location - depending which individual bands are available from any given site. If a site has less than ideal radio conditions/performance, then it would be highly unusual for one device to be repeatedly connecting to it and another not.

If one device is losing coverage entirely when next to another that's not - it does suggest a device fault. The 2way SIM-swap would be the good next step.

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Littlesorn — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 22:05:10 GMT

Hi, we tried the sim swap and the internet speeds still drop and we still lose signal.
We tried this in various locations around the house and in the garden (mobile router) still the same poor intermittent signal.

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Littlesorn — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 22:27:05 GMT

Tonight we couldn’t get any connection to sky tv so we tried a speed test and it came back with 0.4 Mb then dropped to 0 mb. We then checked in the EE app to see if there was any faults recorded with EE. The app said the signal being received was good and there were no faults with the network.

We are really disappointed with the inconsistency of the EE service and that they are saying they can’t do anything about it. We can’t stream anything and when we do the quality is awful (you can forget HD) , working from home is extremely taxing and become unattainable and we are stuck until august under contract .

Re: Poor internet signal and EE support- What are my rights?

Christopher_G — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 14:28:45 GMT

Hi @Littlesorn

Thanks for doing that SIM swap test. I can only suggest speaking with our technical support team about this to determine whether this is down to general coverage in your area and discuss your contract.

Chris