topic Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible in Mobile Network discussions

5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 20:37:53 GMT

I recently just switch to EE's unlimited 5G mobile phone plan, because I have heard good things from multiple sources, and I don't want to use my shared house's slow wifi while it's being used by many tenants at the same time. One of your staff guaranteed the plan I currently use should be more than enought for me need. I am a software engineer and a somewhat heavy gamer. I live somewhere close to New Cross Overground Station, and after a few days of constant speedtesting, swapping SIM across mobile phones, the result is outrageously unacceptable for the price £38 I'm paying. At times the download speed drops below 3Mbps, but getting relatively high upload speed for some strange reason.

The following results are grabbed from multiple 5G phones, including iPhone 13 Pro, Pixel 5, & Pixel 6 Pro. So it is pretty sure it's not a single device's issue. On iPhone I have set the celluar network to be '5G On' and 'Allow More Data On 5G', and on both Pixel phones I have already turned off Adaptive Charging & Adaptive Connectivity.

I have good speed sometimes exceeding 600Mbps while I commute back to my office, but that doesn't benefit me at all because I need it while I'm at home. And even with good reception (3 bars to full bars) and within <50ms delay, the download speed is still abyssmal. Is there an issue with the nearest tower in the area? I was on giffgaff before switching, delay was worse but it could sometime get over 80Mbps download for me. But now I can barely watch 1080p video on YouTube without frequent buffering. I really want to stay with EE, because the delay is minimal and I can maintain good connection while I'm gaming. But the speed is really putting me off.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

Katie_B — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 12:50:12 GMT

Good afternoon @4elvin.

Thanks for providing screen shots of your recent speed tests.

Please could you search your home post code using the Service Status Checker and let me know if it reports any known issues or weak indoor coverage.

Speak soon,

Katie

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

bristolian — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 13:57:42 GMT

Are similar speeds encountered when using 4G? The strength of received signal is not the primary driver of download speeds, available spectrum is.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 16:29:05 GMT

It seems the status checker is not available at the moment?

@bristolian Yes I'm getting similar speed if set the phone to 4G only as well.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

bristolian — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 16:46:52 GMT

Try https://coverage.ee.co.uk/coverage/ee

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 17:40:06 GMT

Here's the result from https://coverage.ee.co.uk/coverage/ee

@Katie_B Also I tried to make sure this is not an indoor only issue, I did another two SpeedTest outdoor with iPhone 13 Pro and Pixel 5, both caseless, and this time the download/upload speed differences are getting even ridiculous.

SpeedTest results outdoor, iPhone 13 Pro & Pixel 5, both in 5G connection.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

bristolian — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 17:52:05 GMT

It would be interesting to see which carriers your phones are connecting to, using a suitable app. iPhones are not great for that, Android easier.

Plenty of dual-carrier B3/B7 deployment in the vicinity, but I suspect your NR is coming from approx 0.6km away and thus would be a good test to see which layer you are connected to.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 18:56:00 GMT

This is a good direction. I downloaded an app from Google Play called 'Opensignal, and this is the tower I'm connected to. And it's not even 100m from where I live. Yet the internet speed is still that poor.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

bristolian — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 19:12:56 GMT

OpenSignal is not one of the apps I would have recommended - it has some dubious mapping & there are other apps that give radio info more reliably, however...

I can't locate any eNB in the immediate vicinity of the station that has a matching cell-ID so I would suspect that's an NR cell. NetMonitor Lite (for radio stack info) or Cellmapper would be a reliable choice.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 19:40:31 GMT

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

bristolian — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 20:52:15 GMT

Those screenshots show you're currently connected to 4G-B3 & B7 carriers on a site carrying dual-carrier B3 & B7, single-carrier B1.

All of which suggests your phone is preferring a 4G layer over 5G. It would be interesting to know whether your speeds are varying - traffic volumes could be a factor if so.

The "report a problem" link on the coverage checker is the next step if poor speeds are consistent.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 22:27:23 GMT

Interesting to know. Since all of my phones show '5G' is being used unless I force them into '4G only'. My speeds are pretty much consistently slow since I switched to EE last week. I've tried doing speedtests after midnight and it does not improve much. But the ping is always low, staying below 50ms or 60ms at all time.

I'll try to report this problem again later since it seems some parts of the website are broken right now.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 01:20:09 GMT

I have gone for a walk eariler near New Cross Station, with my Pixel 6 Pro + NetMonster app open most of the time. It turns out during the walk the phone did not even receive any 5G NSA signal at all and stayed with LTE the whole time, even it displays '5G' at the corner:

Something is definitely not right and this is not what it says on the coverage map.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

bristolian — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 09:41:04 GMT

@4elvin wrote:

the phone did not even receive any 5G NSA signal at all and stayed with LTE the whole time, even it displays '5G' at the corner:

This can be normal behaviour where an NSA (5G) cell is available, but LTE (4G) layer is preferred.

The coverage map does show 5G as being potentially on the edge of multiple cells with strong 4G throughout, although I am unsure what the RF criteria is for this.

Edited to add: It maybe that to reselect 5G-NR your phone needs to idle on a site which carries both techs and thus has the reselection criteria.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 12:41:06 GMT

I'm out of home currently with the sim in my Pixel 6 Pro, just took the Overground train to central London. I've been checking NetMonster while I'm on the train. Before the train reached Surrey Quay, the station next to New Cross, the result stayed mostly the same, but when it came close to SQ, the app reported 5G NSA was then connected, I immediately did a SpeedTest and the result:

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

bristolian — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 13:09:40 GMT

DC-B3 EARFCN 1815 + 1617) aggregated with B7 (most likely EARFCN 3350) is 80Mhz of bandwidth. Network Signal Guru would be an interesting view.

NR-3500 (N78) will likely be a single 40Mhz carrier.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 01:38:20 GMT

I've just done a speed test at around 1:18am at home, finally having a good result for once. However, I doubt it will remain this way throughout the rest of the day and importantly the evening based on the result I had on the last few days. SpeedTest, NetMonster, and Network Signal Guru screenshots:

@Katie_B If you see this please let your colleagues know that I have yet to be able to report any coverage/status issue since it is still showing error at https://coverage.ee.co.uk/coverage/ee/report-fault when I try to submit one.

I'd love to stay with EE due to the excellent speed I've observed from other parts of the city, but if it cannot deliver some decent speed in places I spend most of my day in, I might be left with no choice but to look for alternatives. There are still weeks to go before my current 1-month contract ends. I look forward to resolving this issue.

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

Christopher_G — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 15:41:27 GMT

Hi @4elvin

Are you able to try on a different device or browser please? If you're running a VPN, please try with it deactivated.
Chris

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

4elvin — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 16:32:55 GMT

Hi @Christopher_G,

I'm not sure are you referring to the speedtest or the report page, I always turn off VPN for the best result. I just tried submitting a report again, but it all failed on both my Macbook and iPhone 13 Pro, with Chrome and Safari. And there was no VPN running on both devices:

iPhone Safari:

Re: 5G Signal near New Cross Station London is horrible

James_B — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 18:00:35 GMT

Hi @4elvin,

Are you able to check the network status at ee.co.uk/help/service-status after logging in?

James