Awful variation in 4g download speeds

[Rob195]

I live on an island with four masts.  Speeds from one are excellent (65-1105 d 25-45 u)  but the other three are very poor  usually 5-8d and 0u.  More often than not one of the three poor masts fails on speedtest completely.  I keep reporting and keep getting told that there is not a problem and it may be a one off........I have three weeks of speed test results now all consistently showing the same.  I moved back to EE after a breif time away to take advantage of a good value 40gb deal but I cant use it.  Very frustrated.  Incidentally the signal from each mast is usually excellent and making calls is not a problem - all masts give me a 3/4 bar 4g but I can park under two of them and get 8mbps at best.

[Kirigaya_Kazuto]

Very strange issues - Does it say there's an issue on the EE Coverage & Network Status Checker | Check your signal

It could be an issue to do with the wiring to the mast, it does sound like it, rather than the mast equipment itself 

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Rob195 ,

When you look on cellmapper.net do you find that the good cell tower supports a band not available on the bad ones? If so, is that band the one which shows good performance?

Some people find the cellmapper website too difficult to use so you can use an app to check what band you are using when observing the good performance versus the bad performance. Good luck!

[bristolian]

Hi @Rob195 

7 minutes ago

Hi @Rob195 

Variable download speeds are not, of themselves, a fault but just symptomatic of varying data loads on the nearest sites and potentially the different 4G bands in use.

Your signal bars are only measuring the quality of your received signal, and have no correlation with the bandwidth available - this is what has the greatest bearing on your speeds.

Without knowing your location, then another possibility is speculative - but if one of your serving sites is only providing coverage on the low-band 800Mhz service this only has a single 5Mhz carrier and will only provide limited data capacity which could easily be overwhelmed.

Checking the 4G band and/or EARFCN you're using at the time of perceived poor speeds, would easily prove this theory either way.

[bristolian]

Hi @Rob195 

Variable download speeds are not, of themselves, a fault but just symptomatic of varying data loads on the nearest sites and potentially the different 4G bands in use.

Your signal bars are only measuring the quality of your received signal, and have no correlation with the bandwidth available - this is what has the greatest bearing on your speeds.

Without knowing your location, then another possibility is speculative - but if one of your serving sites is only providing coverage on the low-band 800Mhz service this only has a single 5Mhz carrier and will only provide limited data capacity which could easily be overwhelmed.

Checking the 4G band and/or EARFCN you're using at the time of perceived poor speeds, would easily prove this theory either way.

[Rob195]

Hi 

Thanks for that.  I dont really understand the technical stuff - all I can tell you is that on an island with a population of around 1100 1 mast does not give a speed test result at all, two give speeds betweenn 5-8 download and the other between 65-105.  The last one means all the apps I'd like to use (weather, video, plane movements, bbc sounds etc) work brilliantly.  The slow ones just buffer then work briefly and then buffer again.  The one that doesn't give a speed test result does nothing - apps open then buffer then time out.  If I use the coverage map it tells me  I can do everything at those locations.......but I cant. It's not just occasionally - it's all the time, everyday!  I've even got up early - same result.

[Christopher_G]

Hi @Rob195

I'd recommend speaking to our Technical Support team so they can look into this a but further.

Chris

[Rob195]

I did Chris.  I spent an hour on chat with a tekky yesterday  - chat so that I could pass on details of locations, postcodes and download speeds, upload speeds and ping.  He assured me that someone would call be back ....I'm still waiting.  Incidentally I'm just back from my daily car trip and the situation is still exactly the same.  The mast failing to connect to speed test app or stream sounds or Flight Radar 24 is still failing despite the fact that coberage map says "excellent for ....etc etc"

[Christopher_G]

I've sent you a private message to get some more information from you, @Rob195.

Please have a look and get back to me.

Thanks

Chris

[EssexBoyEE]

What Phone Make and Model are you using, is the Phone from EE or elsewhere or another Country.

[Rob195]

Hi 

Samsung Galaxy S8 supplied by EE.  Works fine in terms of data when I'm on the mainland.  Works fine when getting signal from one mast here (but only 1 out of 4)