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Daytime slowdown - very rural area so not many users

jimwillsher
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor

‎22-01-2021 02:43 PM

Hi

 

Firstly, I am not using the supplied EE 4G router, I am using a Teltonika RUTx09 4G router. But I do not think this is an issue.

 

I live in a rural area. Very rural, it's mostly farms and forest, and many of the locals are not tech-savvy (based on the help calls I get!).

 

I am using the 4GEE service, and I do my speedtests at speedtest.net (NB this post is not just about speed tests, it's about real-world use.

 

If I do a speed test VERY early in the morning, around 4AM, I can get download speeds of 112 and upload speeds of 35. Yes, that's 112, or 109, or 105, I have the Speedtest.net results page in front of me. But if I do these tests during the day I am lucky to get 20-30 download, and 20-30 upload.

 

Of course, these speeds are better than the 11 I can get on ADSL, but the fact I can get 112 shows what speeds my kit - and EE's kit - is capable of achieving.

 

Given that I live in a rural area with only one small town which is served by FTTC and FTTP, I would be very surprised if every man and his sheep were continually using all the bandwidth on the cell tower. So I'm included to think this is contention within the EE network.

 

I know that during this pandemic all the operators have said they have sufficient bandwidth, but there is "sufficient" and there is "performant", and from what I can see, their internal kit does not have sufficient bandwidth for the load.

 

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

 

Many thanks

 

 

Jim

0 Helpful
1 REPLY 1
bristolian
EE Community Star
EE Community Star

‎22-01-2021 04:50 PM

Hi @jimwillsher

 

I know that during this pandemic all the operators have said they have sufficient bandwidth, but there is "sufficient" and there is "performant", and from what I can see, their internal kit does not have sufficient bandwidth for the load.

 

Variable speeds are, as you can imagine, not a fault of their own but merely symptomatic of varying data traffic & usage. A lot can also depend on the amount of bandwidth available to all users on your serving cell.

 

Particularly in a rural area, this could be as low as a single 5Mhz radio carrier, or anything from 20Mhz upwards.

 

You could use the coverage & status checker to report an issue, using the "I have a problem" link, but it's extremely unlikely that 20Mb/s download speeds would be classed as a fault.

 

To cite one potential (admittedly extreme) example, if you only have a single 5Mhz Band20 carrier serving your area, and one or two home-workers using video calls, it could easily have a significant impact on your data speeds. The speeds you achieve at certain times are certainly pleasing.