Slow download speeds but fast upload TR26 2SF

[Lauragiles]

I have no idea how many times I have to complain and report this to EE.

The upload speed is currently faster than the download. Can someone please sort out my connection. It’s been fine for the last 9 months but since some engineers have been doing “maintenance” over the last 2 months it’s been borked.

This is via 4G Router. Apparently your team say there isn’t a problem. I beg to differ!

[Lauragiles]

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This is a screenshot of a speed test. It isn’t appearing on the post.



3.98Mbps down

11.65Mbps up

[XRaySpeX]

Patience! Your images were awaiting approval. I have now done so & they should appear soon.

[Christopher_B]

Hi @Lauragiles

Welcome to the EE Community.

I hope you're well and having a nice Friday, other than this issue of course.

Could I please just check what your speeds were like before these issues started, this is just so I can get a better idea of where things stand.

Thanks 

Chris 

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Lauragiles ,

When the measured upload speed is higher than the measured download speed, this is a sure sign of a congested network due to the high number of users out and about.

I frequently observed this situation with my previous service provider to a much worse extent (sub 1 Mbps at times).

Previous workarounds which succeeded for me were to force a switch to 3G which apparently is much less congested, or a restart of the router to cause it to pick a new cell tower to connect to. Good luck! 🤓

[Lauragiles]

This makes sense because during the day it is almost unusable. My house appears to be in between 2 masts and I've been told in the past that one has been taken offline so I only have 1 mast to use.

I really don't know what else to do now as EE are washing their hands of the problem and I use this connection for work. I expect i'll need to get a phone line installed and set up with normal broadband. Annoying. It worked fine for almost a year without any issues

[Lauragiles]

I signed up to this in May 2020 when BT weren't installed broadband due to covid. This was working at 30Mbps down and up. Not exactly the same but close to it.

From what I gather my address TR26 2SF is either in between 2 Masts or I only have 1 mast to use. Since May/June 2021 the connection on Mobile data and router data has been rubbish. I get frequent packet loss when testing. If I do get a reply from a ping it can vary from 400ms response time to 120ms response when hot spotting on my phone but it's not consistent. From my house to the local shop there's no data at all.

It seems to be worse during the day. I've put in a complaint and the response I get from EE is that the maintenance work has been completed. It's not working, in the same way, it was 3 months ago and it's been affecting my work.

Imagine being in lockdown with no option to go to people's houses or coffee shops to use broadband. I had to drive to a location away from my home and sit in my car and hot spot from my phone to work! It's ridiculous and I'm fed up with trying to get someone at EE to sort it.

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Lauragiles ,

The suitability of the 4G connection for work will depend on whether you need live video or whether you can get by with just audio, and whether the latency is ok (roughly sub 60 ms unloaded measured on fast.com).

I've worked at home during the pandemic using a 4G LTE internet connection as my main house connection and have been fine with as little as 2 Mbps for Teams audio. I suspect even 4 Mbps would be too low for video.

The killer is likely to be latency as you might find the delay between you hearing the other party and when the other party hears your reply is too high and makes an online conversation or presentation too difficult. Unloaded latency is likely to be around 32 ms and anything higher than 60 ms is likely to produce a bad experience.

For fixed line broadband sizing, Netflix and Disney+ recommend 25 Mbps. Oftentimes, people pay for more bandwidth than they require.

[Lauragiles]

I understand the connectivity from a technical background I've worked in networking and infrastructure support for 15 years.

My complaint is that this connection had been working perfectly well for all things video audio work etc for 9 months. EE made some changes recently and since it's been unusable and they won't fix it. Correction, they say there's no error

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Lauragiles ,

My feeling is that while the mast it down, this is no longer a technical issue and is more a commercial and service level issue. Assuming you have a regular consumer/personal contract as I have, I suspect the service level agreement will be non-existent or much less strict than a business contract. At some point, an official complaint may be justified (if not raised already). It may help others to hear if you find success in getting this resolved in a timely manner as the issue could potentially hit any one of us. Good luck!