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!

[bristolian]

Can you pinpoint an exact date or timescale when this speed reduction happened, or has it been gradual?

As has already been suggested, slow data speeds are not necessarily of themselves a fault, but can be symptomatic of varying loads on the network sites. If this was due to a network change, I would expect there to have been a step-change on the date the alteration was made.

You can check for known network issues on the coverage & status tool , selecting "check network" rather than "check coverage". This also includes the facility to "report a problem" if something you perceive as needing attention isn't reported.

Unfortunately, if the underlying issue is one of DL congestion, then that's not a fault scenario but one that requires additional capacity upgrades to be made to the affected sites. I'm confident that EE will be aware of this if so, but it's not always as quick a fix as all parties would like.

[Lauragiles]

It's not clear whether there is a mast down or not. EE has been very vague as to which masts are in my area. Which are working and which aren't. The complaint I've had open for 8 weeks is now a referral to the ombudsman which won't get dealt with or fix things particularly quickly.

The long and short of it it, everything was working fine, EE have "maintained" it and now things are broken but they won't be accountable for it.

I live in a very small village in Cornwall. Perhaps the increased tourism in the area has put a strain on the usage. No one has any answers

[mikeliuk]

cellmapper.net is good for checking the coverage and location of well-known, established cell towers. If you can obtain the cellid and other details of the cell tower you are connected to, opencellid.org is good for locating newer towers. It's likely the tower you are connecting to is further than you think.

Both cellmapper.net and the opensignal app are good for checking how things look averaged over a certain medium period of time.

[Lauragiles]

It started sometime in May which I assumed was due to maintenance work being implemented to cope with extra load for G7 ( I live in Carbis Bay). It started by losing data and phone connection on my phone and router. The phone part was but the data connection on the router has been intermittently useless. For a time I was able to hotspot from my phone and work ok. Last week the maintenance was completed and since both my phone and router connections have been intermittently slow.

I was told they recognised a speed issue with the router data side of things but weren't sure how to get it resolved. I've had an agent phone be every week for the last 8 weeks regarding my complaint and to be honest she just reads the notes on the system and can't tell me anymore.

I've been told it's not possible for the engineers to test from my house inside or outside and they won't test the black spot that has appeared from my house to the local shop.

Essentially I'm stuck with a connection that works sometimes and not others with no clear resolve from EE and have been told coverage isn't guaranteed. They fail to accept it has been working fine for months and since their maintenance, it's not rubbish. It doesn't sound like this forum can help. With EE agents moderating I'd hoped someone could get the ball rolling. It sounds like there's a major disconnect between customer service and engineering with no human contact just reading notes. Awesome for the best 4G network provider for 7 years... their words not mine!

[Lauragiles]

Thanks for sharing those tools. Here are the results. I'm not sure exactly what this means but I seem to be in the middle of them all.

[bristolian]

I did have a brief check of your local serving sites before my previous post, there seems to be plenty of scope for additional capacity to be added should it be required. But that's not necessarily a quick fix - it does depend on the physical site config and other factors.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being in-between many sites - your issue seems to be one of capacity/spectrum and not coverage.

[bristolian]

I did have a brief check of your local serving sites before my previous post, there seems to be plenty of scope for additional capacity to be added should it be required. But that's not necessarily a quick fix - it does depend on the physical site config and other factors.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being in-between many sites - your issue seems to be one of capacity/spectrum and not coverage.

[mikeliuk]

My feeling is the best hope is a review of the opensignal app to see what the average is in the closest zoom on your actual position. Completely agreed it seems to be a capacity issue that there's more demand than can be fully satisfied by the backhaul.

Before I joined the service provider, I saw that the average in my area was 70 Mbps down. Initially I only achieved 35 Mbps down which suggested for me the issue was not capacity but specific to my location or the router location.

As my measured number was far below the average, I guessed that I could improve things by changing the position of my router to achieve a better connection/link speed. Below is the current value that I see from a wired connection to the 4G router (Netgear MR1100) and 81 Mbps is the highest I've ever seen (I've seen peaks of 60 Mbps and 70 Mbps from normal usage).

If you have an Android phone on EE, you could use the Network Cell Info Lite app to assess the raw RSSNR for the current location of your router, move phone to various other locations and turn airplane mode on and off to see if there is any sweet spot with a high value above 13 dBm.

Due to the many cell towers in your area, it is doubtful that all of them would be congested with saturated backhaul. Historically I've connected to two town centre locations but my current good number comes from a tower located in a cemetery quite a bit further away in the other direction and with buildings and trees blocking the line of sight so I really wouldn't have expected good performance in that direction. In the best case, your device may end up camped on a tower which is not congested. 

[x@x ~]$ speedtest-cli --share
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from EE (213.205.x.x)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Community Fibre Limited (London) [15.26 km]: 32.391 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 81.02 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 32.09 Mbit/s
Share results: http://www.speedtest.net/result/11770756351.png

Noting my speedsmart numbers as I've never used that service before. Due to the slight disagreement with ping and download, it may be worth retesting with fast.com and speedtest.net. It's likely they will all agree for the same position of the router or handset.

Ping

58 ms

Download

74.94 Mbps

Upload

32.03 Mbps

[XRaySpeX]

To investigate the possibility of fixed BB with more consistent speeds, what does BT Wholesale Broadband Availability Checker's Address Checker estimate for your addy? Post just the whole table and the line above it, blanking out your addy. 

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Lauragiles ,

As you investigate your fixed line options, the cellmapper picture has just appeared for me and there seem to be pockets of red in your locality which suggests there may be the coinciding of capacity issues (4 Mbps down vs 11 Mbps up, I actually only mention capacity here in deference to "There's nothing inherently wrong with being in-between many sites - your issue seems to be one of capacity/spectrum and not coverage.") with signal issues (red on cellmapper.net). Certainly a large number of lost packets would suggest a signal issue.

I would recommend to first rule out a signal issue by finding a location in your property with a better RS-SINR value so that hopefully you connect to the best possible tower. It's possible the current router location favours a tower which is unfortunately congested.

You've mentioned that "It seems to be worse during the day" and "This makes sense because during the day it is almost unusable", so I would recommend that you carry out as much of the debugging as possible when the network is least congested (e.g. early in the morning or late at night when the download speed is higher or equal to the upload, if this ever occurs). 

If no improvement can be found to the issue of lost packets after a number of days, it would be worth accelerating the search for alternatives.

[bristolian]

Red trails on a CM plot are an indicator of poor RX quality and nothing directly to do with any DL congestion - they also seem to be in a different location to where the OP is resident.

In amongst the well-intended advice, I don't see any confirmation of whether the poor speeds are a consistent issue or are varying with time and day. That would be further evidence of this being a capacity issue.

If @Lauragiles  has an Android device capable of running the Cellmapper app, it may well be worth installing it and seeing what sort of values are reported for RSRP, RSRQ & SINR. Those will be a good indicator of the signal quality being received. There are alternate methods available for iOS.