EE Throttling my speeds when i use Youtube?

[SuarLFC]

Hi,

I have been having trouble with my broadband for a little while, i thought it might be because i am using WIFI so had a electrician come out and fit ethernet cables to each room. I am still having issues, mainly with Youtube where it looks to be that my speeds are being throttled when it notices i'm streaming video from Youtube. I am paying for 900MBs but when i use the 'Stats for nerds' on Youtube to show my connection speeds it is around 3000kbps, which means it will only load 480p. If i turn on my VPN and essentially hide my traffic from EE my speeds immediately fly up to 500,000kbps+, this is very frustrating as i shouldn't need to run a VPN and the VPN is then causing connection errors on other websites making me refresh the page.

If this is not EE throttling what is causing this? I have tried resetting the BT fibre box, the EE modem, i have replaced the WIFI with ethernet, i have tried changing the DNS to both Google or Cloudfare to see if this fixes and nothing works.

EPDATE: I have just removed the ethernet and used WIFI and this is no longer happening on WIFI, is this something wrong with out the modem or my set up and the way its routing through a hardwired connection? Because it works fine with a VPN on wired

  

[jak26]

@JimM11 Its only a couple of days activated, so a new Hub 7 Plus, then wired LAN to PC. 

Although not really related to these throttling issues, I've found a few things so far -

Trying to on-board via the app coincided with that 9 hour sign-in outage last week (that affected BT email too) - annoyingly the app needs to log in to the web account to do anything - the division of function between app and web dashboard is strange.

The Hub rebooted a couple of times straight away - likely f/w updating - but another annoyance trying to complete first setup.

After reading posts I went straight to the compatible option for 2.4GHz and so far no probs with some older devices.

Trying to get a device list is confusing. The dashboard version is fairly complete but uses DHCP related names that can't be edited. On the app the device list obtained by clicking the image of the router is fairly complete with names that are more correct suggesting some kind of lookup. The other device list available from the app seems to always miss out a few devices.

[JimM11]

@jak26 Not sure if the 7 Plus suffers from the delayed Ethernet port connection, you will have to find that out, the 6+ version was 20-30 seconds for connection, and only a switch keeping the port active was the way to get instant connection was nothing to do with iPv6 at all.

The app good luck with that, you will need it. Names are edited on the stupid app, they stick well app wise, sometimes pass over to the Hub if lucky and then Web manager shows what you want. Below so you have it FW history so far.

Smart Hub 7 Plus
FW: r3.29.4-R-1511690-PROD-84001 and the gui is at App version 3.7.4 19/12/2025
FW: r3.35.15-R-1597208-PROD-84001 and the gui is at App version 3.11.2 19/12/2025
FW: r3.35.24-R-1648110-PROD-84001 and the gui is at App version 3.11.3 23/01/2026

[Pghstochaj]

Grr. I spent most of today assuming that it was a fault on my side, swapping out deco units, swapping out cables, removing 4g back up, resets, different DNS, changing every setting I can within the Deco system then realised that:

My ping and broadband speed throughout is really good (up to 900 Mbits). Everything else works brilliantly, including Netflix. It’s just a YouTube issue.

Connected to LAN and WiFi I get the same bad result, large lag, slow loading times, can’t easily skip through on laptop and phone. 

On 1/2 bar 4g it all works completely fine.  
On a VPN with wifi it works absolutely fine (even a rubbish VPN).

ChatGPT told me that it’s an ISP-YouTube routing issue and then I find I’m not the only person.

I wonder how to get it sorted. 

[JimM11]

@Pghstochaj You need to call EE CS and have them fix it for you.

[Pghstochaj]

It’s not just me, it’s on BT and Plusnet too. Reddit users are trying to work out if it is national or limited to a certain area. Obviously I will contact EE tomorrow but given the extent of the issue I cannot believe that either they don’t know, or it is intentional. 
Some users won’t notice as they might not use YouTube enough to see the big change in behaviour, plus randomly some videos work well, making my troubleshooting today very confusing. 

[JimM11]

@Pghstochaj Wife uses you tube premium all day connected laptop, FF500 connection on Vodafone here Scotland zero issues....

[bobpullen]

There's a thread over on the BT forums here too. I also saw some chatter on Reddit yesterday.

The last time I recall something like this happening, it ended up being specific to certain CDN locations. There was some decent troubleshooting in another thread over on the BT forums here before it was eventually resolved.

Perhaps worth a read to see if there are any pointers that might help isolate the cause this time round?

[zmulla84]

I’ve had the same issue this week! I’m on the 1.8gbps package using an Asus router and used different DNS and EEs own! It’s always buffering for a few seconds but evening times between 7-9pm it’s the worst. Thinking of leaving EE due to throttling of pretty much everything, I used to be on BT 900 and thinks were instantaneous

[helloitwez]

Same issue here. 

Started about 10 days ago. Constant buffering or dropping down to the lowest resolution in YouTube. It’s definitely not the connection itself as Apple TV streams perfectly in 4K HDR. 

Tried Apple TV hardwired and default Samsung Smart TV YouTube app over WiFi and both have the same issue. 

[Pghstochaj]

Even shorts are taking 4-5 seconds to load this evening.

Netflix 4k is instant.