Questionable download speeds with EE Full Fibre Gigabit

[PeteC125]

Hi All,

I'm hoping someone might be able to explain something to a not-so-tech-savvy EE customer...

We're currently paying for EE's Full Fibre Gigabit broadband, which clearly advertises a 900MBs download speed with a guaranteed minimum of 700. I've not been overly impressed with the service since changing from BT and upping our speed, and numerous online speed tests on my desktop pc (Ookla and the like) consistently show download speeds of around 30MBps and uploads speeds a bit more. Nowhere near the guaranteed minimum of 700.

I'm going to guess that the 700/900 speed promise is probably just to the router only, and everything from there onwards gets slowed down?? We have the normal family use - a few phones, laptop and Xbox, but surely a full fibre broadband should be able to cope with numerous devices? What's prompted me to type this post now is that I'm currently updating  an Xbox game and right now the speed is showing a massive 8MBps. 9 hours for the update to complete, yay.

I do understand that more devices slow things down, and that an ethernet cable is better than wi-fi (the Xbox is not connected with cable, too far away from the router). But should things be this slow when we're paying for full fibre??

Many thanks,
Pete C.

[XRaySpeX]

Welcome to EE's Home Broadband Forum.

Any quoted speeds by any ISP are always BB sync speeds to the the router.. However a 900 Meg service shoould cope with the normal family use that you quote.

Try a wired speedtest on its own, using an Ethernet cable supplied with the router, here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html . Click on the "Results Page" button at the bottom of the graph you first see and then copy to here just the "Link to this result:" link that you see below the next main graph.

[JimM11]

@PeteC125 As XRaySpeX has requested at least do one test on a capable device by Ethernet cable to the router too try and get a base position so that it is known that the speed you have purchased is at least capable, otherwise on a GOOD and CAPABLE  mobile device test the wireless speed of the router, but NO more than a few feet away from it, the further you go away then the slower the speed will get, if the wireless is playing nice and no others are doing heavy downloading etc you may get the speed picture, networking is a shared resource so can be hard especially on wireless only testing.

[PeteC125]

Thanks for the responses and info guys, much appreciated . Unfortunately I don't have an ethernet equipped laptop to do a wired test but a wi-fi test with my mobile a couple of feet away from the router, and no other devices in use, showed a download speed of 105mbps. I'll try and find a way of doing the wired test, I'm keen to see if it gets anywhere near the advertised speeds.

Thanks again. 

[bobpullen]

@PeteC125 - your speed over Wi-Fi isn't down to just the capability of just your hub/line. The specs of the connecting devices are also important. Better advice can be offered by knowing the make/model of the devices you are running speedtests from?

e.g. if the desktop PC is quite old and only has a Wi-Fi card that supports 2.4GHz, then you'll struggle to get much more than 70mbps to it. I think every XBox since the XBox One supports 5GHz so speeds should be quicker there but distance is also important; 5GHz Wi-Fi doesn't reach as far as 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and if the Xbox is too far away it will use 2.4GHz and be affected in a similar way.

What's prompted me to type this post now is that I'm currently updating  an Xbox game and right now the speed is showing a massive 8MBps. 9 hours for the update to complete, yay.

---

8MBps or 8Mbps? Both are pretty slow but there's a notable distinction: -

8 Megabytes per second = 64 Megabits per second.

[XRaySpeX]

Then do a Wireless speedtest from the fastest WiFi device you have & post the resultant link.

[Minkey1]

@PeteC125 

Doesn’t help your situation, but with the same fibre service to the same hub, I’m getting this to the hub, then wirelessly to an iPhone. This is a recent test via the EE app.

The wireless bit is better than anything I’ve had before, and significantly better than WiFi to a cheap Fire tablet I have. I can only assume the capability of the WiFi radio in any wirelessly connected device is a huge factor. 

My desktop - and even laptop - days are well over. The router sits close to all my AV kit and that’s all connected via an Ethernet switch, and behaves flawlessly with 4k streaming, although I can’t speedtest it in the same way.

As I say, it’s no help, but does show what’s do-able.

[PeteC125]

Thanks guys for the further replies and info - all very helpful stuff to a non techie like myself. 

Mike I've just used the EE Home app for the speed test and it was around 70mbps, so nowhere near yours! It's clear to me now that it's all about devices and distances and ethernet vs. Wi-fi etc. 

My mobile is a Samsung Galaxy A14 ( crap, worst phone I've ever had for the record!) and the Xbox in question is an early model, so likely not capable of handling quick broadband speeds. 

I guess I'm just a bit too naive and gullible to think that a 900MBps download speed promise means all devices will receive lightning quick download times! As I said in my first post,  I'm not too tech savvy. I really do appreciate all the info guys, thank you!

Cheers. 

[JimM11]

@PeteC125 There are two (2) EE app's, are you sure that you are using the EE Home app, which router do you have?

[XRaySpeX]

The EE Home app? Do you have the white EE Smart Router? It only works with that. It doesn't work with the black EE Smart Hub Plus.

@Minkey1 : Same hub as OP? Had he said? I never saw.