EE's terribly unsatisfactory service

[SteveBuscemi]

Hey all,

I don't really have a question. I'm only writing this to make my displeasure known with EE as a mobile data service and to warn others if you're on the UK mainland.

I've been using EE in various forms since 2020 IIRC. I never remember it being as bad as it is now and I recently switched to unlimited data contract to see if this would ensure me a better, prioritised and more stable connection. It's worth noting, that I only noticed it being this bad when moving to London.

I use various testing tools to analyse the network speeds and connections. Speettest.net, fast.com, iftop and tcptrack to name a few. I'm a software engineer by trade so I've experience on how to analyse and diagnose these issues. What I notice is that I'm rarely able to get past 13Mbps and that is not consistent, it goes up to 13 and right down to 300Kbps. On a good day I can get to ~30Mbps for a very short inconsistent period.

Another important thing to note is that I don't notice these issues in other countries. Which leads me to believe it's either the UK mainland infrastructure, aggressive load balancing and traffic shaping, or EE's configuration of said infrastructure.

I've multiple custom setups supporting a NAS at home. My use case is very simple. Stream files from home, now for most mp4's, they only require 300KB consistently to stream, according to my tests (though not every file has the same bitrate, most should fall around this area, unless 1440p or larger). The problem is, the network is extremely inconsistent, it can't even stream mp3's without buffering. This doesn't only happen on my NAS wireguard set up. It happens opening a simple google webpage. It takes 5 seconds or more at times to open a YT webpage, sometimes it doesn't even load at all and returns an invalid response. The connection also just cuts out at random and displays "No internet connection", which I suspect is disrupting the TCP handshakes that HTTP needs to do.

Strangely enough I turn on my VPN and many of these issues don't occur. I get super low latency whereas before it was astronomically high, but I still need to deal with the aggressive traffic shaping/load balancing that occurs. This leads me to suspect that EE might also have DNS configuration/leaking issues.

I've switched most of my services to HTTP based in order to benefit from the network prioritisation that HTTP normally gets on these networks but to not much success. I've manually modified the interface QoS code and MTU of packets of my servers to attempt to ensure higher priority and less fragmentation of packets when streaming to the EE network but still not much success. I've noticed marginal improvements within the UK and massive improvements outside of it, or on managed wifi networks such as hotels or airports for instance.

Since I've tested my set up in 5 different countries(mostly non-uk) now and the only one presenting these issues is south mainland UK. I must conclude that these issues are multifaceted and regionally localized.

• If I can get better latency, speeds on internet and home streaming on a Thai Tourist sim or in the rural hills of Ireland than my monthly unlimited supposedly 5g EE contract . There's something wrong with the infrastructure and/or its configuration.

• If I can get better connection consistency just by switching on my VPN within the same region. There's something wrong with the infrastructure and/or its configuration.

• If I have the same issues whether it's my NAS or a simple YT video. There's something wrong with the infrastructure and/or its configuration.

 I've been diagnosing these issues for over a year now on and off and this must have cost me around £1000 - 2000 in time. Completely unacceptable for supposedly the "best network years running in the UK". I understand the traffic shaping and load balancing is necessary for public networks in high density areas, however you guys should have a network which isn't partially broken and is able to provide an acceptable speed and latency.

If I must use a VPN to get an acceptable latency and even then if it's anything serious I still need to find a wifi hotspot to use because the speeds are inconsistent. This is a completely kaput service. Why the hell am I paying you guys, I literally get better service in developing countries.

Judging from the exhaustive amount of forum questions complaining about the same thing. I don't have faith this problem will be resolved any time soon. It's just that spiderman meme where everyone is pointing to each other.

In the near future, I'm going to try to exit this contract and perhaps contact Ofcom if necessary. It's ridiculous that I can't consistently get over 100KBs for longer than a couple of seconds. I'm paying only a fraction more for my dedicated FTTP line. Essentially I'm paying for a premium service and only getting dial up and first gen broadband from 07. 🤦‍♂️ (They can't even get the unicode to work correctly on this website. That was not the emoticon I've inputted)

Before anyone asks, yes I've tested on multiple phones, exact same situation.

[SteveBuscemi]

Hey all,

I'm writing this to make my displeasure known with EE as a mobile data service and to warn others if you're on the UK mainland.

I've been using EE in various forms since 2020 IIRC. I never remember it being as bad as it is now and I recently switched to unlimited data contract to see if this would ensure me a better, prioritised and more stable connection. It's worth noting, that I only noticed it being this bad when moving to London.

I use various testing tools to analyse the network speeds and connections. Speettest.net, fast.com, iftop and tcptrack to name a few. I'm a software engineer by trade so I've experience on how to analyse and diagnose these issues. What I notice is that I'm rarely able to get past 13Mbps and that is not consistent, it goes up to 13 and right down to 300Kbps. On a good day I can get to ~30Mbps for a very short inconsistent period.

Another important thing to note is that I don't notice these issues in other countries. Which leads me to believe it's either the UK mainland infrastructure, aggressive load balancing and traffic shaping, or EE's configuration of said infrastructure.

I've multiple custom setups supporting a NAS at home. My use case is very simple. Stream files from home, now for most mp4's, they only require 300KB consistently to stream, according to my tests (though not every file has the same bitrate, most should fall around this area, unless 1440p or larger). The problem is, the network is extremely inconsistent, it can't even stream mp3's without buffering. This doesn't only happen on my NAS wireguard set up. It happens opening a simple google webpage. It takes 5 seconds or more at times to open a YT webpage, sometimes it doesn't even load at all and returns an invalid response. The connection also just cuts out at random and displays "No internet connection", which I suspect is disrupting the TCP handshakes that HTTP needs to do.

Strangely enough I turn on my VPN and many of these issues don't occur. I get super low latency whereas before it was astronomically high, but I still need to deal with the aggressive traffic shaping/load balancing that occurs. This leads me to suspect that EE might also have DNS configuration/leaking issues.

I've switched most of my services to HTTP based in order to benefit from the network prioritisation that HTTP normally gets on these networks but to not much success. I've manually modified the interface QoS code and MTU of packets of my servers to attempt to ensure higher priority and less fragmentation of packets when streaming to the EE network but still not much success. I've noticed marginal improvements within the UK and massive improvements outside of it, or on managed wifi networks such as hotels or airports for instance.

Since I've tested my set up in 5 different countries(mostly non-uk) now and the only one presenting these issues is south mainland UK. I must conclude that these issues are multifaceted and regionally localized.

• If I can get better latency, speeds on internet and home streaming on a Thai Tourist sim or in the rural hills of Ireland than my monthly unlimited supposedly 5g EE contract . There's something wrong with the infrastructure and/or its configuration.

• If I can get better connection consistency just by switching on my VPN within the same region. There's something wrong with the infrastructure and/or its configuration.

• If I have the same issues whether it's my NAS or a simple YT video. There's something wrong with the infrastructure and/or its configuration.

 I've been diagnosing these issues for over a year now on and off and this must have cost me around £1000 - 2000 in time. Completely unacceptable for supposedly the "best network years running in the UK". I understand the traffic shaping and load balancing is necessary for public networks in high density areas, however you guys should have a network which isn't partially broken and is able to provide an acceptable speed and latency.

If I must use a VPN to get an acceptable latency and even then if it's anything serious I still need to find a wifi hotspot to use because the speeds are inconsistent. This is a completely kaput service. Why the hell am I paying you guys, I literally get better service in developing countries.

Judging from the exhaustive amount of forum questions complaining about the same thing. I don't have faith this problem will be resolved any time soon. It's just that spiderman meme where everyone is pointing to each other.

In the near future, I'm going to try to exit this contract and perhaps contact Ofcom if necessary. It's ridiculous that I can't consistently get over 100KBs for longer than a couple of seconds. I'm paying only a fraction more for my dedicated FTTP line with another company. Essentially I'm paying for a premium service and only getting dial up and first gen broadband from 07. 

Another dodgy thing I've noticed is that the speeds on fast.com or speedtest.net are not representative of all connection transfers. These site are typically given higher priority than others in order to mislead you, if you use a shell tool like iftop you can spot the true transfer speeds, which more often than not, will jump to a couple of MB/s for a second or two then drops and maintains a consistent few kilobytes per second. Using that data, you can generate a graph that will make your case. If you wish to pursue contract dissolution. 

Before anyone asks, yes I've tested on multiple phones, exact same situation.

[XRaySpeX]

OFCOM don't handle individual complaints. You can make a formal complaint to EE & if you don't get satisfaction after 8 weeks you can take it to EE's ADR provider. See Complaints code of practice and here is the Complaints Form .

[bristolian]

Support fora don't tend to attract users reporting good service or thanking the company for it. So the "exhaustive amount of forum questions" wanting help is never a surprise on such a facility.

Unfortunately my expertise is not in IP routing or suchlike, hence cannot add anything to your testing.

[XRaySpeX]

@SteveBuscemi : There is no point in posting the same matter all over the shop, esp. not to a thread over a year old. It'll still be read & actioned, if necessary, by those with expertise & interest in it.

[Northerner]

Hi @SteveBuscemi 

I suppose its all relative as some users will be happy with the service as for them it meets there need at the time of use. You seem to be an advances user and for you the network is challenging to use as you would like or expect.

Same can be said for service in some ares is fantastic in others less so. EE ( like all networks) does not give any network guarantees on service, speed or network quality. 

Thanks 

[bristolian]

To add, you mention your experiences being across the south of the UK but also mention London.

Are you saying this is only an issue within the M25? Are there any specific locations either in London or elsewhere?