Network Latency EE 4G Broadband since a month ago.

[Mick_R]

Hi,

I have been with EE since around Feburary 2023 and it's been great until recently.

I used to play on my Xbox as did my son and we were getting around 45-50ms network latency (ping), now it is regularly around 300-400ms!

Since the 25th of January this year (which is also when work was done on our local mast) my pings have been horrendous. I've contacted EE numerous times. They changed my plan, sent me out a new sim card, etc etc but nothing has changed.

They did say they found something and changed the MHA and said the problem has now been fixed. Yet my problem remains unchanged. I have then called them quite a few time since only to be told they can't find a problem and it could be down to weather conditions or the infrastructure in the area.

Yet the weather conditions and infrastructure was fine for 8 months prior to this!

I have spoken to my two neighbours who live around 1/4 a mile from my location, who are also on EE 4G as we live in a rural area and there is no broadband or fibre available so the 4G internet is our only option. I asked them to do some ping tests and they also are experiencing the same issue, yet EE keep saying there's no problem.

My Xbox is connected to a gaming router via an Ethernet cable, a cable then runs from the Ethernet router which goes to my 4G Ethernet modem.

Everything works fine at 2AM in the morning! and the problems usually start to show around 6pm until 11pm on a weekday, and pretty much all day at the weekend. I've attached some pictures below of ping plotter, screenshots, etc.

laptop pingplotter 04/03/24laptop pingplotter 05/03/24XBOX ping 05/03/24Ethernet model SignalNeighbours ping also on EE

Other neighbour Mark who lives 1/4 mile away

I had none of this prior to 25th of January when work was done on the tower. Everything was working great for 8 months prior to this.

This is getting so frustrating for me, as it just feels like I'm being fobbed off when clearly there is an issue.

Hopefully someone can help...

[bristolian]

---

@Mick_R wrote:

She did get a couple of replies from different people in the area saying similar

What can we do apart from keep reporting it and getting no-where?

---

Social media is useful for "comparing notes", have those affected users also filed reports on the status checker and  - if necessary - followed up with calls to CS?

[Mick_R]

Well one of the people who replied said they had reported it multiple times so I would assume so.

[Mick_R]

I have now escalated this to EE complaints department to see if we get any further as this issue is still ongoing.

They have asked me to do speed tests over 3 days so I'll be posting the results here also.

I did mention that I have done this numerous times already!

I actually thought that they had fixed it the other day as I was able to use my XBOX for a couple of hours the other evening from around 6PM until 8PM and actually got my hopes up, but it was short lived and the issues returned just after 8PM.

[Leanne_T]

Hi @Mick_R 

Thanks for coming back and letting us know. 

Please let us know how you get on once this has been looked into by the complaints team.

Leanne. 

[Mick_R]

Here is a copy of the email I sent to complaints @ ee

Complete with speed test results, timestamps, pings, and download/ upload speeds.

Here are the speed test results for the last 3 days.
During the week speeds / pings start getting bad from 5pm until around 11PM which is why I have included speed tests
from different times of the day so you can see exactly what happens.

After 11pm during weekdays speeds usually pick up, and everything runs fine until around 5pm the following evening
when things start slowing back down, and network latency becomes too much to play online games.

On a weekend it is usually worse and starts being bad around 10AM to around Midnight, and then works fine after that.

Day1
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16007251204 03/13/2024 10:07 PM ping 305ms 9MB 7MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16007450927 03/13/2024 11:26 PM ping 41ms 84MB 9MB - GOOD INTERNET

Day2
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16011612465 03/14/2024 8:56 PM ping 358ms 4MB 5MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16011705073 03/14/2024 9:26 PM ping 347ms 5MB 7MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16012219731 03/15/2024 1:00 AM ping 50ms 89MB 7MB - GOOD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16012502572 03/15/2024 3:11 AM ping 44ms 70MB 7MB - GOOD INTERNET

I got an email today saying:
Network update: We could not find a problem in CA9 . This may have been a one off and we therefore recommend you restart your device. If you are still having problems, please call us on 150. Your Report ID is 4987975. - As per usual!

Day 3
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16013660446 03/15/2024 10:41 AM - ping 47ms 74MB 10MB - GOOD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16015008448 03/15/2024 4:30 PM - ping 42ms 55MB 7MB - GOOD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16015912626 03/15/2024 8:38 PM - ping 247ms 3MB 10MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16016465544 03/16/2024 12:22 AM - ping 47ms 79MB 10MB - GOOD INTERNET
and another email:
Network update: We could not find a problem in CA9 . This may have been a one off and we therefore recommend you restart your device. If you are still having problems, please call us on 150. Your Report ID is 4989260.

I have also noticed that my upload speed seems to be around 10MB upload where previously it has usually been around 20-30MB.

[Mick_R]

I was asked to continue the speed tests so I emailed complaints a lot more than I was asked to do, as I did speed tests pretty much every hour to show exactly what happens and when. Here is what I sent to complaints dept in an email.

Here are a lot of speed tests from 16th March which illustrates exactly what has gone on nearly every day for the past 8 weeks now.
This is pretty much a 24 hour log. This all matches up with pingplotter which I'm running 24/7 logging all of this too.
Screenshot of this included.

8PM At this point the internet was pretty unusable,even web pages were taking a long time to load.
Watching TV was very pixelated, almost like watching it on a mobile phone in the 1990s due to the low bandwidth.
9PM TV stopped with a connection error (see picture attached). There was a red line indicating packet loss on pingplotter.
I tried doing a speed test 30 minutes later, but the speed test site came up with a connection error too!

Saturday 16th March 2024

https://www.speedtest.net/result/16016465544 03/16/2024 12:22 AM ping 47ms 79MB 10MB - GOOD Internet.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16018585536 03/16/2024 2:59 PM ping 398ms 9MB 1MB - BAD
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16019269372 03/16/2024 6:22 PM ping 412ms 3MB 6MB - BAD Internet
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16019472828 03/16/2024 7:30 PM ping 370ms 5MB 5MB - BAD Internet
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16019559638 03/16/2024 8:00 PM ping 384ms 3MB 8MB - BAD Internet
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16019648232 03/16/2024 8:34 PM ping 373ms 5MB 6MB - BAD Internet
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16019717307 03/16/2024 9:01 PM ping 379ms 2MB 5MB - BAD Internet / TV stopped working - connection error
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16019800801 03/16/2024 9:36 PM ping 388ms 2MB 5MB - BAD Internet - even the speed test failed!
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16019865400 03/16/2024 10:04 PM ping 404ms 6MB 4MB - BAD Internet
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16019958230 03/16/2024 10:49 PM ping 293ms 12MB 6MB - BAD Internet
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16020023679 03/16/2024 11:22 PM ping 91ms 25MB 6MB - Starting to get better..
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16020059559 03/16/2024 11:41 PM ping 47ms 85MB 6MB - GOOD Internet back to normal apart from my Upload speed seems to be way down.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16020264428 03/17/2024 01:39 AM ping 50ms 70MB 6MB - GOOD Internet as above

So I have to wait until nearly midnight to be able to play on my xbox due to the severe lag and ping.
Now perhaps you can see why I am getting very frustrated with all of this.
We had none of this prior to the 25th of January!

Sunday 17th March 2024

https://www.speedtest.net/result/16021566299 03/17/2024 12:27 PM ping 330ms 8MB 7MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16021648109 03/17/2024 12:57 PM ping 422ms 62MB 7MB - BAD INTERNET (speeds were ok, ping horrendous)
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16021879684 03/17/2024 2:16 PM ping 378ms 7MB 8MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16022040145 03/17/2024 3:08 PM ping 47ms 83MB 7MB - GOOD INTERNET - co-incides with the ping plotter graph
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16022183099 03/17/2024 3:53 PM ping 414ms 1MB 7MB - BAD INTERNET - again mirrored by ping plotter graph.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16022331358 03/17/2024 4:41 PM ping 412ms 1MB 8MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16022441939 03/17/2024 5:17 PM ping 408ms 2MB 8MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16022666033 03/17/2024 6:33 PM ping 385ms 5MB 8MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16022782244 03/17/2024 7:15 PM ping 380ms 6MB 9MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16022873316 03/17/2024 7:49 PM ping 294ms 9MB 8MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16022951782 03/17/2024 8:20 PM ping 373ms 3MB 9MB - BAD INTERNET
https://www.speedtest.net/result/16023293518 03/17/2024 11:01 PM ping 40ms 85MB 9MB - GOOD INTERNET

When it is working correctly, myself and my son can both play on our xboxes, and we can watch TV at the same time without any issues.
This is the way it used to be before the 25th January.

Output from the modem internals when the internet BAD at around 8:20PM
{
"network_type": "LTE_A",
"mcc": "234",
"mnc": "30",
"rssi": "69",
"rsrq": "-9.0",
"lte_rsrp": "-99",
"wan_lte_ca": "ca_activated",
"lte_ca_pcell_band": "3",
"lte_ca_pcell_bandwidth": "20.0",
"lte_ca_scell_band": "20",
"lte_ca_scell_bandwidth": "5.0",
"lte_ca_pcell_arfcn": "1617",
"lte_ca_scell_arfcn": "6225",
"Z_SINR": "24.6",
"Z_CELL_ID": "366",
"Z_eNB_id": "5079809",
"Z_rsrq": "-9.0",
"lte_ca_scell_info": "196,2,20,6225,5.0;"
}

Output from the modem at 03/17/2024 11:01 PM when the internet is good

{
"network_type": "LTE_A",
"mcc": "234",
"mnc": "30",
"rssi": "73",
"rsrq": "-9.0",
"lte_rsrp": "-99",
"wan_lte_ca": "ca_activated",
"lte_ca_pcell_band": "3",
"lte_ca_pcell_bandwidth": "20.0",
"lte_ca_scell_band": "20",
"lte_ca_scell_bandwidth": "5.0",
"lte_ca_pcell_arfcn": "1617",
"lte_ca_scell_arfcn": "6225",
"Z_SINR": "20.0",
"Z_CELL_ID": "366",
"Z_eNB_id": "5079809",
"Z_rsrq": "-9.0",
"lte_ca_scell_info": "196,2,20,6225,5.0;"
}

This is from a shell script that I had to run under Linux, as the modem doesn't normally give out such detailed information.

The matter has now been escalated from level 2 and I received an email entitled MNBL Investigation on Cell Site with a incident reference number so I am now waiting for an engineer to get in touch.

[Katie_B]

Thanks for keeping us updated @Mick_R. 

It's great to hear this has been escalated and the site is being looked into.

Katie

[Mick_R]

Well someone from the investigation team called me today, and I must say I'm not too happy.

The explanation I was given is that the tower has too many devices connected to it at peak periods and that's why there's a bottleneck, but I'm out of contract and I could always go elsewhere!

Well unfortunately I can't as because we live up in the hills, and can't get fibre broadband (only ADSL which might as well be dial up), and the only 4G operator in the area is pretty much EE , as O2, Vodafone etc are only 2G in our area.

I was pretty much told well tough, there's nothing more we can do!

I still can't see how this can be the case, as everything has worked fine for me for the past 8 months prior to this, and my neighbours used EE for years before I even did without any major issues.

The explanation was "well, people are using more devices now". I can't see how the internet is now so bad over the course of 1 day difference (co-incidentally when work was done on the tower, which I was also told has nothing to do with it).

I can't see an extra few hundred or thousand devices just popping up overnight, as literally my speeds have gone from 60-70MB to 1 or 2 MB in the evening, and my pings from 50ms to over 300-400ms.

I'm so fed up with all of this now.

[Mick_R]

Just an update, the internet is still exactly the same. Poor pings and speeds on an evening.

I even took the router, laptop and an external power supply and drove in a complete circle around the tower, and at one point was within 100M of the tower with the same results, and poor network latency and speeds.

Router + Laptop + PSU in car.

I also went to friend's house in the village, who have an EE phone, asked them to do a speed test, and they got exactly the same results I was getting. Low speeds, and high ping.

It seems that EE just doesn't care. One guy said they would need to spend £50K to upgrade the tower and because only around 1200 people live in the area they had no plans to do that.

Also they are increasing the prices,and at the same time providing a service that is very poor compared to a few months ago.

Well, I came up with a solution to this problem. Internet that works!

Starlink!

I purchased a Starlink system instead.

So if that's they way you feel about your customers then you can go forth and multiply (obviously I'd like to use not so polite language).

I had been considering changing our phones to EE but obviously I'll not be doing that now either.

So much for priding yourself on excellent customer service!

I hope people get to see this absolute mess about we have in such a small rural community.

Goodbye EE !