5g slow

[marymulhall]

Hi, since switching to EE from Three I've noticed 5g is considerably worse.  I'm constantly getting 4g like speeds on 5g (40-50mbps) whereas on threes I was getting over 200mbps. I also noticed a wider 5g availability in Northampton on three compared to EE. Does anyone know if ee is expanding their 5g capacity in Northampton to allow faster speeds and further coverage? I use an iPhone 14 Pro Max. I don't have any speed restrictions as the contract is no max mbps (your best speeds).

[shaunjenks215]

It’s all about Spectrum and what is deployed locally. Overall EE has much wider 5G coverage than Three. However EE uses a lot of low band spectrum for 5G including N1 and N28 and in many areas now N7. They do have 2x 40mhz of N78 (3500mhz) C band spectrum but deploy this much more sparingly and only really in high traffic areas. 
Three on the other hand have 140mhz of N78 (a 100mhz block and a 40mhz block) they’ve also decided to use their b28 for 4G rather than 5G. They do have some n1 deployment but much more sparingly than EE. Most of their 5G deployment is that C-band and they often use both N78 carriers on a site giving them 140mhz of bandwidth. - this gives unrivaled speed and capacity on 5G, but generally poorer coverage (you don’t see much 5G outside of urban areas on Three like you do on EE) 

Don’t forget that EE is generally in a much better position for 4G than Three, this gives EE the fastest and most capable 4G network, and given the vast majority of data is still on the 4G network also means overall EE is considered to be the fastest network. Three however is fastest for 5G specifically. 

[bristolian]

Low-band is generally taken to mean 700Mhz & 800Mhz deployment which is used for broad area coverage.

1800Mhz, 2100Mhz, 2600Mhz & 3500Mhz are regarded as high-band, and are used for a base layer (in the case of 1800Mhz for 4G) and additional capacity layers (such as 2100Mhz & 2600Mhz for 4G & 3500Mhz for 5G)

[Yogibeark2k2]

Why in earth did you change? Three sounds like a really good network compared to this EE crap you are using now. My EE speeds are 2.2mbs down and 0.03mbs up on 5g! I am definitely going to change! EE are  useless.

[Christopher_G]

Hi @Yogibeark2k2 

Welcome to the community.

Is this in a specific area? Could you check your postcode on our coverage checker please?

Chris

[Zillur12]

I was with EE from the beginning and just left a year ago due to high charges for existing customers. I decided to move to O2 for a few years and then returned to the EE network. Since returning, I have noticed that the network is very bad; it’s far worse than O2. The current EE network is expensive, and their 5G service is very slow. I’m not sure what happened to EE and their service. All I can say is that it’s not just me; even many friends and family with EE are saying the same things.

[chrcolk]

Not just you, here EE were great when they rolled out LTE, since about 2 years ago its been declining, and currently is slower than O2 during peak hours, which is pretty alarming, BT brought the best mobile provider in the country and have ended up gutting it.

I dont know if its over subscription greed, bodged deployment of 5G or something else, but its really bad when you consider how expensive EE  has become.  I made a thread on it, to see if it gets attention, and a theory as to what might be going on with bands been moved from 4G to 5G instead of them buying a proper amount of new dedicated 5G allocation, although my theory may be nonsense as I may have misunderstood how 5G works.

I have recently read how Three has so much more frequency range, and not only do they have it, they seem willing to deploy it.  So will give them a try soon on a test sim, if EE have access to the high performing 3500mhz, the question is why hasnt this been universally deployed to every mast, is it £'s been cut?  Because my mast giving me 6mbps download and less than 1mbps upload could do with the additional bandwidth.

[bristolian]

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@chrcolk wrote:

I dont know if its over subscription greed, bodged deployment of 5G or something else, but its really bad when you consider how expensive EE  has become.  I made a thread on it, to see if it gets attention,...although my theory may be nonsense as I may have misunderstood how 5G works.

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You have misunderstood how spectrum allocation works. EE's spectrum is increasingly technology-neutral, but uses DSS.

EE & 3 have very different deployment strategies, this can sometimes create very localised results. You allude to O2 being quicker during peak hours - benchmarking surveys suggest the exact opposite, so this may be a localised result on your specific sites.