5G Broadband dropouts

[MacDavidson]

Hi folks,

So I got Three’s 5G broadband and get great speeds, with great coverage around the house. But at various times each day (for no apparent reason), it just disappears from being available as a wifi device for around 10 minutes, or until reset. The Mac connected by CAT7 cable is unaffected, and all lights remain as they should.

I’ve positioned the router in various places, tried changing the APN from 3internet to three.co.uk, and reset several times. 

Am I doing something wrong? Should I have 2.4 and 5 GHz on at the same time? 2.4 GHz is slower, but I need that for the smart gadgets in the house, but speed is what it’s all about…

Thanks in advance for your time

[WCAT-15]

Exactly the same as you. (I bought a Zyxel when the ZTE MC801 gave dropouts and the 5G is much improved).  However, even with the Zyxel in the 7 months I have had nearly 300 dropouts. Why am I still with THREE???  Because in the 7 months I have only noticed about 6 of the dropouts, and those typically only last a few minutes. So I can live with it......

[Spligosh]

It really isn’t good enough that three are still blaming local mast problems for this issue. I was also plagued with dropouts on my ZTE modem. I eventually wrote a complaint letter to their CEO and he put his executive team onto it. A very nice lady called Pamela sent me out a new modem model number NR5103E and after some too and fro-ing regarding sim size now works with no dropouts whatsoever. If this has been an ongoing issue for you then email the CEO!

[stevekn]

23 pages on this thread ad counting....   my modem is still dropping the internet several times a day.

Do yo have the CEO's name and address ?

Time for a fix ?

[Spligosh]

I should add - keep your email polite but firm and emphasise that this kind of service is not acceptable 😉

[Axel006]

having the exact same issue, I tried using a different router with this SIM, and it worked perfect. I assume this is purely due to the firmware update 

[acelove]

Same. Was was fine in Feb, perfect even, 600-700mpbs. March, after the cooling off period, constantly dropping out, speeds gone to 95-300 on a great day, websites just hang, plagued with DNS issues. All of a sudden they're saying there is a mast issue, my apartment is directly facing the mast. Got told to keep checking the website for updates - It's now OCTOBER and not a single update at all. 

Three Technically say there is work ongoing, first they told me too many people were using the mast, then tried to tell me it wasn't congested??!? But they're still happily selling Home Broadband when you put in your postcode! 

I was told it would be escalated, never got a call back. They tried to give me £5 credit, was very insulting. Then offering disconnection for free. Fine, but it's not a resolution, I cancelled my ISP, at cost to me as we could only ever have broadband via the Property Management. It just leaves us in limbo. 

It was absolutely fantastic the first month, but its getting progressively worse DAILY. 

I have the ZTE, changed to three.co.uk yesterday, as my phone doesn't have drop outs when connected to 5G mast, unlike when its connected to the router. Usually get DNS errors, tried to manually change them but doesn't seem to do anything even with Google and Cloudflare as primary and secondary.

I usually notices issues when using my phone, it gets DNS issues, I drop the WIFI and it connects fine and pages load rapidly. I'll be testing the three.co.uk APN this week to see if its better. Although still getting ping spikes every now and then

Three have been useless, they don't listen, they lie, they're not properly trained. I come from telecoms, I know my stuff and I feel like I'm going red in the face explaining DNS issues. 

The router hasnt been updated since March, oddly when the issues started. Not a single update has been made to at least try and fix the issues, no one from Three has contacted me back. I'm due a calll next Thursday, we'll see and i'll report back. 

Don't let them mess with the router settings, twice now they've logged in and made it even worse. It's just beyond frustrating because it's like they don't care, all they care about is cramming the network up way beyond capacity at the expense of everyone else who wants to stay and pay for a decent (when working) connection. 

[WCAT-15]

Not just ZTE, I get lots of brief dropouts with Zyxel router (but not as many as with ZTE)

[WCAT-15]

I've had 5G broadband since April. (5 months). Started with ZTE router but lots of dropouts so I bought a Zyxel router as advised by members of this forum. That was an improvement, but still get dropouts. In fact my Internet Connection Log shows 154 dropouts in 5 months, with total dropout time of over 24 hours. Most dropouts are only a minute or so (before it all comes back online OK). Most dropouts are not even noticed by us.  However, some nights we get a mid-evening 10 minute dropout in the middle of watching streaming movie or something, which starts to push me toward going back to reliable fibre (at double the price........).  I wish THREE would improve the reliability of the broadband.

[WCAT-15]

Update: 7 months now, Zyxel Router. 278 dropouts so far, some just for a few seconds; rarely longer than 5 minutes. I touch nothing, and it just comes back when ready. If I stood on our roof I could probably see the local mast on a hill about half a mile away. 

If we assume that most THREE 5G customers do not have these problems, it should be possible for engineers to identify the cause of this annoyance.

[stevekn]

Its a well known problem that Three and ZTE are ignoring.