5G Home Broadband Woes

[ajwid01]

Masts turned off for DAYS with no warning.
Lengthy "We're fixing an issue in your area", with no updates or ETA for days.
OR - the "Network Status" won't work - it has an issue. Might work after the 100th "click".
Limited (100) connections available ONLY for 5G - and you'll be bumped to 4G+ with no warning.
4G/4G+ can be so over-subscribed, that you'll only get less than 1MB/s at peak times. 2-6 MB/s at others.
(Middle of the night you might get 22MB/s)

Any problems: and support just take me through 45 minutes of:
"Turn it on and off again"
"Disable data and re-enable it"
"Perform a reset".
"Relocate the router".

None of the above really works; it's just making you feel like they are helping, and potentially making a difference.

In reality - I need to walk around my roofspace for 5 minutes, and put the router back exactly where I took it from, and it reconnects to 5G again, with no other messing! As aforementioned - that lasts again for anywhere between 20 minutes and 25 days. (More likely 20 minutes to 8 hours.)

The above is significantly editted, as if I write more: the post gets deleted.

[The_Stranger]

Terrible service over the last month or so. The network status checker has claimed there's been work in my area for just as long with no end in sight. Most days I can barely watch a 30 second video on YouTube without it needing to downgrade to the lowest quality and take time to buffer.

I've never encountered such appaling service before. Hell! At this point, I think the old dial up connection I used to have was better than what I'm currently getting from Three.

[mb21uk]

Having a very similar experience here in TR1. 5G works great for a few days then I lose it and can't get back on. 2nd tier tech support amounted to "take it or leave it". When I get 5G speeds are great and hub position is "Perfect" but when I lose it 4G speeds are slow (1-10Mbps) and hub position is "Poor" or "Terrible". It's on my office window ledge, by the way. I despair. 

[radiomean]

As I have said in my other thread, I reckon it is some kind of traffic management. When things get too busy for the fastest connection (ie 5G) you get pushed off to 4G, with a reduced speed. And in my case, I get bumped down from 4G to a 3G connection!

[sc1999]

According to the network status 3 have been continuously working on my tower for nigh on 3 months and service is still patchy. However I have a solution. O2 are offering 100gig for £15 and as my phone can handle 2 sim cards I am going to add an o2 sim for data.

[ajwid01]

Thanks for commenting on your own woes. It's nice to know I'm not just an isolated case of bad service.

I honestly don't know how they have the audacity to sell bandwidth/service, when they don't have the infrastructure in place to support it.

I was contemplating Starlink, just to be a bit different.  That's £480 upfront and £90 monthly.

I'm currently toying with either:
1) BT Fixed Line with a Hybrid (EE Sim) to connect to 4G if the line drops. (EE appears decent coverage.)
2) EE 5G Outdoor Hub. (It's actually an Indoor Hub, but they plumb in an external antenna)

Option 1 = c. £31   Option 2 = c. £43

I was really impressed with the 5G bandwidth from 3; just the reliability is not good enough. Even if they turn the 5G mast back on, the wife is going to go ballistic with the loft hatch open in Winter - for me to repeatedly climb up and walk around with the router 'til it reconnects to 5G after it drops top 4G.

I'm tempted to try 5G with EE, but if they turn out to be as patchy as 3 have been - I won't have the fallback of fixed line. If only they offered the Hybrid on 5G; that would be just the product for me. I suppose - for the cost of Starlink, I could get options 1 + 2!  Hahaha!

9x months ago, a BT sales guy was saying that he often sold 2x fixed lines to families on high-usage and limited bandwidth. (My old copper here only supports 22MB/s max, and I'm about 900m from the cabinet).

I'll see what tomorrow brings, when I grumble at 3 again, and ask to cancel. I'm hoping they honour what they said they would do, if their service remained too unreliable for me.  Fingers crossed.

[radiomean]

Quote - 'I'm tempted to try 5G with EE, but if they turn out to be as patchy as 3 have been - I won't have the fallback of fixed line.'

Give it a go! I have an EE 5G mast about 2 km away, and recently I started to get 5G signal from it...

It is now pretty solid, and peaks at 240meg down, 70meg up and only really falls to about 150meg down at peak times. 4G from EE is also stable at over 100megs pretty much all of the day.

I got a 3 Sim to try their 5G as I am shown to be in the coverage area - but no 5G at all and 4G speeds are slow... I have had the 'we are fixing a network issue' message for weeks as well.

When I am now (away) is also shown 4G coverage but I barely get 3G.

Oh dear!

[sc1999]

I'm 500m from a EE tower, with line of sight,  and I got 100meg, 4G, at 6am and 1meg by 10am. I will keep my fttp connection until I am 100% sure that the mobile provider can guarantee consistent speeds throughout the day.

[ajwid01]

Given that Three are now plugging their HOME 5G offering; you might think they would be courteous enough to tell customers that masts in their locality will be being worked on, and an ETA for resolution of issues. Post, email, text... anything will do. But no - your service "tanks" to unusable, and no-one in support has any idea what the engineers are doing, what the problems are, what the ETAs are. They just waste 45 minutes of your time going through ineffectual on/off/reset loops.

Three really need to improve their game with customer service. Yes - they have ultra-polite staff on the ends of phones - but if they are ineffectual and don't know anything (can only take you through scripted tests) : I'm sorry - but that is not really "SERVICE". It's wasting people's valuable time.

I can't believe I wasted 5 months going round and round the merry-go-round with support; before someone actually admitted that the root cause is just over-subscribed service for their infrastructure. I was told, as a result of the root cause being their inability to provide me the service I am paying for - I will be able to cancel mid-contract.

Probably the person that told me the REAL root-cause of my issues wasn't actually supposed to admit this.