5G Home Broadband issues

[Neil]

Had 5G Home Broadband for a few months now, has been pretty solid with only the occasional hiccup (the last time was a few weeks ago and the issue checker said a mast was having work on it - my signal actually improved when the work was finished).

Unfortunately for the last few days the service has completely degraded - whereas before I got a good 5G signal and average speeds of 150 - 300mb down and 10mb up, I now have < 10mb down and < 0.25mb up!

Have been through support and whilst the agents are nice and friendly, their advice is reboot the router, reset the router, take the sim card out... which I've tried.  The agent even reset my device remotely which didn't help.

I have checked the diagnostics on the router and it looks like I don't even pick up a 5G signal now:

Have tried moving the router (even though it had good signal and wasn't moved before losing it), to no improvement.

It's really frustrating as I work from home and it's seriously impacting my job now - I thought when I signed up for the home broadband it would be at least as reliable as my old fibre, but now my partner is having to drive in to work so she can get enough internet speed to handle a teams meeting...

I have a case raised and the nice support agents promise it will be investigated and fixed within 7 days but the issue checker still says there is no problem...  But that's not what I'm seeing...

Can I expect things to improve back to their previous levels of service or am I best trying to get out of my contract and going back to fibre broadband?

[ajwid01]

Hi,:

Sorry to say: sounds like you are in exactly the same position as me. Better off getting out of contract.

5G was amazing for me (same as you), but random drops to 4G were caused by limitations on the mast as to how many concurrent 5G connections were allowed. The 4G was so bad because allegedly the infrastructure was over-subscribed in the locality. (They admitted all this to me after 5x months of doing the same things you have: on/off, reset, relocate).

I found that moving my router around for 5 minutes, and then putting back to exactly where I took it from allowed it to reconnect to 5G on nearly all occasions. Sometimes though - it was as though they turned off the 5G at the mast!

For the last 7x days, I have had ZERO 5G capability. The network status checker 99/100 wouldn't work - and when it did - it says they are working on the masts. No-one can say WHAT they are working on (fault fix / upgrade) or any estimated resolution time. (They even sent me a text to the HUB (Huawei) to say they fixed the problem after 2x days. But it was a lie. Still the same).

I get 5-6 MB/s average during the day. < 1 MB/s peak (like some of your results!), and maybe 22MB/s in the middle of the night when other people are asleep.

When they admitted all my troubles were lack of mast bandwidth; they offered me a no-fee refund. ( I'm not sure that the person was supposed to admit the root cause.) But they hoped I would stay with them - as they are always upgrading the network, and things should improve (just no-frame).

I have persevered with it for an additional 4 months - but this week is the final straw.

I have just terminated my contract today. Cancellations told me it would auto-charge me £330+ to cancel the contract early - and they would have to put me through to Techical Support for a potential escalated No-Fee cancellation.  I went through 1st and 2nd line support this afternoon, and they have processed my cancellation.

Good luck!

P.S. I agree - the telephone people are absolutely lovely. They just can't resolve anything.

[ajwid01]

I just went to EE Business and ordered a 5G Outdoor HUB. (It's actually an Indoor HUB, but they can get an engineer to route a cable to an external antenna). Allegedly the 5G connectivity is GOOD here; potentially better than Three's - so I'm going to give it a 14x day trial.

If that doesn't work - I'm going to go back to awful 22Mb/s copper from BT.

Fast speed is not worth it, if it's unstable/unreliable. I still have my 2x Three 4G Mifi devices as a fallback if the fixed line stops working (which it did for 2-3 weeks the last time I had it).

From 9x months of Three's 5G, I would definately trade that time back on BT fixed line. It would have been slower, but a lot less stress and frustration.

[sc1999]

Having read many posts and comments like yours and having repeated speed issues with EE and 3 I am going to stick with my BT fibre connection for the foreseeable future.

[Goober]

If you have the ZTE 5g router is the network light on the front blue and how many lights are on for the signal strength, does the router status say 5g or 4g when you log?

[StephR]

Hi @Neil, thanks for joining us here at Three Community. 

I'm sorry your broadband signal has taken such a dip lately, I totally get how frustrating that must be. I'm glad our technical team are already looking into that for you, especially as there's no obvious fault showing up at first glance.

Let us know how things are after those seven days, or once you've heard back from the team. Whether it's a short term issue or a bigger problem that needs a little longer to resolve, we'll do all we can to help get you the right resolution.

StephR

[ajwid01]

My speed is still dire today... but will be trying to new EE 5G experience, when the 'box' arrives in the next 2 hours.

In the meantime: my speed is exactly the same - but now out of the 4-5 masts normally available, I have switched to a DIFFERENT single mast. The mast I was connected to for the last x7 days has disappeared - and the others still appear to be OFF..  This mast normally have 5G availability on it - but right now, the HUB is not picking up any 5G, still only 4G. I strongly surmise they have disabled 5G in the locality whilst they work on all this stuff,

Also - I  noted today... that the awful "network status" message is now working AND - it appears to indicate all the things that have previously been missing - and that I have grumbled about publically here.

You will note that it now says definitively that they are UPGRADING. (Before it didn't distinguish between faults or upgrade... just "doing work on masts".)

It also now appears to include an estimated time to completion of the work.

IF they had done this before - I likely wouldn't have cancelled with Three. I would have begrudgingly persevered with the horrible service, in the hope that TOMORROW, it would all be well again.

I'll check whether tomorrow this has come to pass or not... and/or what the status message says.

I'll also give feedback tomorrow on my potential experience with the alternative EE 5G.

T.

[ajwid01]

It was a lie:

Message has gone back to the previous "default" message of working on masts, with no resolution date.

Pitiful.

T.

P.S. Thankfully though - I installed a new 5GEE Hub from Everything Everywhere, and my Internet has gone back to being usable again. Back on 5G.