New 5G hub - confused!

[MrChaplin]

We decided a few weeks ago that we were done with Sky TV so wanted to cancel but the retention offer we got was still to charge £70+ a month for their broadband & phone (landline & mobile) which was frankly ridiculous. After some research we came across Three's 5G hub which looked perfect. 

Some background, we live in the outskirts of a city but our small close is at the very end of a fibre line with no plans to extend or upgrade the connection. Our fastest speed on Sky was 34Mbps and no other fibre is available here outer than BT so we are pretty restricted in our options. 

I work from home so need a stable, fast connection. Rest of the family are avid PC gamers so they need good connections and I need for Amazon Prime/Netflix etc to be not dropping out while they're running around defending planets and stuff! 

Mobile phones in the home all have excellent 4G connection and pretty good 5G so we were confident the hub would work. 

It arrived, set it up, nice blue lights and insane speeds - for us anyway of 180Mbps. We had some issues with thick walls from one end of the house to the other so hardwired the PCs via Powerline and a WiFi extender at the opposite end of the house. All good!

Except the hub drops out 4/5 times a day and after a reset, works great again. We gave it a few days to settle in but dropouts continued and the online checker told us there was work on our nearest mast. After a week of this we called Three who told us yes, work was ongoing. No, they didn't know how long it had been going on for. Yes, it was expected to be resolved in the next week or so. And yes, if resetting the hub worked, continue to do so. 

After another week of this, some of our smart devices seemed to reconnect themselves whenever the hub dropped out, still 4/5 times a day. We decided that as we still had Sky broadband for another week that we'd continue to use that for our PCs so I could work consistently at least. 

We called Three again last Friday to see if there was any update or fix and were told the mast works were now complete and passed on to device technical support (at this point, the website still said there was issues and it still does now). We also passed the line test. 

And then it escalated. The Three person we were speaking to basically said it doesn't work, it won't work, we don't know when it might work so we're cancelling the account now, you'll get a bag in the post, send the hub back within 5 days or we'll charge you £350! 

We were like what the actual?!? We like it, it works great on 4G, it occasionally works on 5G and even when it's slow, it's still considerably faster than our supposed superfast fibre! All we want is to know if there is a way to stop it dropping out! 

I checked some other posts in the community and it seems others have had similar issues that Three have offered solutions to. We're going to call again today and ask to keep the account but wondered if anyone here has any useful advice?

Using the app to check signal tells me 5G coverage is poor but we get excellent on 4G so is there anyway to tell the hub to connect to 4G only for now? Or should we change it to the 4G hub? Request a different hub? Anything else?!!

It's a Zyxel NR5103E hub running V1.00(ACBJ.0)b12

[Anvil_Iron]

Hi, You can limit the router to just 4G by going to the router's web-based config at 192.168.1.1

Network Setting > Broadband > Cellular Band > Preferred Access Technology

Set it to just 4G and Apply. See how it goes.

[MrChaplin]

Thank you @Anvil_Iron if we can ever get through to Three to stop them cancelling our contract (lines and live chat closed at 3.30pm on a Monday!) we'll try it 

[MrChaplin]

I changed some settings on the brand management section of the router webpage, as advised in another post and so far, all is good. Will keep the 4g only setting as a back up. Thank you! 

[JonathanB · Accepted solution]

Hi @MrChaplin,

I'm sorry to hear you've been running into these issues with your new 5G Broadband. I've seen a few reports of the Zyxel disconnecting till rebooted when it connects to a different mast/cell. The previous firmware issue we had with these was preventing 5G connections whatsoever where that was relevant, so I expect it's most likely down to the nearby work, or a coverage limitation.

If you're wishing to hold off on returning, and try 4G in the interim, then I can get you in contact with some colleagues that I'm sure can help.

I'll send you a private message to link over to them.

Thanks,
JonathanB

[MrChaplin]

Thanks to all who responded. I changed some setting on the router webpage, confirmed our cancellation has been cancelled and so far (touch wood) all is working well and connection is stable

 Reminded myself of two very important pieces of advice - always read the manual and always check the community pages! 

[Dazzar]

@MrChaplin 

As another option do what I did and lock the channels so it’s not hunting , I had you problem as I’m equal distance and at the edge of two masts , locking it and I do not have the issue you describe anymore , if you have sky glass 3 and sky are not friends……