Sudden drop in 5G signal and performance

[Gagandeep]

Hi all,

Looking for some advice. I have a ZTE home router and a few 5G enabled mobiles. Recently, the performance on all of them has fallen. Typically I used to get over 300/25 via my home router and similar, if not faster on my mobile, but now this performance has dramatically fallen, with typical speeds of 60/5. The placement test on the ZTE has gone from "excellent" to "poor" without any change in its position. 

Looking at Cellmapper, I am connecting to a mast that is around 300m away (straight line distance) I am not sure if this is the mast I used to connect to, but I would be surprised if it was not. I think there is a mast further away that the devices sometimes flip to that then causes performance to dramatically increase. There are apparently working going on in that location.

My suspicion is that the mast is now oversubscribed and this is why my performance has dropped so significantly. I have also noted on cellmapper that the coverage fields projected from the mast now no longer cover my road. I think they used to before. Finally, my router now only seems to connect to a 4G network:

4G Frequency: 99
4G Connected Band10.0MHz@2100(B1) + 20.0MHz@ + 15.0MHz@1800(B3)
4G Signal Strength-99 dBm
4G ECIO/SINR2.6 dB
4G PCI4
4G Cell ID784967

All fields relating to 5G are blank.

Seeing as I am stuck in a contract that is now not delivering, is there anything that I can do to try and restore performance before I look into potentially having it out with Three. I have already submitted a complaints form. Any other ideas are welcomed.\

Thanks

[Dannygwilt]

Started having this same problem within the last week or so before I was getting 400-500 on my ZTE 5g router & 500-700 on my mobile now I'm lucky if either get 100mb down and can't seem to find anybody who has been given any decent response from three

[JonathanB]

Hi @Gagandeep,

Are you still experiencing these issues? What was the result of your complaint? If this is still going on, please let me know and I'll check if there's anything more we can do to support you with this.

JonathanB

[sc1999]

5g requires more power than 4g so 5g masts are smaller and, therefore, more required. If the system becomes oversubscribed you may only get 4g and if a mast fails, or is taken offline,  then other masts have to take up the slack. Depending on where your next mast is will affect your speed.

I think that all of the networks have oversold home broadband and are struggling to keep up. My area used to get good 4g from 3, EE and O2 and now they are all equally mediocre. Vodafone has never been good but are now better by having done nothing.

[Anvil_Iron]

Not only does 5G masts need more power but running a phone in 5G mode decreases the battery charge significantly. I always keep my 5G phone set to 4G mode which is adequate for my needs.