Three 5G Hub NR5103E dropping out

[xlbpb]

I have the above hub and since I've been with Three I've had to reset the router daily because it will randomly decide to drop out at least once or twice a day. Three have never resolved this for me, they always give me the same script: hard reset it, take the sim card out and put it back in, change my Wi-Fi password. I'm frankly sick of it. Today has been the worst, we usually get speeds of around 250mbps download and 12mbps upload, fantastic for myself and my partner as we are avid gamers. It dropped to 2mbps download and 0.8mbps upload- both wired and wireless.

I contacted Three via live chat and did a hard reset etc. after about 15minutes it worked and went back up. I also addressed the issue of the hub dropping everyday and he assured me "It won't do this now that you've hard reset it" low and behold, it did it again and the speeds dropped again. It's honestly not good enough and I can see I'm not the only person who's had this problem.

I did previously change the IPV settings to IPV4 only and this reduced the number of drop outs to a couple times a week vs everyday. Still not great, but tolerable... but now when I try to change to IPV4 it just doesn't want to know and it gets even worse. Don't know what to do anymore. Tempted to just get an EE data sim and throw that in there as I always have 5G on my mobile with them in my area. Has anyone tried done this? I asked if I had to send the router back if I leave and they said I didn't, but I heard elsewhere it's their property and you're supposed to send it back. Any advice or fixes, anything really would be much appreciated.

[PeterSmithson]

I gave up on that router and got a second hand Nokia one from ebay. All my dropouts have stopped. Very solid. 

I've been with three for six months now. In all that time, the network status checker tells me that there's a problem in my area that they're working on so they've covered themselves. But it's obviously the bad router provided

[Jonny]

Ive been using my old Huawei three modem for the last week, its 4g but works and is steady at about 30 mbps, I have exactly the same problem as you but am not a gamer so can get by with it for now, I think is the modem rather than the network, I have no problem with my phone and can use it as a hub with insane speed, three always had Huawei stuff but now use these lower priced hubs and they clearly are not very good !

[JonathanB]

Hi @xlbpb,

I'm sorry to hear that you've been running into all these issues with your router. From what I've been able to determine this sort of behaviour with the drop outs is usually indicative that your 5G signal is fluctuating and either losing signal momentarily or conflicting between two or more masts.

Particularly with the recent drops in speeds it's worth double checking our Network Status Checker, as this will at least confirm if we're aware of and working on issues with any local masts, given the issues seem to have gotten worse recently.

I'd recommend to experiment with where you have the router located in your property. Generally higher and on a windowsill or near a window gets the best results, and wherever possible try to avoid having the router within 1 metre of other electronic appliances as this can also cause interference.

In terms of IPv4, if setting a manual APN profile yourself doesn't seem to help the Broadband team can set this up on our side too, if you explain to them that you're experiencing persistent connectivity issues, and need them to set your APN profile to IPv4 only they can override your default settings.

I hope these suggestions help, and just to confirm, for 5G routers we do usually retain these, so if the outcome is that you cancel the service you'll be given instructions and either we'd send you a DPD label to print, or a pre-paid Royal Mail pack to return the router to us.

Thanks,
Jonathan