Very poor speeds during evening

[pob]

I’ve had my home broadband connection since Jan 2021. I’ve always had excellent speeds (700+ Mbps) and I’ve often defended three on other forums when people have slated their coverage. 

However in the last 2 months my evening speeds have plummeted to around 20Mbps and connections often stutter. Playing 4K content on streaming services is difficult as I either get frequent buffering or poor picture quality. 

This must be a network connection/congestion issue as I have similar speeds on the other SIM cards in the household using a variety of devices. 

Devices:

• NR5103E 5G Hub (three broadband contract)
• Deco XE75 Mesh WiFi
• iPhone 13 Pro Max (smarty SIM)
• iPhone 13 Pro (smarty SIM)
• iPad Pro Cellular (smarty SIM)

Speeds are brilliant in the morning and afternoon. They plummet only in the evening. This is on WiFi and Ethernet.  Poor speeds also happen on wifi directly to the 5G Hub and via the Deco Mesh.  As mentioned already poor speeds also happen independently on the different Smarty SIMs in the three Apple devices when not on WiFi.

Can anything be done or am I stuck with unusable speeds?

thanks. 

[Bazowl]

I'm new to 3 and I'm having the same issues it's so slow nothing works apart from my mobile, even then it won't open certain pages. Speed and video tests are showing 10mb download speed, and video bit rate only capable of playing 320p what the hell have I signed up to this is pathetic 

[RaeC]

Same… 9pm each night I loose connection and get around 20mbps when it comes back… can only have one device connected or it’ll drop out.

[PeteG]

Hello, RaeC. 

That's not so good. It sounds like something is definitely wrong there. Have you tried changing the placement of the Hub to see if there's any other locations around the house that provide a stronger signal? Generally you should find that the performance is better if the Hub is placed near a window or something like that. 

You can also try placing the hub on the upper floor of your house which helps with signal pickup and broadcasting, and if you try rooms on different sides of your house, you might find that some are better than others. 

Pete. 

[pob]

No it stays on 5G.

I tried 4G manually to see if it made a difference. 4G was even slower and useless. 

[JonathanB]

Hi @pob,

I'm really sorry, it does sound like this is congestion based on all the info you've shared. Are we acknowledging an issue on the Network Status Checker?

[pob]

No, I’ve been checking the network status regularly and no issues have been reported. 

[JonathanB]

Thanks for checking, I can't see any other possibility than mast/area congestion here. I'll PM you a link to some colleagues that can have a closer look into your connection in case this issue is somehow not flagging up properly.

To view your private messages on the community, click on your avatar image in the top right of any community page, then "Messages".

[Anvil_Iron]

I think Smarty is also using the Three network.

It sounds like there's an increase in traffic in the evenings due to simply more people using the network.

Is the router dropped down to 4G in the evenings?

[JonathanB]

Yeah Smarty is our sister company and use Three UK rather than having their own masts.