Three network dropping Teams and Facetime in South Ealing

[westlondon]

The 3 network has become very unreliable in South Ealing - W5 5RF

The signal on my roof mounted home router is good - it has line of site to 3's mast and with very good signal quality scores for 5G - download speeds in the 400-600 Mbps range

In the last 3 weeks the network has been constantly dropping MS Teams video calls and Facetime video calls - it's not a bandwidth thing - the network seems to completely drop the data connection for a minute to two (disconnecting the router) and when it returns the download speeds are still very good.

The 3 service has been great for the last 18 months but intermittently the network status page for faults reports there's an issue and then the next day there's no issue reported but the network is still unreliable.

[digitalnomad]

Did you ever get a resolution to this? Signal strength all around Ealing Broadway (0.5 mile radius from the station) is absolutely abysmal. Severe congestion impacting data speeds, which they don't seem in any hurry to acknowledge or resolve.

[Chris1]

This is a very interesting post for me - I have similar problems when I go the office, which is based near Ealing Common close to the Doubletree hotel on Hanger Lane W5 3HN (you don't need to remove this postcode as it is publically available).. The throughput (on my 4G phone) is absolutely awful as well, I get single digit download and upload speeds! The cell which my phone connects to is obviously overloaded as well. I shall have to try the gfblip site.

[westlondon]

The 3 mast in Ealing Common is at 429 Uxbridge Road. It's on top of a block of flats and was originally one of the "relish" broadband sites - then integrated into the 3 network.

Let us know how you get on with the blip tester - be sure to check the "DNS" box to enable detailed testing.

[Chris1]

Interesting to hear of the history. There is also another site (according to cellmapper.net ID 4379) on top of the Doubletree hotel and looking at the rough map of where the coverage is provided by it, my office is there. It serves mainly the north half of the common.

13288 on top of 429 Uxbridge Road seems to serve the southern part of the common.

538 at UWL serves the west side of the common, and the part as you walk towards the town centre.

The blip tester doesn't seem particularly healthy at my office in W5 - I tried it earlier this week and it was flatlined with red and black at the 2000ms end of the graph. It wasn't my phone not performing, as when I got into a not so congested area the graphs worked as normal.

[westlondon]

Update - the cell site still has the same repeating ping spike / packet drop error - see attached screenshot from phone whilst standing across the road from the mast which is on the roof of Thames Valley University.

 

[westlondon]

Jonathan B -  not sure why you felt the need to remove the postcode.

It’s not my home address and is relevant because three have 2 x cell sites in W5 - and it’s the one at the postcode you deleted (literally on the roof of that postcode) that’s got the routing error.

[JonathanB]

Hey @westlondon,

Thanks for clarifying, I've restored the info. We don't access your actual Three account when reviewing the community, so have to make a judgement call regarding data shared.

Thanks,
JonathanB

[westlondon]

OK so  I've managed to narrow down the problem and it's an issue with routing on 3's network on one cell site.

There are 2 x cell sites serving South Ealing:

[Physical Cell ID / RFCN]

460-6175

356-9360

Based on signal strength / quality, the closest one to me is 356-9360 which I think is on the roof of Thames Valley University. Three did some mast works on that site a few months ago.

When I lock my router to each cell site, there seems to be a problem with routing on 356-9360 - with continuous ping spikes (2000ms or longer). Ping spikes have been an issue on three before -with loads of complaints a year or so ago - coinciding with works on Three's cloud core work.

Although the upload and download speeds on that site are consistently good, services that aren't streamed with a hardware buffer i.e. MS Teams, Zoom, Wi-fi calling all result in dropped calls. I've recreated the problem without using my home wi-fi problem i.e. testing on the router WAN connection.

Here are 2 x screenshots to prove the problem. Both created using BLIP which runs as JS in the browser on the router WAN connection - so isolates any hardware / LAN network issues.

Three's network status page says there isn't a problem - but there clearly is:

- it's been happening for a few weeks after a network error was reported and closed on the 3 status page.

- it's repeatable on a phone web browser and computer web browser

- it's only on the cell site closest to me

How do I get this escalated to 3's network team (not CS who just fob off with "reset your router" type advice?

[Anonymous]

Things to do;

1) Check the Three status page for any ongoing issues especially as you say you’ve got a roof mount router with line of sight. 
2) Failing that it’s a call to customer service. 
Best of luck.