Three Mobile Broadband Speed

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  • neutral

    by Graham at 01:09 on 10 Dec 2011Report abuse

    Hi,

    I wonder if someone might be able to help. My E586 MIFI from Three is showing a full signal, and when idle '3G'. When I begin to use the connection the '3G' changes to 'H', which I thought meant I was within a high speed area. However, speedtests are showing that I'm only getting a download speed of around 1MB.

    I wouldhave thought that with a full signal and supposed high speed connection I would be getting far quicker speeds than 1MB. Are my expectations too high or do you think there's something wrong? If you think it's the latter I'd be grateful for any suggestions to sort it out....

    Thanks.

  • Matt - EditorEditor - Matt

    by Matt at 21:03 on 11 Dec 2011 | registered | 782 postsReport abuse

    The 'H' symbol indicates a HSPA connection, which is faster than 3G, so this is correct.

    However that does not guarantee a particular download rate as there are other factors involved which affect the connection speed. The local network may be busy, for example.

    And actually 1Mbps is not too bad. If you have a look at this year's mobile broadband road trip results you'll see that 1.3Mbps was the average speed, and not a single dongle was able to deliver more than 2.91Mbps.

  • neutral

    by Graham at 00:45 on 13 Dec 2011Report abuse

    Thanks for your response Matt. Yes, maybe my expectations were too high. However, with claims of their latest 21MB speeds plastered all over the mifi I can't help but be a bit disappointed, even if contention is an issue.

    The roadtrip link makes interesting reading....

    Thanks again,

    G.

  • neutral

    by Dave King at 11:49 on 6 Feb 2012Report abuse

    I have a htc cha cha on the 3 network and my speed test returned 3.82 Mb/s download and 310 Kb/s upload. Do I win a prize ?

    ;-)

  • neutral

    by Chris K at 12:11 on 12 Feb 2012 | registered | 48 postsReport abuse

    I use the 3 network in my tablet and I get anything from 1.5Mbs to 5Mbs according to the time of day. The upload always seems to be a constant 1Mbs regardless of the time of day.

    I think the download speeds can be different according to where you’re local mask is and not so much on how strong your signal is but more to with how many users are on the same mask at the same time.

  • Matt - EditorEditor - Matt

    by Matt at 19:38 on 12 Feb 2012 | registered | 782 postsReport abuse

    Dave, I was going to say you do win a special prize for 3.82mbps but Chris is getting 5mbps so the award goes to him I'm afraid.

    Speeds and coverage are getting better though we probably won't see any really drastic improvements until 4G arrives (around 2014/15 for widespread coverage, it's reckoned).


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