i live near the centre of nottingham and regardless of time of day rarely get above 7Mbps and average 1-3 Mbps on 3. at first i thought my phone (htc one sv) was faulty, until one day in the middle of nowhere in lincs i got 22Mbps.

apparently nottingham is a DC-HSDPA area which makes these speeds a joke. conjestion is the obvious problem but i have done loads of speedtests in the middle of the night and get similar results - what's going on?

3's overall coverage still amazes me though.

Here is a screenshot of my 3 connection at home.
http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/c...ps2019f831.png
Ive seen it as high as 30mb.
However the speed is totally useless as it only allows me 2-3 pages to browse and then no connection it just dies.
At work i get similar speeds to others 1-2mb but have seen it as low as.0.15.
I think im being punished for using p2p once at work.
Before that i never had a problem speeds at my work were 8-9mb no problem with low speeds.
At home never needed wifi as the 3 speeds were more than fast enough for the odd app download or browsing.I already have BT fibre so never really needed the 3 connection it was just a back up but not anymore.

I see 20Mb/s throughout the day at home, apart from very peak hours (7-9PM) where I see about 13Mbps. Early hours of the morning I regularly see 30Mbps.

In Manchester, I'm yet to see it drop under 5Mbps in the middle of the day, and where my gf works I get 5Mbps, where as no other network at all even gets signal.

It all just depends where you are

Should go away eventually... I did have a few days where my connection would burst up to 25Mbps for two seconds every time I did a speed test then immediately cut back down to 2Mbps. Went away after a few days when I stopped tethering and put the SIM in a data modem instead.

A speedtest from work i can actually see the mast,

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/c...ps3bae71c2.png

I've found using the speedtest.net app that you need to pick a decent server.

Every time I pick the local one, the speeds are crap. I always choose the Namesco one in London for every test.

From the london server.


http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/c...psfd1b05c3.png

It's surprising how much it varies around the country. I've just got easily my best result ever:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/658095359

its really bad today, seems its worse at weekdays (I guess due to people been at work)

the speedtest showed 0.04 for about 10 seconds and then aborted with "network commmunication issues".

namesco london server.

16 megs regularly in East Northants.

I get a steady 27Mb and I live in London. Its worth giving them a call and letting them know the area you're experiencing issues in. I experienced speeds like yours for a time, gave them a call and 3 weeks later everything was back to normal.

yep I have already rang, they looking into it.

giffgaff getting pretty slow as well.

only O2 is staying above 4mbps.

I have also tested with more normal activity such as downloading android apps, Three took about 15 minutes to download a 1meg app, giffgaff about 20 seconds, and O2 about 3 seconds.

As it stands, I have no suitable 3G for multimedia.

O2 - usage limit unviable.
giffgaff - sporadic performance might work okish for 240p plus a moderate limit at most with tethering.
Three- throughput insufficient 24/7 every minute of the day, I have yet to see it even spike up.
T-Mobile - yet to try.

Thanks for the answers guys, it seems the normal inner city performance is worse than outside cities but not as low as what I am seeing, so I have rang and reported this to three.

this map

http://www.three.co.uk/Support/Coverage

Type leicester. Goto advanged 3g coverage, can see gaps around royal infirmary etc.

Gaps in advanced yes, but not in normal 3G, that just means it's not DC-HSPA, it is still HSDPA.

yes so why is there no advanced in the city centre? seems bizarre.

three rang me back today and said they cant find anything wrong and that the service is contended so "speeds will vary"

thats the official line they taking, so i cancelled.

Due to the nature of radio technology and where you can put cell sites at reasonable cost it isn't possible to have 100% ultrafast coverage everywhere, no network does.

I hope you find something that meets your needs.

Except "ultrafast" does not involve any new cell sites. Anywhere with 3G service should be capable of DC-HSDPA "ultrafast". It is technologically equivalent to you having two phones downloading at the same time.

It seems to be the case that Thee don't regard you in an ultrafast area if you are too far from a cell site, unless there are still large areas yet to be upgraded.

Looks more like the latter. Just checked the Edinburgh coverage map and there's large gaps in "advanced 3G" coverage centered precisely around places where I know there are major 3 macrosites. The "no coverage" area just happens to look exactly like what the "coverage" area of those macrosites would look like if they were subtracted.

Yet the edge of coverage where it moves from good indoors to outdoors/none if there is no overlapping non-advanced 3G coverage is identical, so there appears to be no distance/signal based limitation.

Interestingly the 3 coverage map does actually seem to take into account the presence of buildings - or rather specific, individual buildings and their sizes/shapes, rather than just a generic fudge factor being applied in terms of general urban scatter.

to be fair, that map is a bit useless. It shows a large area which I know is covered by DC-HSDPA yet the map says no coverage.

Abysmal speeds, Three have went from being the best network for data to the worst in the space of a few months. Took around 5 minutes just upload a tiny screenshot.

http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/c...ps8b7b1aaf.png

Have you reported this? If so what was their response?

I'm currently enjoying 21.82mb/s (albeit not quite as good as the 27.05Mb/s recorded on Monday).

They seem to be the virgin media of the 3G world.

fixed capacity in each location, if not many customers great, if many then dire speeds.

They called me after I emailed them. Tried to go through phone settings with me but told him all 3 phones were the same result. They are investigating it will call me back.

Would somebody mind explaining exactly what a macro site is please?