I took this today http://oi62.tinypic.com/2dhh1z5.jpg This is not a one time thing, this is what I get every day on H+ O2 0.25mb Anyone else getting this?

It's caled having a network based on 900 frequency and only having 2100 as a 3G frequency for capacity, then hobbling 2g voice quality to squeeze in some token 3G.

Give it ten years and the 4g will be solid.

Or move to EE or 3 instead and get 21st century mobile communications, today?

I had the same thing on Vodafone where I was getting fairly decent 3G speeds in Harlow town centre until one day (around the time they started rolling out 4G) it dropped down to a download speed of .1meg and it did not change for the remaining 5+ months of my contract however many faults I logged with Vodafone (this was on my own phone and also my works phone so it was defiantly the network).

I left them just over a year ago (even though I was getting 20% discount through who I work for) for Three and could not be happier (decent 3G everywhere and can stream high quality internet radio from Poole to Harlow and also Basildon to Norwich with no issues (apart from dropping out for 30 secs on the Basildon to Norwich journey)..

I constantly had even worse results than this on O2.

Switched to EE last August and never looked back. As of 2 weeks ago EE launched 4G here as well. Checked with my next door neighbour who still sticks with O2 (contract I suppose) and situation hasn't changed for him.

How can that even be called 3G, EDGE would be better

It probably is a 3G transmission but the mast it connects to is on an ADSL link or a 2megabit connection and there are a LOT of users on it.

I used to regularly register 0.01Mbit down, 0.00Mbit up and a ping of over 800ms with 5 bars 3G.... I was let out of my contract...

3G over 900MHz is typically MUCH slower than on the 2100 band

I find this really weird.
They have to be using 5Mhz (minimum on 3G) and 900 is only slightly less than half that of 2100 so why so slow???
Even if a 2100 cell was doing only 2 Mbps then surely a 900 cell should be able to manage nearly 1 Mbps???
Must be back-haul surely?

EDIT: Have we tested the 3G900 on a 4G enabled cell anyone?

I can get GPRS like performance on Vodafone 3G here. I think it's a 900MHz site.

so 0.05Mbps down, 0.02Mbps up, 1000ms+ latency. I think they've found a really bad dialup line and are using that for backhaul.

Someone pointed out that perhaps it was done to keep Vodafone within any coverage obligations but without dramatically increasing rollout cost (presumably they can use the 900MHz antennas they have for GSM). Who cares what the performance is like as long as the 3G indicator shows up on the phone.

Even the nearby O2 site can do 10Mbps+ (might be a 2100Mhz one) and of course EE/3 win with 20+Mbps and 4G imminent

Maybe I'm lucky but I've only once did a speed test on O2's 3G network where the download speed was less than 1 Mbps - and that was 0.9 Mbps. O2's 3G network I generally find it to be consistently decent - not amazingly fast but good enough for general smartphone use on a day to day basis - and the 900Mhz HSPA does be a great help especially for in building penetration.

In my experience no network is perfect, I know of a Vodafone cell locally that has horrends data problems with 2G data in general being poor, Three is known to have congestion problems in many urban areas even outside of peak times (all networks can suffer from this in localised cases but Three are well noted for this problem) while in my experience EE's network is just not reliable enough for indoor coverage in the places I mainly visit. For me O2's network works out for me as the best all rounder, but for others EE, Vodafone or Three may work out better.

My local O2 cell site was just upgraded for LTE a couple of weeks ago, previously it was a 2G EDGE & '3G900' cell only. When LTE was added 3G on 2100 MHz was added as well. So I'd assume any O2 or Vodafone site being upgraded to LTE via site sharing will add 3G on 900 & 2100 MHz as well at the same time if either weren't there before. I do have a Huawei E169 which allows band selection between 900 & 2100 for 3G but it's only rated for 7.2 Mbps download. Nothing I have that's at least rated 21.1 Mbps download can select a relevant band.

If the fallback is to 3g900 then could we make a call then end it and before it goes up to 4g run a test, or am I just over complicating things ?

That sounds like limited MHz allocated to the 900 band.

Yeah, the actual frequency isn't or at least shouldn't be an issue on its own, AFAIK O2 & Vodafone only use one 2 x 5MHz block in the 900 MHz band. There is nothing to stop either of them having two such blocks in the 900 MHz band to allow same cell site DC-HSPA+, they have the bandwidth - but any such increase would be detrimental to 2G GSM capacity in the same band. Of course another factor is the amount of subscribers on a 3G cell site on 900 MHz can be higher on average because of better geographical reach compared to 2100 MHz.

You just need to move to Glasgow to witness the jewel in Telefonica's crown for yourself

I'm suspecting from your profile that you're in N.I. and there is a possibility that you have less load than other areas. The O2 issues are notorious but are regional and load related.

More then likely they setup some QoS so the 4G users get first dibs lol

does DC-HSPA on O2 or Voda Use 2x5mhz on 2100 or can it use 900/2100 at the same time??

DC uses 2 lots of spectrum and aggregates them together.
So it would use 2x5 + 2x5.
Requires 10Mhz in total.
Not a problem on 2100 but as Redcoat says on 900 it wouldn't leave a lot for 2G since they only have about 17.5 Mhz of 2G spectrum I think.

Can't be bandwidth.
Unlike LTE where allocations can be as low as 1.4Mhz, 3G must be in 5Mhz slices so the minimum they can use on 900 is 5Mhz.
So as I said before, let's say 5Mhz on Vodafone's 2100 is giving you 2Mbps, if you halved the frequency, then you should be getting at least some kind of usable speed even if it was 800Kbps or so.
Hell, even if it was 300Kbps it would work, so it doesn't explain why the speeds like dial-up.
Has to be backhaul.

God, you'd have to be quick. Literally "light-speed" Hahaha
LTE reselection after a call normally occurs in less than 5 seconds. On my iPhone on EE it can be literally 2 seconds after hanging up.

I just ran a test 3.63Mbps down and 2.4 Mbps up on o2 H+

I'll see if I can run a 4g test later

I seem to recall that there was a modem on my N5 that took ages to do the reselection. Shame I don't have an o2 sim but if anyone has a N5 with o2 then they might be able to do it.