Has anyone tried running speed tests with their APN username and password field both entered and blank? I seem to find faster speed without the username and password entered in my APN settings?

No, but I guess I could and report back.

Would the brand of phones have any bearing on speeds? I use htc one m8 atm. Would using galaxy s5 be any different?

just read this reply from EE on June 3rd on one of their sponsored facebook status'


Of course this may just be assumption on the part of the member of staff or they may just be saying what customers (requesting unlimited data) are wanting to hear, but this is the first time i've read something like this from a member of staff in relation to the purpose of these 100GB promotions.

But i'm not getting my hopes up, just yet....

Sounds like they're just fobbing off a bit. The logic makes sense but I can't imagine EE offering unlimited, I can imagine how quick I'd run to them if they did though!
Last edited by lightspeed2398 : 09-06-2015 at 10:35

I guess they are testing how consumers are using it. All they need to do really is ask Three! The problem is with people tethering.

It does seem strange, given that there were also EE based colleagues of this person also posting replies on other days, which said they don't offer unlimited and have no plans too.

However it does seem that the most asked question in relation to this 100GB x2 offer is "When are you going to offer Unlimited" or "Why don't you offer unlimited", along with "If you can do this, then why are your normal tariffs so crap" - so they do seem to be under some pressure on the front line

I doubt we'll see unlimited, but it would be nice to have something more generous data wise.


I understand that in respect of unlimited, but what I can't understand about Three, is why they cap tethering at 4GB. Why not offer a 20gb or 30gb limited data tariff which allows tethering and so permits the data allowance to be used between the handset or tethered as the customer wishes. They already offer 15GB mobile data sims and ID Mobile offer 20GB data sims from the same '3' network so what would be the difference / risk to their network if the same limited amount of monthly data was split between phone and tethered use.

I use around 12gb a month, about 1GB of that is handset and 11gb is tethered, its a p.i.t.a to carry around a mifi and a phone, along with two chargers etc just because no network allows upto 20gb with official tethering ability. The closest I can find is the 20GB / £20 data sim from ID Mobile which can have a quota of calls / texts added to it for an additional fee.

The thing is, they don't even have to offer unlimited. Just make their data allowances more generous (and allow sim only users to get the same allowances as contract users).

I can't see any network wanting to offer truly unlimited, and I suspect it would be suicidal to do so. Once you do, it's hard to go back.

If EE was really considering it, it should look to doing things like offering nnGB per month (or perhaps per day) with speeds dropping after that initial allowance - either to single speed, or more likely even slower again. It would be unlimited in terms of data, but not speed. You could potentially charge more money for those who want more data before a speed drop, which could work?

I am sure there are other ways EE could manage things, but a plain unlimited would be madness - or ridiculously expensive.

After all, EE allows tethering as standard - so it would either need to bring in measures to detect it and bar tethering, or realise that people would go and buy a Huawei LTE router (EE sell them too!) and then stream HD and UHD movies to their TV - using immense amounts of data compared to the likely usage on a smartphone or even tablet.

Personally, I'd just look at doing some more MBB tariffs with 50, 100, 200, 300GB allowances (and/or cheaper run-on rates) and also offering 10, 20, 25, 50GB on SIM only tariffs/PAYG.

EE can't know if people would pay for such tariffs until it tries, but I expect EE wants to make money and doesn't want to give away data for what it probably knows people would want to pay.

No, I don't want to pay £100 a month for 100GB! I might well pay £50-60 though, if I can ditch my landline rental and broadband subscription that adds up to about £40 a month as it is. Question is, would EE offer that?

I suspect its all about money and business. If a customer needs 10gb or 20gb+ a month split between handset and tethered, they are probably hoping that with limited tethering data flexibility, that they'll take out two contracts, a standard sim contract for their handset and a Mobile broadband sim or a mifi based contract, for the data use over and above what their phone sim offers via tethering.

With mobile broadband sim data allowances already at 20GB - 25GB a month, and EE offering one at 50GB a month (albeit expensive) I can't see any reason why the networks can't incorporate a standard handset sim with tethering ability upto and above the same allowances as the MBB ones, other than for the reason mentioned above, the hope of the customer taking out two contracts, instead of one.

I don't have ADSL, so i'm more than happy to play a fair game and also factor in the £16+ per month I would be paying for line rental, as well as the equiv monthly charge for Fibre / ADSL, in return for a usable 3G / 4G alternative, but even with that totaled up, the cost of the 50GB EE deal is still excessive. I had hoped that the EE 4GEE Home tariff, originally aimed for rural ADSL not spots would have expanded, but even that seems to have ground to halt and its all gone very quiet. Maybe, just maybe the wonderful, holy EE network isn't quite as robust as we thought, as they do seem to be constantly shying away from any long term big data allowance take ups, don't they!

Nobody seems interested in pushing mobile broadband as an alternative to ADSL, whereas you can see that elsewhere in Europe you can buy an LTE router and enjoy 100 or 200GB monthly allowances for under £100 a month.

That's still expensive, but some people would pay the premium (but not what it would cost here) because they could get speeds far in excess of what a fixed line would offer. I can't even get FTTC broadband at home yet, so I'd go from 6-7Mpbs to 60-70Mbps, and my uplink speed from 0.8-1Mbps to 50Mbps!

I would definitely pay extra for this! I am sure many others would too. But EE possibly isn't bothered, and even less so now BT is buying it.

I'm envious of your 6mbp - 7mbps - Our ADSL reaches 1mbps peak, with regular drop outs, 500 - 700k is the norm, streaming even youtube is impossible and Netflix is just something that people in Town's enjoy. Getting even 4mbps here would be like getting Fibre!.

This isn't the only area which suffers either, I have a work colleague in Gawsworth, Cheshire who get similar speeds to me and family in rural Bala North Wales, 11kms from the exchange who get 256k!

These are the areas in need of something like 4Gee Home. It even affects the local economy, 12 months ago a local Milk Dairy closed with the loss of 35 jobs, purely because it couldn't network its office computers or temperature control / signalling equipment reliably. A lot of other small businesses could easily go the same way in the future.

It may take BT 50 years to bring anything decent to the area, but in the meantime we have a completely uncongested 12mbps 3G and borderline reliable 4G already here. It just needs a network with the balls to make it work.

If EE offered a 200GB /month mobile broadband sim at a reasonable price I'd jump at it, I live close to my local mast and can usually pull 70-80Mbps down and 35-40Mbps up at any time of the day

Would be interesting if BT were to eventually offer a wholesale broadband service to ISPs via 4G for landline not-spots and rural areas.

If they were to agree to doing this, and used the 2.6Ghz 4G spectrum they acquired at the auction to provide the service via standard EE masts in exchange for being able to keep the spectrum... Who knows! Certainly it could work out cheaper than deploying fibre to all those premises and could boost rural 4G rollout too. I doubt there would be any unlimited packages though!

jayteedc

I don't know what BT will do with that spectrum it got for 4G (which I assumed was purely for offering broadband to areas where it might be uneconomical to upgrade all cabinets). I expect it will do something eventually, which will become part of what EE's home service was - which seems to have gone very quiet.

(Although, price wise, I think you can pay the same with a normal MBB SIM and just buy the exact same router from Amazon for about £100 - and now there's a Cat 6 router from Huawei too).

They might do eventually, but I imagine that will be years away if they do. At the moment BT Mobile are instrumental in not even offering Mobile Data / Mi-Fi based tariffs

EE was the best hope, with their initial roll out in Cumbria back in 2013, however little seems to have progressed since then

https://explore.ee.co.uk/our-company...-rural-cumbria

EE have 4G already in a lot of rural areas, including mine so i've no idea why this tariff isn't being rolled out into many other areas as 4G spreads, in reality it doesn't seem to have progressed much since the original press release, well over 2 years ago


To be honest that seems a lot of money for an extra 5GB a month (assuming the Home tariff still starts at 25GB a month). For £20 a month I can get 20GB from ID Mobile from a standard Mi-fi without having to invest in additional hardware. For 40gb - 50gb then it would probably be worth it, but for 25GB its not vastly different from what is available from a bog standard Data Sim.

I'd hope that they do all they can with wired technology first. There isn't a lot of rural Britain (in terms of population) that can't be wired. I hope the EE acquisition doesn't throw all that out of the window and means that they will move to 4G as an even greater bodge.

(around here, BT has strung fibre to the premises in anticipation of a single rural farmhouse signing up for faster broadband - and judging by the lack of cables from the pole, they haven't)

You could indeed do that. I was making a point more about buying a proper router, which in my personal experience makes a huge difference. The antenna on the Huawei router is far superior to that of my (Huawei) Mi-Fi and it has two antenna connectors to add an even better set if necessary, including outdoor ones. (Okay, my Mi-Fi has that too, but I'd sooner have the real deal).

The router also has four Ethernet ports (albeit only 100Mbps).

BT have basically said (after several years worth of rural broadband debates), that it may be many years before we get fibre, and its possible that we never will. The large part of the issue is that we are on a rural exchange, serving less than 70 properties and BT don't seem to think its worth the investment of putting Fibre in an exchange serving so few customers. We had to fight tooth and nail just for ADSL and it was almost 2007 before we left dial up!.

The added complication is that some isolated properties are a further 4 or 5 miles from that exchange. So you have 4 - 5 miles of cable to the exchange then probably another 6 or 7 miles to the nearest Green fibre box - that's a hell of a lot of cable slinging to the nearest Fibre available postcode, about 10 - 12 miles worth

Yes, you are right, in real terms an exchange with 70 people isn't a lot of population, but even these communities have Schools, Businesses and Farms which all need to be connected to an outside world.

I would also pay a premium for unlimited 4G. I would even cancel my landline and ADSL and pay around £50-80 a month

all good in theory though

Seems faster but haven't had time to fully check could be placebo. Just on the off chance, does anyone happen to know any good (perhaps hidden) APN settings for any networks?

how much faster? it wont let me edit mine on my phone

I did it on my iPhone by installing the APN as a profile and not including the username and password. Not sure if it worked TBH, but my speeds did seem to increase from about 30 to 45. Whilst writing this I just realised that I've got 100GB. Let's do some testing.

Phone: iPhone 6 Plus - iOS 9.0 Beta 1 with new modem.
Same Server for all Tests (Sheffield - XILO)
Without Username and Password :
Test 1: Ping 36ms Download 31.41 Upload 28.70
Test 2: Ping 35ms Download 26.28 Upload 30.60
Test 3: Ping 34ms Download 26.28 Upload 25.69

Average: Ping 35ms Download 27.99 Upload 28.36

With Username and Password:

Test 1: Ping 48ms Download 38.25 Upload 24.50
Test 2: Ping 48ms Download 27.68 Upload 26.15
Test 3: Ping 50ms Download 29.64 Upload 25.60

Average: Ping 48.6ms Download 31.85 Upload 25.42

I have a 2nd sim that I received about 20 days ago. Is it still possible to activate the offer? I don't want to top up £10 and find that I can't. I notice in the terms it says top up within 14 days of receiving the sim. Has anyone actually tried?

I bet they allow a fair time for delivery, so it should be fine.