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Old 20-10-2016, 18:06
bikerlad
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For me it was more using google maps to search for places to go, or using the BA app, both of which were painfully slow with Three FAH. They should just change the name as it's nothing like being at home.
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Old 21-10-2016, 07:41
Mark C
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For me it was more using google maps to search for places to go, or using the BA app, both of which were painfully slow with Three FAH. They should just change the name as it's nothing like being at home.
Everyone talks as if there's no such thing in the world as free WiFi. !

It can be insecure of course, but don't use it for any transaction activity,

I was in Malta last month, I'm on EE, the wife is on Three, we were both connected to Go Mobile, it worked fine for Google Maps for both of us. Who cares about bloody You Tube, we were on holiday !
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Old 21-10-2016, 07:53
jonmorris
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That last line is exactly what Three said!

On just about every holiday, I'll watch some Netflix in the evening. Sometimes in bed. My son likes YouTube Kids.

Wi-Fi can solve the problem and save data allowances, but Three restricts for all. Not everyone going abroad is on holiday!
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Old 21-10-2016, 08:58
Mark C
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That last line is exactly what Three said!

On just about every holiday, I'll watch some Netflix in the evening. Sometimes in bed. My son likes YouTube Kids.

Wi-Fi can solve the problem and save data allowances, but Three restricts for all. Not everyone going abroad is on holiday!
True, I have even less time on business abroad to recreationally use the internet !
In any case, you can't really argue FoH is appropriate for business use ?

And surely Jon, wherever you are 'in bed' somewhere, you're served by Wifi, so FoH is irrelevant !?
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Old 21-10-2016, 09:11
jonmorris
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I have plenty of work trips where I have free time, and suspect everyone has different needs from work or leisure trips, or a combination, or having kids who want to be amused for short periods of time. (I now await someone to say that my son shouldn't be watching YouTube on holiday, lazy parenting etc etc).

Anyway, the EU (for as long as we remain) has rules to stop any such restrictions in the future so FaH will eventually have to work without restriction and there won't be anything to discuss.
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Old 21-10-2016, 11:58
Mark C
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I have plenty of work trips where I have free time, and suspect everyone has different needs from work or leisure trips, or a combination, or having kids who want to be amused for short periods of time.

.
Free time on a business trip, should surely be used by exploring the city you're in, not staring at your phone, but whatever floats yer boat !!

I'm beginning to wonder what some people did with themselves before Smartphones and the internet existed !
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Old 21-10-2016, 12:06
jonmorris
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People explored the city maybe!!

I should point out that I don't spend all my trips abroad watching Netflix etc. More to the point, I have more issues when I can't access maps/navigation, or have to wait ages to download a file (or app from the Play store).

Of late, I've found downloading files has been quicker. I do think Feel at Home has been tweaked, so less things are heavily throttled.
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Old 21-10-2016, 18:00
Thine Wonk
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We should remember that Three is a consumer network mostly and that feels like home isn't on business plans. All of the ads talk about connecting with home when on holiday or posting holiday photos to Facebook.

It has never ever been sold as a "watch season 5 of Breaking Bad on Netflix whilst in torremolinos" and they have always said that there are restrictions on the website, including throttling and a data cap.

For what it offers, especially as the USA is included it's amazing and did just the job for me. I'm hoping to use it next year too if it's still running.
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Old 21-10-2016, 19:34
jonmorris
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They didn't always say that. That was the problem. They claimed problems were down to the foreign network.

Now they do say and you'll notice I've not complained about it for some time.
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Old 21-10-2016, 21:06
Thine Wonk
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They didn't always say that. That was the problem. They claimed problems were down to the foreign network.

Now they do say and you'll notice I've not complained about it for some time.
By which you mean 6 hours?
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Old 21-10-2016, 21:19
jonmorris
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By which you mean 6 hours?
Sorry, but I had to jump on the 'it's just for sending hot dog leg photos to your mates' bit. Plenty of people do actually want to use mobile data for a variety of things when roaming.

Fair enough if they're told the restrictions before signing a contract, or paying £5 a day (fortunately that's now ancient history as all of the EU is included), then so be it!

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Old 21-10-2016, 22:17
Gigabit
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Thine Wonk as always is looking out for Three who of course are a very vulnerable entity who need protection from the big bad world.
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Old 21-10-2016, 22:30
jonmorris
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With the speeds I've been getting of late, I can't imagine them getting much sympathy. Perhaps Three should be throttling data in the UK too.

Today with all the DNS problems, I could barely use my EE account but Three was working fine. Not only could I use Spotify, but I downloaded a good 150 tracks at Extreme quality without trouble on a drive back from Heathrow.
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Old 22-10-2016, 07:23
natbike
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Frankly those defending Three sound pathetic. No one is demanding that three let you do everything for free.

However it's only fair that when you buy you are fairly informed. I made a decision to use Three based on being able to login to a computer abroad. It wasn't high bandwidth but it was blocked. They didn't mention this when asked (I specifically checked and they said it would be fine).

Transparency and fairness are reasonable expectations when purchasing anything.
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Old 23-10-2016, 00:40
Aetnla
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I have just come back from Paris and streaming didn't even work properly with 24k bitrate radio stations without it stopping and buffering all the time. Even the Yourmuze.FM app kept stalling all the time. I also did some download tests from my web server and found that audio/video files downloaded ridiculously slowly (below 10kbps) while other file types downloaded fast. I also tried downloads over HTTPS but all file types were then restricted to dial-up speeds (around 40kbps). It seems it limits HTTPS websites to dial-up speeds unless the website is whitelisted.

So the way I think blocking of streaming works is by the response headers. It will block if the header indicates audio or video.
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Old 23-10-2016, 15:33
InfamousTeal
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I have just come back from Paris and streaming didn't even work properly with 24k bitrate radio stations without it stopping and buffering all the time. Even the Yourmuze.FM app kept stalling all the time. I also did some download tests from my web server and found that audio/video files downloaded ridiculously slowly (below 10kbps) while other file types downloaded fast. I also tried downloads over HTTPS but all file types were then restricted to dial-up speeds (around 40kbps). It seems it limits HTTPS websites to dial-up speeds unless the website is whitelisted.

So the way I think blocking of streaming works is by the response headers. It will block if the header indicates audio or video.
Streaming works perfectly on facebook though, because Three want it to! It's interesting watching a perfect HD video on facebook and then Youtube not loading at all.
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Old 23-10-2016, 20:45
Carl_Boys
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I'm not a big fan of three at home. I would be happy with a 3mb unrestricted connected with the equivalent ping of three uk network. Not bothered about 30mbs and 4g speeds buy 3mb is more that enough for what I need abroad. Finders crosses it happens. My wife is on EE so I don't know what she gets with them. The Vodafone 25gb deal is tempting as comes with 4gb roaming use.
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Old 01-11-2016, 09:18
juzzy25
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Just got back from Warsaw in Poland and "Feel at Home" seemed a bit more zippy on connecting, I was streaming on Facebook and I even managed to download an app over the 3G (for anyone interested the network is called PLAY)

I didn't try YouTube or Spotify but data seemed a lot more zippy.
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Old 01-11-2016, 09:24
jonmorris
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I'm back in Germany on Thursday so look forward to seeing if they've scaled back the throttling as it would appear they have in some places.
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Old 01-11-2016, 09:36
derek500
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We recently spent a month in Holland and the Feel At Home worked perfectly.

We're on PAYG and the £25 add on is excellent value.

Tune-In Radio was used every night, throughout the night, with no buffering for LBC and Five Live.
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Old 01-11-2016, 16:29
InfamousTeal
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I'm still in Paris using FAH on my iPhone 6, no changes for me, it's all still throttled.

I use Orange F and sitting in my flat I get 18 Mbps on 3G - but absolutely no Youtube, Netflix or even twitter images still. I agree with Derek500 though, Tunein is working fine? I swear it used to be throttled.

Side note, I am incredibly impressed with the EDGE service on the underground metro in Paris using Feel at home. I can send whatsapps and they send instantly, imessage too, I literally even sent a photo on whatsapp, and i'd say it only took about 20 seconds to send, which, on Edge, underground, where every single other person is also using Edge, AND that it's feel at home so it has to go back to the UK and then to me... is pretty impressive
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Old 03-11-2016, 10:42
jonmorris
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I'm in Germany today and managed to get YouTube streaming, for a bit. Very odd as it failed a few times and I was ready to give up - but then it worked, so I started to film.

Like when Thine Wonk tried, I was able to stream even at a high bitrate (even though it started by picking a low one) but you can see from the video that everything else was slow. I also failed to get videos to load from my own collection and found the ones that worked being within the trending list.

I wonder if the more popular videos have more servers hosting the files? So some stuff works and some stuff doesn't - because you'll see that when doing the normal networking test, things quickly returned to normal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vIU86Mn2ZY
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Old 03-11-2016, 13:31
rasseru16
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I'm in Germany today and managed to get YouTube streaming, for a bit. Very odd as it failed a few times and I was ready to give up - but then it worked, so I started to film.

Like when Thine Wonk tried, I was able to stream even at a high bitrate (even though it started by picking a low one) but you can see from the video that everything else was slow. I also failed to get videos to load from my own collection and found the ones that worked being within the trending list.

I wonder if the more popular videos have more servers hosting the files? So some stuff works and some stuff doesn't - because you'll see that when doing the normal networking test, things quickly returned to normal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vIU86Mn2ZY
Hi Jon, thanks for the update. What roaming networks are you able to use in Germany please?

Thanks
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Old 03-11-2016, 19:39
InfamousTeal
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I got myself a local "Free Mobile" sim in Paris and have been testing it today. Good amount of 2600MHz 4G around, and seen some 700Mhz 4G too! None of that in the UK.

3G is pretty good, can be painfully slow though. There's a website where you can put in a Cell ID of a Free mobile mast and it'll tell you where it is! Pretty cool.

Using FAH I used Orange F which i found to be faster than Free. But at least now I can watch Youtube, use spotify, netflix etc
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Old 03-11-2016, 20:20
rasseru16
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I got myself a local "Free Mobile" sim in Paris and have been testing it today. Good amount of 2600MHz 4G around, and seen some 700Mhz 4G too! None of that in the UK.

3G is pretty good, can be painfully slow though. There's a website where you can put in a Cell ID of a Free mobile mast and it'll tell you where it is! Pretty cool.

Using FAH I used Orange F which i found to be faster than Free. But at least now I can watch Youtube, use spotify, netflix etc
I have also used Free Mobile in France, in Lille the 4G speeds were brilliant! What kind of 4G speeds you getting in Paris I wonder?
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