Mobile Broadband

DarrenG1972 · 13 January 2021 at 2:55PM

I have a contract with 3 for mobile broadband.

When I took the contract out I did some research for all the mobile broadband providers and while my area is not covered by 5G, it was covered by 4G.

I was happy with my investigations that if I used 4G, I would only be getting a max 10MB download which I though was acceptable.

However after taking out the contract, no matter where the mobile router is placed, I am never able to get download speeds greater than 1MB. I complained to 3 about the speeds and for the last 6 months I have been getting half price line rental. What I needed to do was every month, go to customer services tell them my original complaint number and they would reduce my next bill by 50%. The last time I did, I was informed that they cannot keep offering me 50% discount and that I can leave the contract penalty free. I suspect I would be getting a 50% reduction in my bill for the entire contract.
Now for three I eventually discovered this page: http://www.three.co.uk/support/network_and_coverage/network_support, and it was using this page, I continually get message

We’re fixing an issue with our network in this area

We’re sorry for any disruption you experience. Our engineers are working on masts nearby, which means the rest of our network is handling more traffic than usual.

Updates on our work will be posted here. We’re working as fast as we can to build a better, stronger network in your area.

You can find more help and advice below. And you can read more about our Big Network Build here.

Last updated on 02:15 pm 13 January 2021.

I tried putting in postcodes from multiple areas around the country, and they always displayed the above message.

Basically 3 have mentioned to me that there is serious congestion in my area, and they have no idea when they will be able to fix it, or when my area will be covered by 5G. Since I took out the contract, I have discovered from lots of other forums that this is a regular occurrence with 3 in that they get some many subscribers that their network is overloaded.

I am happy to exit the contract penalty free, but before I take out another mobile broadband contract I want to find a page similar to the three support page to find out what problems are being experienced by the other mobile boadband providers in my area, I have an assumption that the other companies will probably be using the same mast and that ever other provided is probably suffering the same network congestion.

I want to avoid switching to another provider to have the same problems with poor download speed. but I am struggling to find on the other providers a proper what is the status of our network page like I eventually discovered on the three site. (I suspect for good reason)
For the other providers can anybody help me out with giving me a link to proper network status pages, and not just to our network coverage type pages.

Thanks

FYI: I took the router to an area where 3 advertise is covered by 5g, and the change in network speed was incredible. So I know there is no problem with the sim card or the mobile router.