3 Mobile Broadband

[p_mq2000]

Hi
Is there anyone here using 3 Mobile Broadband? I just started using their sevice few days ago. They said :the speed is up to 3.6M so I expected half of that is would be great. But here's the result i checked in various time of the day

21/07/2007 09:11
951 kbps (117 KB/s) 59 kbps (8 KB/s) 32 % 140 ms 231 ms

21/07/2007 08:46
1169 kbps (143 KB/s) 57 kbps (7 KB/s) 82 % 136 ms 379 ms

21/07/2007 08:43
1532 kbps (188 KB/s) 59 kbps (8 KB/s) 87 % 123 ms 290 ms

21/07/2007 08:39
60 kbps (8 KB/s) 60 kbps (8 KB/s) 3 % 135 ms 6255 ms

20/07/2007 20:18 1
9 kbps (3 KB/s) 7 kbps (1 KB/s) 12 % 149 ms 2909 ms

20/07/2007 17:10
28 kbps (4 KB/s) 47 kbps (6 KB/s) 16 % 140 ms 1783 ms

20/07/2007 179
16 kbps (2 KB/s) 36 kbps (5 KB/s) 74 % 155 ms 1975 ms

20/07/2007 09:25
1171 kbps (143 KB/s) 46 kbps (6 KB/s) 90 % 125 ms 380 ms

Anybody has any idea about this?
Have a good weekend
pmq

[Sean]

Going by how much your receive rate varies over such a small amount of time (i.e. 60kbps at 8:39am and then 1532kbps 4 minutes later), it looks to be an issue with your connection to the network, rather than a congested network.

If you're using a laptop, try running a couple of speed tests outside of your building. If you get a string of good results, then it's likely that the location you use your PC at inside has a weak signal or something is interfering. For a PC, try moving the data card about (a USB extension cable may help).

On the other hand, if still get very erratic speed test results outside, then it is likely a faulty data card. In this case, I would recommend trying the card on another computer (rules out the PC and avoids support blaiming it) and then get on to 3 support.

[harringtonp]

Unfortunately the problem is neither his laptop nor card

First of all the max speed you can attain with Three is 1.4 Mbps. I know the software displays a max 3.6Mbps but the local network is not enabled for this.

I was one of the early users of 3 (signed up when it was 40E a month) and was extremely happy with it. I regularly used to get download speeds of over 1Mbps regardless of the time of day and in locations as diverse as Ennistymon, Limerick, Carrigalin, Dublin. The service was faster than previous experience I have had with Eircom, NTL, Esat.

Since they dropped their price to 20E and cranked up their marketing campaign they have had a massive uptake of the service. Unfortunately their infrastructure cannot handle it. There are regular outages and the only time I find it usable without pulling my hair out is morning time. As the day goes on it gets slower and slower (as more people use it presumably). By the time you get to evening you have a service thats mostly slower than old dialup (which is what many of your tests are reflecting). If you have access to another broadband (as I have now) try switching between the 2 and you will see the difference.

I have been on to them and they are very aware there are problems but no real information was coming forward. I am considering trying to cancel my contract because as far as I am concerned I am paying 20E for non service which was not what I signed up to and what I saw in the trial 2 week period. I dont want to do this as switching is always a bit of a pain... I'd prefer if they sort their service out.

It would be great if somebody from 3 would reply here and enlighten us as to where the problem is... is it the radio interface... or a datacenter problem ... presumably everything is channeled through proxy servers .... or lack of dns servers (there s/w doesn't allow you specify your own) ... or is it the fact that because they have a download limit they have to presumably log the amount of each data in each request somewhere for later totalling...are they writing to a DB and cannot write fast enough at peak times due to lack of DB server capacity or poor sotfware (they rtt is very high in the above test)...
Come on, somebody from 3 tell us where the problem is !

Anyway, rant over, Paul.

[p_mq2000]

I feel sorry for Paul and everyone else, who are still having to pay for a hideous service. I don't know much and can not explain about the techniques, but I can be sure that they are not supplying a good service as they advertising. And not many customers try to protect their right, just acept to be rip off.

After 10 days being 3 broadband customer, I returned the modem and cancelled the service. i told them that Their service is not good enough. They said they would improve it in September. So i reply I would come back then.

If we all act like that the company will know what they have to do. Or if you are not in trial time any more, you should try calling them to ask them to fix the problem.That the way I did to get rid of Irish Broadband before. Here is the story.I had a contract 12 months with Irish Broadband, but they did give me a good service. I kept calling them and send them the test speed result. I said I would happy to use their service if they can supply it well. Otherwise I couldn't pay for what I didn't get. Finally they had to acept my request to cancel the contract.

So i just have one advise is do not afraid of fight back to the company if you are right. We all have right and are protected by law

[parrymj]

I have been using 3 mobile broadband for the past month and it is driving me nuts. As other posts have said the service drops significantly in the evenings. During the day the max i have achieved is around 750kbs and after 6pm it drops down to around 6kbs, which is totally unusable. Being new to this forum i can only find a few postings re 3 mobile broadband. Is there a mechanism to log complaints against isp's?

[frankp]

Been posting about this on my blog lately (Aonach Consulting) - the speeds are an issue, but right now they are probably not the biggest issue, which is scary.

Here are just some of the issues I have been having:

1. Speed issues themselves are not fixed - I frequently nose dive to a fraction of the advertised speed and I NEVER get above 1MBPS.
2. I frequently need to restart my computer to try to get the modem recognised. Others have reported this issue too. The modem almost never works on the first startup of my machine.
3. I cannot FTP.
4. As my ISP I would expect Three to provide SMTP servers. They do not.
5. I cannot email using other SMTP servers as it would appear that due to the configuration of you handling of IP addresses my IP is ALWAYS black listed.
6. Gmail and other sites simply don’t work.
7. Forms on websites frequently don’t work. particularly those that involve an upload of any kind.

Upload speeds are god awful too. Boards.ie have a big discussion on it...

[BedyDendy]

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