4G band 1 switch off causing a big speed drop

[Seán]

Back around May I noticed significant drops in my 4G broadband speed, initially on certain days of the week.  From looking at my MikroTik router's modem status, I noticed it was no longer connecting to 4G band 1 at certain times of the day, just bands 3 and either 20 or 28.  Band 1 originally came online during the Covid-19 pandemic and made a huge improvement to my speed up until recently.  Over the past two weeks, it appears that band 1 has been switched off completely on the mast I'm connected to, which has the cell ID 1475408.

To give an idea of the difference band 1 made to my speed, on Friday 16th June around this same time, I got a speed test of about 160Mbps on Ookla's speed test while band 1 was operating on the mast I'm connected to.  At this time of posting I got a speed test of just 16Mbps on Ookla's speed test as band 1 is gone.

From using the phone App NetMonster which reports the bands my phone connects to, I noticed a few other Three masts in nearby towns no longer operate band 1 at least during my recent times of checking, i.e. no longer lists any 2100MHz (band 1) cells, so I assume Three is switching it off possibly to save on power or to revert that band back to 3G operation.

Is this 4G band 1 switch off just temporary?  Otherwise I am considering switching broadband provider once my Three 4G Broadband contract ends in a few weeks.  It was bad enough getting a price increase in April and now seeing a big drop in my connection speed. 😕 I have no 5G reception in my area, so upgrading to 5G is not an option.

[Three_Stacey]

Hi @Seán sorry to hear you're having difficulty with your broadband and thanks for all the details.

I'd be happy to have a look at this for you but I'll need to access your account and possibly reach out to our tech team to get this investigate. Have you been in contact with Customer Care about this?

So that I can get the ball rolling please PM me your name, number, full address and date of birth.

[Seán]

Thank you for looking into this, I sent a PM with the requested details.  It will be interesting to see they say and whether they can re-enable this network band.  It made such a massive difference to my connection in the evening when everyone is online. 

[Three_Stacey]

@Seán sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I have logged this with our technical team and as soon as there's an update I'll let you know.

[Seán]

I just want to check if there has been any update.  When band 1 came online on Saturday and Sunday everything was fine and had no issue streaming even in HD. This evening with band 1 offline again YouTube was dropping all the way down to 144p and reporting a connection speed well under 1Mbps:

Three struggling to stream YouTube

[Three_Stacey]

Hi @Seán as you know I opened an investigation to figure out if something was happening with the mast you connect to, but no fault has been found. I will pass on the update you have just given and ask for them to review it.

[Seán]

That would be great if they could have another look between 9pm and 10pm as that was when my connection was barely usable Monday evening.  Just trying to open webpages reminded me of dial-up Internet from my childhood watching the individual images gradually appear and we couldn't stream video until about 10:30pm.

My connection remains quick during the day up to around 8pm.  For example, as I write this post about 2:15pm I got a speed test of 109Mbps down and 22Mbps up.  I used to get similar speed in the evenings whenever 4G band 1 was operating. 

[Alex_14647]

One more here. B1 disappearing in the mornings for the last few days (when I need the BB most as I WFH) and the speeds going down by 75%. From what I can see it seems like the B1 antenna is either OFF or occasionally remains ON on some sort of power saving mode or similar as the RSRP goes down and the band is not aggregated. Most of the times is OFF until 11:30am.
So this seems to be a configuration on the mast side issue. Not sure the rationale behind it but IMHO not acceptable as this happens at peak time. It seems like this hapens at the same time as Sean is reporting but in my case AM time vs PM times (which makes even less sense)

The mast/bands are: 

CellID: 1145601
B3 earfcn: 1700 phy-cellid: 40 -> This one works OK

B1 earfcn: 100 phy-cellid: 40  -> this one either switches OFF or reduces the power and therefore the RSRP to the point it can't be aggregated, which renders the BB unusable at peak time (morning time) 

Any feedback would be much appreciated,

Alex

[Three_Stacey]

Thanks for all the details @Alex_14647 Please pop me a PM with your name, number, full address and date of birth so that I can have a look at your account settings. If needed I'll reach out to our technical team to get this investigated. Can you also let me know what device you're using at the moment?