Great Phone Offers With All You Can Eat Data | Three.ie
3Community Menu

Home Broadband - 5G Modem prefers 4G masts

hku2
Investigator

Home Broadband - 5G Modem prefers 4G masts

Hello,

 

I am using the 3 Home Broadband 5G Pro service. There is currently a big issue in my area, where between us and the 5G mast, there is a 4G one in shorter distance, and as a result, the 5G modem will prefer to connect to the 4G one instead, resulting in better signal, but unusable speeds.

 

I have tried to explain this to customer care many times, but it never seems to land. It is not the customer care representative's fault, but I do not believe they have been given the proper training in order to support the 5G Home Broadband packages, 80% of the time I will be told to "try the 2.4G connection", so there is clearly some confusion around 5G and 5GHz WiFi there.

 

Back to the problem at hand. 4G speeds on a home broadband connection are unusable, especially when we are paying for 5G, and when a 5G connection is feasible. I have tried moving the external 5G antenna around, but it will always prefer the 4G mast since it's a lot closer.

 

This is a 2 year contract, so this situation is unacceptable and a very bad user experience.

We would need to either:

1) Be able to set the modem to prefer the 5G connection (currently disabled in the modem settings, but should be possible to enable?),

2) Have the 4G mast replaced by a 5G one. There is actually only one 5G mast in the entire area, so we could certainly use another location.

 

For some additional information, here is a map of the current topology:

https://siteviewer.comreg.ie/#site/DU1211/53.5786650456/-6.1130054229/1/Site%20DU1211

 

Site DU1211 is the only Three NR mast in the area, and Site DU1147 is the one getting in the way and causing the modems to connect there instead.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated here. Speeds drop from 40-100Mbps when connected to 5G, down to as low as 4Mbps when connected to 4G, which again, is unusable, and unacceptable really considering the cost of the service.

10 REPLIES 10
Three_Deborah
3 Mod Retired

@hku2 hi there, thanks for the detailed post. I'm reaching out to the relevant team to gather some information for you. Can you leave this with me for a day or so? 

 

 

Sure thing, thanks in advance for your help!

Three_Deborah
3 Mod Retired

@hku2 you mentioned you have the 3 Home Broadband 5G Pro, was that tech installed? If so, what were the 5G result back then, and was there any comment on 4G at that time? 

 

 

Hey there,

Yep, it was tech installed. The installer actually mentioned that there was a 4G mast closer than the 5G one, which at the time of installation was down for maintenance.

They did however say that once the 4G comes back online we may have issues with the modem trying to connect there over the 5G one, which is exactly what seems to be happening now.

@hku2 Gotcha, that makes sense. Okay I'll need your broadband account details. Can you send me your full name, broadband number, address and date of birth, please? 

 

Once I have these, I'll open an investigation with the relevant teams.

 

Thanks Deborah, much appreciated.

I am getting an Access Denied error when trying to PM you, is there another way to send you that info?
LauraH
3 Mod Retired

@hku2 I see your PM, we'll pop back to you over there 👍

 

 

billbond4
Leader

I would say your bet is when the LTE mast gets upgraded to 5G then you will get a 5G service.

Three probably wont push out an update in the short term to allow 5G, you maybe able to change the firmware on the router, i would look at this option, but doing this may invalidate the warranty on the router, so be sure to read all the steps.


I am having a similar problem to the original poster.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.