Speeds gone slow in Clonakilty for the last few weeks..

[gijoe50000]

My 4G broadband signal used to only be crap from around 9:00pm to midnight (down to 1-2Mbps), but for the last few weeks it's been poor all the time, from just after the good weather ended. Even as I'm writing this, at 2:00am, it's only about 5Mbps, a few weeks ago it would literally be 10 times that after midnight.

Before 9:00pm nowadays it's almost always less than a 1Mbps, and has dropouts every few seconds, for a few seconds. Just generally all-round unusable.

I've tried resetting and restarting the router but it didn't make a difference.

Here are some of the relevant values from my router (which has 4 bars of signal):

CELL_ID  478485

RSRQ     -14.0dB

RSRP      -104dBm

SINR       -5dB

PLMN      27205

From looking at these values online it seems that the RSRQ value is acceptable (just about), but the RSRP and SINR values suggest that the signal quality is almost non-existent, even though it's got 4 bars of signal.

• Is it a case that 3 just have too many people on the network? (Probably not the only problem if the signal is still poor at 2:00am when most people are asleep.)
• Is there a problem with the masts?
• Are 3 just dropping the signal strength to save a bit of power, to see if anybody complains about it? (The cynic in me favours this theory!)
• Or some other reason?

[LauraH]

@gijoe50000 Hi there, I've checked the mast in Clonakilty and all appears as it should there, no alarms that would indicate a fault. Have you tried changing to 3G Only to see if that makes a difference? Some screenshots of speed tests from Ookla would be great too.

[gijoe50000]

3G speeds are slow, but maybe not bad for 3G. The settings from my router are:

CELL_ID   47215996

RSSI        -83dBm

RSCP      -93dBm

ECIO       -10dB

PLMN      27202

The RSCP and ECIO seem to be low, but probably not bad for 3G. Here's a 3G speedtest:

The 4G signal was alright for a while today 4-5Mbps, but just went very poor again soon afterwards.

4-5Mbps:

CELL_ID   478485

RSRQ      -11.0dB

RSRP      -103dBm

SINR        6dB

PLMN      27205

I didn't get a chance to grab a speed test for it since it then dropped to 1Mbps:

CELL_ID   478485

RSRQ      -12.0dB

RSRP      -102dBm

SINR        0dB

PLMN      27205

Here's the speedtest from this one:

The two sets of 4G data above were taken within a few minutes of each other, and while the RSRP is terrible, it looks like the signal to noise ratio SINR is the main variable factor between 5Mbps and 1Mbps and it decreased a lot within about 5 minutes.

And just after typing these sentences it's now:

CELL_ID   478485

RSRQ      -13.0dB

RSRP      -103dBm

SINR        -2dB

PLMN      27205

It looks like everything is going to hell again.

I can only assume there's too many people on the 4G network, or else it's 3 lowering the power at the cells, but I can't see why they'd do that other than prioritising the "working day" over the general public wanting to watch cat videos when they get home.

So it's more than likely just congestion on the network. And I'm about 1-1.5km away from the town, and the mast, so I'm probably getting the short end of the stick. 

I'll finish up with a final copy of my signal settings after writing this:

CELL_ID   478485

RSRQ      -14.0dB

RSRP      -102dBm

SINR       -5dB

PLMN      27205

Basically the signal to noise ratio (SINR) dropped a full 11dBm in about 30 minutes (6:50pm-7:20pm) since I started writing this reply. And signal quality (RSRQ) is dropping off steadily too. 

Here's the speed test now, worse again, and pretty much what I'm getting most of the time:

[LauraH]

@gijoe50000 Thanks so much for the detail. Can you pop me a PM with your details (broadband number, full name, address and date of birth) so I can take a look at your account and connections?