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5G in Letterkenny

Seán
Investigator

5G in Letterkenny

I recently purchased a Samsung A51 5G from Three on prepay during the offers.  As Three's coverage map shows 5G coverage throughout Letterkenny, I bought the 5G add-on to try it out while shopping there yesterday.

 

Upon arriving at the Letterkenny Shopping Centre, I saw the 5G icon on my phone, however, the speed is no better than what I get on 4G there.  To double-check, I set the network mode to 4G/3G/2G Auto, run a few speed tests and repeated set back to 5G/4G/3G/2G Auto and the speed tests were roughly the same around 80Mbps.  Sure that's plenty for on a mobile, but was curious to see what 5G could get there, especially since I paid €5 for the add-on. 

 

One thing I did notice is that the 5G icon had just an outline around it as shown in this screenshot taken yesterday: 

Samsung 5G outline.png

According to Samsung, this means that a 5G cell is present and it should turn solid with the 5G writing in black when 5G data is connected.  However, I don't recall seeing it turn solid once yesterday while running the speed tests, so I'm wondering if 5G is live yet in Letterkenny.

10 REPLIES 10
LauraH
3 Mod Retired

@Seán Hi there 👋 I'd like to help you out here. Tell me, have you tried both indoors and outdoors? I'd love to check the add-on has applied correctly too so pop me a PM with your phone number, full name, address and date of birth to get the ball rolling 👍

 

insider
Investigator

Hello Sean, it means you are connected to lower band 5G connection. Lower band provides greater coverage but lower speeds. Once you get close enough to 5G antenna it should be solid 5G icon like this: 

insider_0-1607384422128.png


There are some apps that provide mast location. You can try them for mast location.
See my post for 5G speed test with solid 5G icon: 
https://community.three.ie/t5/The-Living-Room/Share-Your-5G-Speed-Test-Results/m-p/768194

 

Thanks for coming back.  I don't think they use the use the lower 700MHz band yet as ComReg is set to auction it off next year and has made that band available as additional 4G capacity during the pandemic. 

 

ComReg's map doesn't show any 5G masts in Letterkenny, so I'm not sure how close I was to one.  Three's 5G coverage show the whole area purple for 5G, which isn't very helpful identifying where the strongest spot is.  The red dot is one is where I took the above screenshot showing the outlined 5G:

Three 5G Letterkenny.png

 

My speed tests all show 'LTE' next to them despite testing various areas in Letterkenny.  I will try testing again tomorrow in Ballybofey and in Barnesmore where the map also shows purple coverage. 

Just to update, I've since tested various areas in Ballybofey and Barnesmore.  The 5G symbol didn't appear anywhere in Ballybofey.  While driving through Barnesmore, I pulled in and just had the outlined 5G symbol as earlier, even while running a speed test. 

 

I PM'd Three_Laur with the details last week, but I'll likely give 5G a miss with what happened this morning.  I just after losing €60 of my credit this morning as I didn't receive a top-up reminder from Three like they issued previously. 😞 

@Seán Oh no! I'd recommend scheduled top-ups to avoid this in the future, have you ever used that service? It's super convenient.

 

Previously the scheduled top-up only topped up every month, so the 28 day plan would expire a few days before the next schedule.

 

I have now set a reminder on my phone when my current plan is about to expire, but this time it's to switch network, especially since the new 3 Pay 20 plan does not add credit like the old 3Pay plan did. 

@Seán You can set up a 28 day scheduled top-up in My3. I'd hate to see a valued customer like yourself leave us, let me know if I can convince you to stay 😢

 

If you can undo the out-of-bundle data charges on my account from this morning, I'll reconsider.  Those hefty charges are really unfair, unlike the €2 out-of-bundle charge Vodafone used to charge me for missing a top-up. 

@Seán I'd like to check the dates of the top-ups so pop me a PM with your details so I can take a look at your account. Outside the 28-day timeframe, data is charged at €1.01 per MB so if using data its vital to keep track of the top-ups 👌