3 USB Modem Speeds

caster

What speeds are people getting with the new 3 USB Modems? Mine seems to average out at about 150kbps - max i've got so far is just or 300kbps.... Pretty disappointing i think.....

richie.c

Well i get a max of 150 in the wee hours of the morning but during the evening it usually hits about 30 or 40. For someone like me where it's the only option for broadband I think it's great and am very happy with the speeds.

Rockson

I've been really disappointed with my usb modem recently. When I got it first I was getting around 700-800kbps which I was reasonably happy with given I was used to dial-up speeds, even though 3 were promising up to 3.6Mbps.

Now I'm averaging speeds comparable to my old dial-up speeds or sometimes even slower! As an example, for the last 25 minutes my top speed was 215kbps but in fact the speed was generally fluctuating between about 6kbps and around 80kbps! My dial-up probably averaged quicker!

I'm wondering if the contention ratio (number of people using it in your area) has gone way up since I bought mine because it's several weeks since I've averaged decent speeds with mine. Fixed-line broadband isn't available in my area so maybe all the neighbours have done the same as me.

I'm guessing the ones that have just come on-stream e.g. O2 are getting better speeds and will be until the contention ratio increases.

caster

I don't think I'll be keeping it if these sort of speeds are the best they're offering. As you said, sometimes it is no better than dial up speed....

Is there less contention on the O2 and Vodafone offerings ?

Urban Weigl

caster, from what I have heard, 3 were caught by surprise -- they assumed mobile broadband would not sell as well as it has. Kind of an interesting problem for any company. As a result, they did not upgrade their network in time. They are working on upgrading their network at the moment, but my guess is that it will take at least a month for them to get their act together, if not longer.

caster

Urban Weigl wrote:

caster, from what I have heard, 3 were caught by surprise -- they assumed mobile broadband would not sell as well as it has. Kind of an interesting problem for any company. As a result, they did not upgrade their network in time. They are working on upgrading their network at the moment, but my guess is that it will take at least a month for them to get their act together, if not longer.

Thanks - thats sounds a little more encouraging as calling it a 3.6mbps service at the moment is really pushing it when you're getting the sort of speeds mentioned above.

I'm also having a problem getting the modem working properly on my laptop - its constantly dropping the connection to the modem and popping up messages like 'Data Modem Invalid'. I reconnect and it works ok for a couple of minutes before the same thing happening again.... Tried it on all the USB ports, removing the anti-virus etc and still the same prob

It works perfectly fine on my PC though (which is in the same location)

Anyone else having this problem?

Tony_ire

I'm getting v. frustrated with mine. Only getting average of less than 70k according to the modem's counter and download speed of 12k on speedtest.ie here in south dublin. It's only barely usable. At the weekend down the country I was gettin average speed of 650k.

Anybody have any specific info on when 3 will be upgrading or in what areas?

center15

Apologies but on a side note has anyone see the ad on three's website. Does anyone else think their sperm usb modems advert is a bit odd....

Urban Weigl

center15 wrote:

Apologies but on a side note has anyone see the ad on three's website. Does anyone else think their sperm usb modems advert is a bit odd....

Aye.

Rockson

caster wrote:

I don't think I'll be keeping it if these sort of speeds are the best they're offering. As you said, sometimes it is no better than dial up speed....

Is there less contention on the O2 and Vodafone offerings ?

I would seriously think about giving it back while you still can, caster. You can always get it again in a month or two or whenever they get back to giving us actual broadband speeds as opposed to dial-up speeds that (at least) some of us are getting.

I've no way of knowing the contention ratios for each company or if there's a legal limit on such ratios - there should be, imo. I'm guessing O2 have a smaller contention ratio as they've just come out with their usb modem package so it'll take a while for their customer numbers to build up, especially at the price they're charging.

As 3 have the cheapest monthly usb modem deal I'm guessing that their speeds will only get slower as they get more customers unless they upgrade their system or build new masts.

I just did a check on comreg's site http://www.askcomreg.ie/mobile/site_viewer.asp about mast numbers in my area (after zooming in so I could see a reasonable amnount around me). Vodafone have 7, O2 have 7, Meteor have 3, and 3 have only one! This does not bode well for speedy surfing in the future unless they spend some money on masts!

caster

Getting much faster speeds today. Nearly 900kbps on a recent download. Seems to be averaging around the 300 - 400 mark which is not too bad. Maybe there were they reading this Seriously though, if the speeds yesterday were the norm, I think loads of people would be returning their modems

By the way, is the number of masts locally a key issue with contention ? No idea how they work this...

Firetrap

I rang up 3's customer care to complain about the slow speeds I'm getting. According to the very knowledgeable Indian:rolleyes: they can't give me a date for when they'll be able to rectify the problem. At least he admitted it was a contention problem and didn't try to convince me that there was a problem with my laptop etc.

Urban Weigl

Like Rockson said, 3 have very few masts. In his case, while O2 and Vodafone had 14 masts between them in his area alone, 3 only have a single mast!! That is not going to be good for contention.

I am sure 3 will address this. The question is, how long will customers have to wait? While they'll be able to quadruple the capacity of their network without adding more masts, by applying the 14.4 Mbps HSDPA upgrade, I suspect users will still be waiting a while before getting average speeds of 1-3 Mbps again.

Then again, I suspect a major part of the current problem, which luckily doesn't seem to be affecting me to the degree it seems to be affecting other customers, is that their backhaul is going through the UK and may be very limited. If that's the case, it should not take that long to upgrade. At least that part of it.

Rockson

caster wrote:

Getting much faster speeds today. Nearly 900kbps on a recent download. Seems to be averaging around the 300 - 400 mark which is not too bad. Maybe there were they reading this

Funnily enough, mine also got a bit quicker after that day! I'm pretty sure they had some sort of cap on download speeds in operation for a while because even when I tried it in the wee hours I never got above maybe 200-300kbps. Now at least I can get semi-decent speeds again in very off-peak hours. However nornal day-time or evening still isn't that hot in general.

caster wrote:

By the way, is the number of masts locally a key issue with contention ? No idea how they work this...

Basically the whole mobile phone system works by everyone's phone logging onto their local mast to get in on the system. Contention ratio means how many other people can be trying to log onto the same mast as you at any given time. The higher the contention ratio, the more people are sharing your mast and the slower the speed you'll get if you all trying to use your mobile/usb broadand at the same time!

By the way, I've just came across this thread in the broadband section here about people having problems with slow 3 usb modems. It makes pretty depressing reading!

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055115306

caster

Went in to the store i bought it from last friday, to return it. They showed me an e-mail from 3 saying that they're upgrading the network this week and speeds should noticeably improve before the weekend. So i'm giving it until this friday (when my 14 days are up)... if there isn't a radical improvement, it'll be def going back.

Rockson

I guess we'll all believe these improved speeds when we see them! The fact 3 are still advertising their mobile broadband as the fastest around doesn't inspire much confidence in their connection to the real world...

HiredGun

Hi everyone. My first post.

3, like the other 3G operators can improve the capacity and speed of their network by adding extra channels. Each operator has 15 MHz of 3G spectrum, which is divided in 3 channels of 5 MHz each. Most masts are fitted with equipment for only one channel. By adding one or two extra channels the capacity of the network can be doubled or tripled without building extra sites. This means that the contention ratio will go down.

culabula

center15 wrote:

Apologies but on a side note has anyone see the ad on three's website. Does anyone else think their sperm usb modems advert is a bit odd....

Hilarious.

Steoob

Rockson wrote:

I would seriously think about giving it back while you still can, caster. You can always get it again in a month or two or whenever they get back to giving us actual broadband speeds as opposed to dial-up speeds that (at least) some of us are getting.

I've no way of knowing the contention ratios for each company or if there's a legal limit on such ratios - there should be, imo. I'm guessing O2 have a smaller contention ratio as they've just come out with their usb modem package so it'll take a while for their customer numbers to build up, especially at the price they're charging.

As 3 have the cheapest monthly usb modem deal I'm guessing that their speeds will only get slower as they get more customers unless they upgrade their system or build new masts.

I just did a check on comreg's site http://www.askcomreg.ie/mobile/site_viewer.asp about mast numbers in my area (after zooming in so I could see a reasonable amnount around me). Vodafone have 7, O2 have 7, Meteor have 3, and 3 have only one! This does not bode well for speedy surfing in the future unless they spend some money on masts!

whats the range on those masts? in the house im living in next year theres 5 O2 masts around it but i cant tell if theyd reach or not...