3-Mobile broadband problems

[starman]

We've been using 3-Mobile broadband with a ZTE dongle and Boaters Phone Co external aerial for well over a year. Until the last couple of months it's been largely okay - unavailable service in some rural areas but otherwise decent enough.

However recently there has been a very marked deterioration - slowness, stalling, hard to get on at all, dropping off, some sites far slower than others etc etc. This is not just in one location but all over the place - Liverpool, Manchester, Stoke and (currently) half way down the Coventry Canal.It's as if something major has changed in the structure of the 3-network service.

Has anyone experienced similar issues? I'm thoroughly fed up with it. I'm tempted to change provider but are they all as bad?

[Lady Muck]

I've often wondered if because 3 has such great offers for their dongles, they might now have enough users to be suffering from bandwidth contention? It's one of the reasons I've stayed away, because I use my dongle for work, a good service is more important than a cheap price.

If I've had trouble in the past, I've always phoned customer care (I'm with Vodafone) and got them to put me through to the tech dept. Quite often if the dongle's not working, it's because the mast is out, either repair downtime or damaged. Vodafone also told me bad weather and high winds can affect the signal.

[LoneWolf]

I'm using 3 with a huawei dongle and have only had a couple of places where i've got no signal. This is coming up GU, coventry t&m etc.

 

Every now and then it does go through phases where it keeps dropping the connection and i have to tell it to connect again despite the signal being good

[Lady Muck]

I just thought of something, could it be that it's not updating on the network properly? Sometimes when that happens with our older Vodafone dongle, we have to do a manual update. This involves putting the sim in a mobile phone and changing the network to another network (i.e one that isn't 3, it will say SOS service only, but that's ok), then changing it back to your network. It forces it to update, and then you *should* get your 3g back. Our newer dongle doesn't have this problem. Give it a go, anyway.

[Andy Todd]

Mobile data volumes are going up very rapidly (for all netowrks). As the contention is on the local loop (base station to subscriber) mobile broadband suffers far more than fixed line to increases in volumes.

[MarkAdrian]

Hmm, Im not sure if this is related, but to me its similar. My wife, daughter, son in law and myself all have "3" mobiles which have worked perfectly until a month ago when they all started saying "Inactive Usim" dispite the signal strength. We have to turn them off and on, its getting rather frustrating when it happens 2-3 times a day.

 

I too am wondering if its some sort of bandwidth issue?

[Albatross]

Wouldn't know....never got mine to connect yet,

big pile of poo

[rgreg]

We've been using 3-Mobile broadband with a ZTE dongle and Boaters Phone Co external aerial for well over a year. Until the last couple of months it's been largely okay - unavailable service in some rural areas but otherwise decent enough.

However recently there has been a very marked deterioration - slowness, stalling, hard to get on at all, dropping off, some sites far slower than others etc etc. This is not just in one location but all over the place - Liverpool, Manchester, Stoke and (currently) half way down the Coventry Canal.It's as if something major has changed in the structure of the 3-network service.

Has anyone experienced similar issues? I'm thoroughly fed up with it. I'm tempted to change provider but are they all as bad?

Spent last 6 months travelling length and breadth of country on system and with very few exceptions have always had reception just with 3 standard dongle plugged straight into laptop. Not experienced any deterioration recently.

[Guest]

We've been using 3-Mobile broadband with a ZTE dongle and Boaters Phone Co external aerial for well over a year. Until the last couple of months it's been largely okay - unavailable service in some rural areas but otherwise decent enough.

However recently there has been a very marked deterioration - slowness, stalling, hard to get on at all, dropping off, some sites far slower than others etc etc. This is not just in one location but all over the place - Liverpool, Manchester, Stoke and (currently) half way down the Coventry Canal.It's as if something major has changed in the structure of the 3-network service.

Has anyone experienced similar issues? I'm thoroughly fed up with it. I'm tempted to change provider but are they all as bad?

 

Are you sure your antenna is OK?

 

Have you tried it without?

[LoneWolf]

I just thought of something, could it be that it's not updating on the network properly? Sometimes when that happens with our older Vodafone dongle, we have to do a manual update. This involves putting the sim in a mobile phone and changing the network to another network (i.e one that isn't 3, it will say SOS service only, but that's ok), then changing it back to your network. It forces it to update, and then you *should* get your 3g back. Our newer dongle doesn't have this problem. Give it a go, anyway.

 

Can you open the dongles to take the sim out? I've not tried that. I think sometimes the computer gets an update for something (AVG? windows?) which knocks the 'redial if signal is dropped' setting off so I do a reboot & try and find the setting & change it back but I dont know if this is the cause or not. Hard to diagnose when I'm moving about as well.

It's doing it now so I shall try rebooting..

[homer2911]

Are you sure your antenna is OK?

 

Have you tried it without?

 

Never used an antena with my 3 mobile dongle, but what I do have is a a 3 mt USB extension lead which enables me to hoist it up higher - in my case onto the stay-rod of the open Houdini hatch.

 

Used the dongle yesterday to enable a live internet connection during a conference presentation I was giving at the Daresbury Hotel in Warington (stone's throw fro Preston Brook) with the signal coming tghrough loud and clear.

[Lady Muck]

Can you open the dongles to take the sim out?

If you look along the edge on the older Huawei dongles (the soap bar shaped ones, not the newest ones that look like USB flash drives, I don't know about those ones), you can see the sim in a slot. Push it with your finger nail and it pops out.

[pugwash61]

Never used an antena with my 3 mobile dongle, but what I do have is a a 3 mt USB extension lead which enables me to hoist it up higher - in my case onto the stay-rod of the open Houdini hatch.

 

I do much the same thing, but with a 5 mtr lead hanging over the V of a long pole fishing rod rest, pushed into a flowerpot, on the roof of the boat.

Indecently, although slightly , I've just come off the phone from talking to 3 mobile, & I think I've had a right result. They've just upped me from 3 gig to 15 gig a month, for the same price of £15 monthly. What's your thoughts?

[Guest]

Never used an antena with my 3 mobile dongle, but what I do have is a a 3 mt USB extension lead which enables me to hoist it up higher - in my case onto the stay-rod of the open Houdini hatch.

 

Used the dongle yesterday to enable a live internet connection during a conference presentation I was giving at the Daresbury Hotel in Warington (stone's throw fro Preston Brook) with the signal coming tghrough loud and clear.

 

Possibly suggesting it's the antenna....

[starman]

Are you sure your antenna is OK?

 

Have you tried it without?

 

Yes, and it's worse without. My feeling is it's either bandwidth or some sort of update needed. Incidentally quite th worst place so far has been central Liverpool - virtually unusable.

[Guest]

Yes, and it's worse without. My feeling is it's either bandwidth or some sort of update needed. Incidentally quite th worst place so far has been central Liverpool - virtually unusable.

 

Sorry -

 

Hope you get it sorted soon.

[soldthehouse]

We've been using 3-Mobile broadband with a ZTE dongle and Boaters Phone Co external aerial for well over a year. Until the last couple of months it's been largely okay - unavailable service in some rural areas but otherwise decent enough.

However recently there has been a very marked deterioration - slowness, stalling, hard to get on at all, dropping off, some sites far slower than others etc etc. This is not just in one location but all over the place - Liverpool, Manchester, Stoke and (currently) half way down the Coventry Canal.It's as if something major has changed in the structure of the 3-network service.

Has anyone experienced similar issues? I'm thoroughly fed up with it. I'm tempted to change provider but are they all as bad?

There are two satellites out of action should be online by end of month waiting for parts apparently

[Lady Muck]

^^^

That might be your answer. I gather 3 customer service is a bit rubbish for calling up and asking about stuff like this?

 

I've found this forum quite useful http://www.3g.co.uk/3GForum/

[RLWP]

There are two satellites out of action should be online by end of month waiting for parts apparently

 

How does that work then? Does a satellite engineer turn up in a rocket and do a service?

 

Richard

[soldthehouse]

How does that work then? Does a satellite engineer turn up in a rocket and do a service?

 

Richard

They just wind them in one at a time just like a kite

[RLWP]

They just wind them in one at a time just like a kite

 

Ahhh. So Cody was on the right track all along!

 

 

 

Richard

[soldthehouse]

Ahhh. So Cody was on the right track all along!

 

 

 

Richard

years ahead of his time

[casper ghost]

I've had mobile broadband too for over a year, no probs, always had good reception but the last week or so and I've hardly been able to log on. I phoned T mobile they tried all sorts of stuff but nothing wrong. Still messing about now, i've had to force pc onto 2G just to do anything and i'm in the same place where it always worked fine...

Anyone had this problem and got it sorted?

[Nickhlx]

A thought .... that may be causing problems for people....

 

The dongle I have came with a approx 1/2M long USB cable, which plugged into the dongle at one end and on the other end are TWO USB plugs. In the manual it says it is to get the power from the PC via TWO sockets. To me this suggests that the dongle requires ( maybe only sometimes) more power than one USB socket can (or is rated to) supply, which I believe is 0.5 amps.

 

Now allowing for margins etc, could it be that, at times ( or most of the time), the dongle needs say 0.75 amps ( bear with me here) so, where possible, it's sucking out of two sockets to share the load. Also, the lead that came with it is noticeably thicker than ordinary ones - perhaps it has thicker conductors within to minimise the voltage drop also ?

 

(My thoughts / assumption .... could the dongle be weaker in performance in some way if it doesn't get what supply voltage it needs ?)

 

Strapping on a 5 metre cable, whilst getting the dongle into a stronger signal strength area ( up a pole on the roof) could be causing the dongle to not be as good as it was when being fed with the shorter cable, as it may be running at ? 4.5 volts instead of nearer the intended 5.0 volts, and some part of the circuitry may be right on a limit of working properly ( e.g. lower gain etc).

 

I will try and see if if I can do some tests with one AND two 5 metre cables running up to my "siamese" cable, to see if it affects the performance any...

 

I am not up on dongles, so don't really know too much about their internals. I do know that they (my two) seem to get really quite hot, so are drawing / dissipating quite a lot of power - I will try and measure that too and see what typical extension leads are dropping over their lengths.

 

Do we not have a dongle expert amongst us ?

 

What do the electrickery experts think ?

 

Nick

Edited October 18, 2009 by Nickhlx

[alan_fincher]

The dongle I have came with a approx 1/2M long USB cable, which plugged into the dongle at one end and on the other end are TWO USB plugs. In the manual it says it is to get the power from the PC via TWO sockets. To me this suggests that the dongle requires ( maybe only sometimes) more power than one USB socket can (or is rated to) supply, which I believe is 0.5 amps.

Interesting!

 

Our first "3" dongle came with a short extra cable that would seem to imply plugging in to 2 USB ports simultaneously, but I scoured the documentation several times, and could only find pictures (or descriptions) that indicated connecting to one port via a bog standard "one plug at each end" cable, (also supplied).

 

As a result I've never tried using the cable with 2 plugs at one end, (and socket at other) for anything. Perhaps I should, but strange their "documentation" failed to mention.

 

A more recent one, bought as "dongle for free", has no such cable, (and also seems to work less well than original offering).