Slow O2 broadband in West Cork

cinkypink

Hi all,

is anyone else experiencing slow broadband in Clonakilty/surrounding areas in the evening? I've had slow slow slow broadband consistently over the last 2 weeks from 8.45pm until after midnight each night. I don't have any issues during the day.



this is with 3 bars HSPA at 21.38 today.

Any suggestions/explanations from anyone would be great.

thanks

Sam Kade

Its peak time for usage.

cinkypink

Hi Sam,

thanks, aware of that, however, it is only for the last 2 weeks that I've had the issues, no problems as such at these times for the last 3 months (hence the question!)

any other suggestions/explanations would be appreciated.

Sam Kade

Yes partly guessed you knew. I have both a 3 modem and o2 modem in north Cork 3 is faster than o2 in fact o2 is so bad it doesn't even work sometimes. I am using o2 right now only getting green light.

jor el

Moved to Midband.

cinkypink wrote: »

Any suggestions/explanations from anyone would be great.

This is simply how 3G works. There is no control over congestion, and no rhyme nor reason to why your speed will go up and down. Signal strength is largely irrelevant, except when it's very poor. Good signal does not mean good speed.

There's nothing you or O2 can/will do about it, so it is what it is.

jay93

what probably happened was that a few more people in your area got o2 broadband few weeks back and its putting more congestion on the network i have both 3 and o2 and at giving times o2 can drop to 0.20 mb/s you are lucky to even get the speeds you are getting at the mo!!
the more people that get a o2 dongle in your immediate area will slow yours right down its just the way 3G works nothing can be done at all unless o2 add more capacity to the mobile mast or put up some more masts but that would be doubtful prepare to suffer on from slow dire speeds i know 3 has more broadband users than o2 but o2 seriously can not handle it at all they are way more congested than 3 imho they have more mobile phone customers than 3 which can also jam up a local mast !!

cinkypink

Are there any O2 Gurus on who can give a constructive reply, or who perhaps can raise this internally within O2?

I am personally not happy to pay for a contract (with 15 months to go) for something which does not work as designed/promised to do, and which was working fine up until a couple of weeks ago.

thanks

Walkman

cinkypink wrote: »

Are there any O2 Gurus on who can give a constructive reply, or who perhaps can raise this internally within O2?

I am personally not happy to pay for a contract (with 15 months to go) for something which does not work as designed/promised to do, and which was working fine up until a couple of weeks ago.

thanks

How about you contact O2 yourself directly seeing as your so unimpressed with the lack of constructive replys here

cinkypink

Walkman wrote: »

How about you contact O2 yourself directly seeing as your so unimpressed with the lack of constructive replys here

touchy touchy Walkman, Don't be so sensitive that was not directed at the OTHER replies on this thread, I am trying to reach out to the O2 gurus on here for some feedback. I've seen some other replies from a couple of gurus on here, and they seem to be quite helpful, and seem to have escalated people's feedback to the network guys in O2. that's all.

thanks

watty

cinkypink wrote: »

I am personally not happy to pay for a contract (with 15 months to go) for something which does not work as designed/promised to do, and which was working fine up until a couple of weeks ago.

There is NO speed guaranteed on Mobile. Not even a connection is guaranteed. It's data "piggybacking" on a Mobile Phone system.

There is no contention control.
Phone calls typically have priority.
Capacity is very poor. The "Up To" speed is the PEAK capacity of a sector, i.e. only one conection close to mast can get it. With 10 concurrent connections in a sector of a mast it's possible to have as low as 0.120Mbps down to 0.05Mbps.

You were just fortunate so far.

See http://www.radioway.info/comparewireless/
(Hint, O2, 3, Vodafone and Meteor are Mobile, not Fixed Wireless)
Also http://www.techtir.ie/comms/fixed-wireless-broadband-better

and
NBS and 3 Ireland sidebar here http://www.wattystuff.net/
* Mobile and NBS
* NBS Areas
* Three’s Fantasy Repeater
* Advert for 3 Ireland Mobile
* NBS, 3 and ASAI
* Is Mobile in Ireland Destroying Infrastructure?

O2_Daryll

The speed that you have given would be considered acceptable by our tech department and they will not investigate it. If things get worse get back onto me but investigating a speed test showing over 1MB will only be a waste of your time and If I was to say I could improve it I would only be giving false hope.

cinkypink

@ Watty - thanks a mill for the info, appreciate you taking the time to respond with detailed explanation. Unfortunately we don't have the possibility to install a phone line in our current apartment so we are stuck with the mobile broadband for the foreseeable future (15 months or so of contract!).


@Darryll, Thanks also for the reply Darryll, I'll retest the speed every so often, and if it drops below 1.0 I'll get back on to you, as there's not much point in my broadband working perfectly during the day (when I'm at work) and then not working to expectation in the evening when I'd like to use it :pac:

thanks again Guys.

O2_Daryll

I am not on here everyday but you can get a quicker reply on our forums here.

watty

cinkypink wrote: »

@Darryll, Thanks also for the reply Darryll, I'll retest the speed every so often, and if it drops below 1.0 I'll get back on to you, as there's not much point in my broadband working perfectly during the day (when I'm at work) and then not working to expectation in the evening when I'd like to use it :pac:

thanks again Guys.

It's not broadband. 0.12Mbps is a quite legitimate working speed!

Official speed table


If there are 15 concurrent connections and NO phone calls then you can't get more than 0.12Mbps near cell edge and you would have to be beside the mast to get nearly 1Mbps. At 1/2 distance to cell edge you'd still get only about 0.25Mbps if there was 15 concurrent connections!

At 1/2 distance there has to be less than 3 concurrent viewers of YouTube for all three to watch 1Mbps video without stutter, or else all three slightly less than that.

Note since we are considering area, about 75% of users can be more than 1/2 distance from mast to Cell edge!

rebel.ranter

Hi Watty,
I think your fixation on the limitations of UMTS is in quite a few cases way off the mark. I know I have commented on this in the past.
If you were to investigate these issues a bit deeper you may find that many of the speed issues are not solely related to code allocations. It could be down to a limited back haul solution from the site or that the cell the customer is in has only a basic carrier configuration. It could also be down to a device being used in an area with poor coverage. A faulty device can cause issues as can a virus riddled PC or laptop.
BTW I still think 3G is a rubbish solution that should never have been pushed as a mobile data solution or an alternative to fixed broadband.

watty

Yes. it doesn't help if a Mast had only 2.048Mbps Pri ISDN backhaul. Fine for phone + pre HSDPA 345Kbps days. It's a bit dishonest to sell your network as "up to 7.2Mbps" in that case.

However, I'm only quoting official Industry and Base Station vendor figures. The Government, Comreg and ASAI won't do anything so actual Real Communication Engineers that can actually understand, design and plan this stuff need to speak out.

I'm not of the Mark. The Retail Mobile industry are. They cherry pick from Vendor brochures without context of terrain, loss to indoors, cell loading, distance from mast, inter cell/mast/sector interference on same channel and much more. That table above is scanned from a vendor's document and is part of UMTS spec. I didn't make it up. It's also constrained by physics and close to the Shannon-Hartley limit.

3G and Edge are pretty much the ONLY mobile solution we have. But it is made poor for people that actually NEED mobile/On the go by being sold artificially cheap against fixed broadband. Of course eircom's highest in the world line rental make it easy for them to do this. The NBS was criminal. Maybe some other Government will have a Tribunal on it. Paying a Mobile Phone company to help roll out a network their licence terms required them to roll out and claiming it's Broadband. Doing no due diligence on the non-existent Satellite part (or ignoring the fact) that still doesn't exist.

Edge can of course do similar efficiencies to 3G and upto 2Mbps in theory, but they make far more from voice calls on GSM so it's limited to less than 245kbps and won't get upgraded. The 150:1 to 300:1 cost variance between €20 data of 10G approx and €20 of voice minutes + SMS is possible due originally to unused 3G capacity.

Now that 3G Data is got large numbers of users and more 3G voice phones expect the caps to be cut and data prices to rise.

rebel.ranter

I would expect mobile data will become segregated with users being offered tiered levels of services (both speed & data caps).
I am in complete agreement that a mobile company should not have been awarded the NBS scheme but that might have been down to the fact that no better or cheaper alternative was on the table. Also those with the decision making powers have grass growing out of theirs ears, that is the only sense I can make of it!
On the point on contention, I believe the problems relating to contention issues that you illustrate are not a primary cause of speed problems. Also remember the Eircom with a contention ratio of 24:1 on a 2Mb line only guarantee ~85kbps. Bear in mind too that most midband users are primarily fixed location users despite the mobile functionality. Operators can optimise capacity needs based on this fact, whether that means additional backhaul, carriers, features or cellsites.
I think midband will get better as networks evolve & customer growth settles down. Remember back in 1999/2000 when mobile networks struggled to survive a Friday without falling over? Eventually they caught up with voice demand.
Having said that I still cannot see how networks will actually make profit from midband, you are right in suggesting that the ~€20 that most mobile networks charge is way below what it costs to deliver the service. But the cost to deliver per Mb (like with memory cards/sticks) will fall but maybe not quick enough.
Then again I don't think Eircom will survive to deliver a proper next generation fixed line broadband fixed line services & all of the other companies out there are too small to matter on a countrywide scale.
Where does that leave us?

watty

It's segregated. Voice calls get priority as they make about 150x more profit for same revenue.

I think you don't understand contention.

24:1 or whatever is number of subscribers that are sold a package. Not the live actual contention.

On mobile you have a peak of 14Mbps (very close to mast for one user) but only have an average capacity across the sector of 2 to 3Mbps. A DSL exchange average capacity is the backhaul.

Contention on Mobile is only controlled by Cap.

The operators will only install density of cells to suit voice demand, not data.

The NBS was badly designed such that the only companies that could even be in the running was anyone about to have to rollout additional 3G phone network.

rebel.ranter

I thnknyou missed my point on segregation of data packages. I would expect that users would be expected to pay a premium for a higher (or even a minimum) speed guarantee, or for higher data caps. In the UK operators have dropped their data caps, probably with the intention of introducing tiered data cap packages at different price points.
Also I am also confused by your definition of contention ratios. Anything I have ever read describes contention ratio as the sharing of a resource not the number of people that were sold a package. True that a fixed network is potentially a more balanced sharing mechanism but it is still a shared resource. It's also true that the way the shared resource is shared is very different for fixed & 3G resources.
Also I very much doubt mobile operators are designing networks for voice anymore, that ship sailed long ago. Most networks are migrating to Full IP solutions which to me signals a clear ntention that data is the future. "Free" calls & texts at a fixed base price is slowly creeping in so that source of revenue is in free fall. The real source of future revenue opportunities for operators is in content, however companies like Apple, YouTube & Facebook have squeezed them out. So much so that the operators are scared of becoming just the dub pipe they are beginning to launch various attacks on such companies threatening to block or throttle such content if there is not a revenue share. Part of me thinks that this is the beginning of the end as far as the Internet as we know it is concerned but then I look at Eircom & see how becoming a dumb pipe could be bad. Lack of income will mean no investment in the next generation networks, that means end users will ultimately lose out.

watty

But they can't guarantee any particular speed. The Technology doesn't provide it. Maybe you could add speed caps.. but each speed band would be "up to" with no lower limit nor guarantee of connection, nor guarantee a session won't disconnect. If people paid for a "gold" package and never got more than "bronze"? That is marketing suicide.

There are rumours that 3G can cap the speed of a user (like most fixed Wireless and Flash-OFDMA mobile) but I have found no evidence that this exists anywhere, or even a spec for it. Of course it's technically possible but actually quite complex for the scheduling agents etc.

The only future is as dumb pipes. That's why I say the current prices and caps on Mobile data are not sustainable, esp. to cross subsidize from voice. That's only a valid model while there is spare capacity to grow customer base.

See http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055936916
and
http://irelandoffline.org/2009/08/is-mobile-midband-in-ireland-destroying-broadband-infrastructure/

"Free" calls & texts at a fixed base price is slowly creeping in so that source of revenue is in free fall.

I don't think revenue is in free fall. It's actually very high. Fixed price packages with excess calls billed at a high price is most non-PAYG (so called bill pay) and around for years. It's also x100 to x400 more profitable than a €20 fixed Cap data modem package.