I am at the end of my tether with this so trying here. The last holiday in Tenerife I spent 6hrs on online chat trying to resolve this and it was never resolved.
SCENARIO/BACKGROUND - For Actual 'Problem' see later
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I have an iPhone 6+ on o2 contact. I regularly visit Tenerife and have had no cause to complain about data speeds via iPhone there before and as far as I know things were OK back in January when I was there for 3 weeks. It always connects to Movistar there.
I went out again in June and everything seemed OK at first (2-3 days) then the speed was abysmal. Running a speedtest app showed 0.01 Mbs download (this is on 3G). I did many things, tried it in different areas so different masts etc. etc. I also had very poor wifi in the complex I was staying at so went and bought a MiFi with Movistar sim. This connected to the same 3G network as my phone yet gave over 3Mbs all the time.
I was using online chat to try and resolve this and they advised that on one day I had used a huge amount of data (think this was 2 days before this). Initially I thought there was no possibility of this but I eventually tracked this down to having plugged my phone into my laptop and the phone had 'hotspot' enabled. I then figure out it was a dropbox sync.
Anyway, so fair enough I had exceeded the daily usage limit (not published anywhere) and would have been slowed down for the rest of that day, but this was 2 days later.
I tried various things based on online chat. Left my phone off all day, stayed up until midnight, logged on and it was still at 0.10Mbps. Various chat operatives gave advice inc one who said I should do 'reset settings' on my phone and this WOULD NOT LOSE ANYTHING. Found out since that it blitzed all of my wifi passwords. I had dozens setup for various venues I visit in my work and it is still causing me huge problems.
I eventually spoke to some technical guys in Scotland who said they'd look into it but never got anywhere with that either. Had to buy 2 further sim cards (2Gb limit) in order to get through my holiday.
I did say to the Tech guys could it be that the 'limit' was put on due to my over-use but never taken off.
I did follow up when I got back but having already spent over 6hrs on chat/phone and about the same buying the mifi and sim cards and trying stuff myself I was totally p'd off with this. Being back in UK it was no longer a problem and just left it.
I went back to Tenerife 2 weeks ago and the first thing I did was the speedtest, still 0.10.
I wasn't about to waste my holiday again on o2 chat so just switched data roaming off on the phone and did everything on laptop (not ideal). It was only when I found out I was not getting some txt's that I switched it back on and just 'lived with it'.
0.10 is fine for email and although slow, you can check facebook and update status etc. It generally fails if you want to upload a photo and watching videos etc. is a nogo. Essentially it's like using GPRS in the UK.
PROBLEM/QUERY
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I am still of a mind to think that a speed cap was put on my phone (via MAC address/PAC code??) and has never been removed. Others using o2/Voda/Three are getting proper 3G speeds, I was until I got capped.
Has anyone else experienced anything similar?
If you have, were you able to resolve it?
I am left with 2 options, change my phone (think this should work although less than a year old and don't really want to change) or switch providers which tbh, having had all this hassle I would do in an instant if it was easy and not require me to 'buy myself out' of this contract.
