4G Speed Reduction

[Anonymous]

I recently upgraded my tarrif from a 1GB data plan to 20GB, due to always hitting my limit, and ending up buying additional data each month, adding 6 quid to my bill on average. Before the change in tarrif, I was getting fantastic speeds for browsing and streaming - it was like being on home broadband - if a webpage took longer than a couple of seconds to load, it was probably because the webserver was down or experiencing problems. It made hitting my limit extremely easy, but I was more than happy with the performance.

The very day that my tarrif upgrade was enabled, the speed dropped drastically. I now cannot view any website without a 5-10 second wait - sometimes longer. Streaming from YouTube is just not worth it - buffering for 5 seconds to play 1 second of video, then buffering again - a torturous, looping experience. The only streaming that does seem to work is Netflix, but only after a long wait, where I assume it is buffering in the background. My friend on Virgin 3G actually loads Netflix programmes faster, and also doesn't buffer during playback.

I have tried to put up with this for a month - thinking it would just rectify itself, and was a coincidental network problem, but I'm struggling to fathom what the issue is now, especially when the change on my account should have literally just been an increase in data limit and a reduction in price (mins/txts stayed the same - unlimited).

The telephone sales person at O2 was adamant that I didn't need a 20GB data plan, and repeatedly said that I should save 3 quid a month by getting a vastly reduced data plan, but I decided to go with the big plan against their advice so I wouldn't have to worry at all about hitting any limits.

I hate to think it, because if it is correct it was never explained to me, but has my bandwidth been artificially reduced due to opting a larger data limit? It's the only logical explanation I can think of, and I can understand why this might be necessary if generally it's the few users with big data plans that are slowing the network, but if this is the case, I'd like to move away from O2, and I hope you will be able to cancel my contract without fees. I believe I'm still within a 90-Day grace period too.

[jonsie]

As far as I know O2 won't throttle speeds unless it has a detrimental affect on other users. I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem on a 20GB plan to be honest.

Have a look at your postcode here to see if there is any mast issues :

http://status.o2.co.uk

Also do a speedtest and post the results here.

http://www.speedtest.net

[MI5]

Your change of mind period is 14 days, not 90 unfortunately and I guess theoretically it is possible that you are suffering from traffic management of compression issues, we haven't heard anyone else mention it, so it's unlikely.
I hope it's purely coincidental and it may be due to work on a mast in your area or some other network issue.
Check here if anything is going on first http://status.o2.co.uk/

[adamtemp64]

http://www.o2.co.uk/assets2/Kana/pdf/traffic_management.pdf

States o2 policy

If on a 20gb tafiff like mine then I have not seen any slowing .

But remember that 4g is a finite data prodouct and depending on max users on at a time it will slow due to the fact it can only supply 75mb speed amongst all the users, unlike fixed fiber broadband where contention is much less and only realy affected by others in your home

[jonsie]

So as I thought @adamtemp64 there is no traffic management as such. As I say,no one on the community has complained about this hence my advice above.

[MI5]

We'd know about it for sure if it was commonplace......

[darrengf]

I have a 20gb and never faced with any issues.  I use on average 12-19gb a month but I'm extremely impressed with o2 4G and speeds.

Where I live more and more masts are getting 4G each day, the Vodafone one about a mile away was recently converted to both o2 and Voda and the speeds are 50mbs which is fine for me.  I've started to get 4G in places where I now don't get 4G on EE and some places where 4G was patchy on EE and still is is now rock solid on o2. 

There are still loads of places with out 4G and 3G on o2 and Vodafone where EE has 3G and 4G so there still catching up,  but for me it's loads better.

West of the country doesn't seem to be as fast at putting in 4G as the east. I know Vodafone look after the west and east Is o2. 

The only thing o2 wasn't great was when I was in London.  Speeds were average and it seamed very patchy to me,  went to few places and Voda and EE were rock solid, but o2 was just ok to average.  So need improvement there.

EE is still fast on 4G. Speeds I've had are unreal, Vodafone is a lot quicker too. O2 isn't the quicker I will be honest, but I have noticed is that it's more constant with the speed.  So when I've been in a 4G area apart from London Patchiness, Its never failed to run anything, where the others sometimes did and had to wait.

[Anonymous]

I've noticed this. I'm also on the 20GB tariff and have noticed that, despite having a 4G download of around 17mg that it is impossible to stream HD video on YouTube.  O2 maintain that the mast in the area is fine (although it has been unreliable before) and that there isn't any issues.  I can live with standard definition video but it's a bit annoying when 4G is sold on streaming HD video.

[adamtemp64]

O2 have always used compression hence poor quality videos and pictures @toby;can you feed back the compression issue 

[MI5]

You can use "bypass" as the APN login to avoid the compression feature.