4G compression - is it just me? AWFUL browsing experience

[Anonymous]

Dear O2

I upgraded to a 5S on 4G (8 gb p/m) and, although recieving it loud and clear in my corner of SW London, the quality of the mobile web browsing service has been just terrible.

Audio and page throughput is quick as are app downloads etc, BUT the evident heavy compression artefacts on all youtube/ video content, and unusual image pixellation render the mobile browsing experience utterly awful. Worse than 3G, for sure. I've lived with it for 3 days, so I'm thinking this is not just a glitch due to heavy network load. I am, to say the least, not impressed.  It's the same with tethering to my laptop. It used to be this way, but I didn't expect it on 4G. 

I try HD videos on Youtube - they are unwatchable. Literally.

I browse my Flickr Pro account - hi-res images rendered with the life compressed out of them. Try zooming in any high quality image and then compare it to wifi - you'll be amazed.

General Google images/ Daily Motion/ Vimeo video - as above. Just nasty. 

In effect, all image and video content is as if I am browsing the web on a 56k modem. I wonder if TechRadar, The Registry and GSM Arena have picked up on this?

o2, this is my experience and opinion only, I am sure and hope others disagree. But if you are compressing images and video to make 4G faster, that's just not on and, despite havcing spend thousnads with you over many years, I will be requesting to cancel my contract and move elsewhere. I can understand throttling at peak times, and I can understand doing this for those who are perhaps inadventently near their data limit, but not as a default setting. 

As it stands, I enjoyed the mobile web far better on 3G. Please, please, tell me I am wrong...

Yours,

Mark

[lucids]

Just tested my android phone on high speed packet data and 4G for streaming video on various services no noticeable difference I can see.

[Anonymous]

I recently got a PAYG 4G SIM card from O2 to test out how the LTE is in my area.

Having been with O2 for many years prior, then switching to EE since their launch and Vodafone since Jan 2013, I was hoping for good news..

Was sorely disappointed to see that O2 still thinks it's cool to chew on all your browsing data and spit out ugly as sin 8-bit images. I used to bypass this by changing the APN on my iPhone but sometimes it didn't work.

Why, in 2014, do they still do this? It's very regrettable, and, a primary reason why I will, regrettably, have to move two business connections to a Vodafone account. Even if their signal is worse, they still don't butcher our browsing experience.

Bypassing this with a VPN also works, but in my opinion not always ideal.

[Anonymous]

recently got a Blackberry z10 on o2 4G payg to test out the network; the image compression is shockingly bad, put a vodafone sim in the phone; dont have any issues at all in fact its faster on 3g with no compression. shame really as i was looking at moving to o2 refresh in a month...not happening now.

[Anonymous]

Have to say in the area where I work when I can get a 3g signal the picture on skygo is poor.

Yet on wifi or Vodafone picture is reasonably sharp. Hence why I may be moving to Vodafone shortly

[Anonymous]

I'm having the very same experience. I posted a topic on here not realising this post was going. Very poor watching skygo for example. Tried tethering to THREE on 3g no problems at all.

HTC ONE mini
Download speed 23.6 Mbps
Upload speed 11.2 Mbps

[Anonymous]

UPDATE

Just tried changing the APN settings as suggested on here and so far so good working well......watching sky sports on skygo and no problems