At least 1 Year of slow Data speeds

[Oceanic_Spider]

My apologies but by the time I reach here, my patience has diminished.

Data speeds through lock-down was superb. However, for at the least a year, speeds have been pathetic. My memory serves me that a significant change occurred at during the merger period. So it may be longer than a year. I have spent far too long with o2 website. No help can be found there.

Coverage checker informs me that o2 are aware of a problem each time I check in. I get text messages to update me of o2's progress. I am now aware these are statutory messages have no relation to actual problems and are sent regardless of issues in the real time in the real world.

e.g. text to inform aware of problem, followed by text engineers working on it, followed by text to say all is fixed, followed by text to say aware of problem and so we start again. All in the space of a month with no change to speed.

At times speed is so bad I cannot email, get web search results. I cannot safely guarantee transactions by internet because my previous experiences have seen the loss of information during internet issues. Followed up by do much time contacting the transaction parties who provide similar unhelpful help processes as o2 does.

I have tried searching everywhere for help, tried to get results by phone, by chat. I'm fed up.

Basically, I want o2 to provide me a service that is directly related to the cost. It does seem like Boris might of be in charge and has been replaced by Liz. I joke, but have o2 become as useless as it seems. How do I go about that? Does anyone know?

I thank you for reading this and hope amongst you there is some constructive advice available.

[MI5]

@Oceanic_Spider 

After that length of time, the best advice would be to leave and find a network that works in your area.

[dreas]

I had issues due to not getting good signal in my house despite there being good coverage outside locally and a report from the o2 coverage checker that there should be good 4G coverage indoors (as 5G is not available in my area, nor with my handset).

So I found some solutions to avoid dropping calls, and that helped me achieve more reliable internet in rooms with Wi-Fi and mobile data blackspots (which are mostly opposite places, with 1 or 2 exceptions in the house)

For example, there is a particular room which is furthest away from the router that has the weakest Wi-Fi, so it makes sense to switch to mobile data.

In no particular order: 

Switch the network from 5G to 4G/LTE or even 3G/2G if you need, and see if your bandwidth or stability improves

Try switching the frequency or bands. There are various methods to do it, depending on manufacturer and OS. One of those methods is using a free app, and a bit of trial and error.

There are guides that I used which helped me to decide which frequency bands to try.

You can see your signal strength on Android by going in the settings (It's in the 'about this phone' section under SIM status) as the bars shown on devices are mostly meaningless (there is no uniform meaning to what 1 vs 2 vs 3 bars really means as far as I know. Every phone displays bars differently I think. So I go off the signal strength as communicated in the standardised unit of decibels.

I would get -100 db of signal in some parts of my house on 4G using the default recommended settings (I didn't do any speed tests, but I surely could to check on this - I've got enough data, but I'd be weary of doing speed tests on a 5G network if you've got a limited amount of data on your plan which might run out)

Just by tweaking the settings I've found that I can play intensive PvP games reliably in rooms I otherwise couldn't, and every bit of latency and reliable connectivity counts in that case, as a second of downtime is the difference between win or loss in the game. It's not a very scientific test, but more of a use case for moving to a network that has less traffic.

Honestly if your slower speeds are fluctuating depending on the way traffic is being routed through the network, then switching to a different network, band or frequency or changing up any combination of those or other things that affect the quality of your signal can work wonders not just for latency, but also bandwidth and definitely reliability.