I always suspected my speeds were slow...

[Jason71]

How does O2 have "relatively poor" coverage? Compared to orange and 3 and tmobile I regard it as excellent.

sure but you do not constitute a statistically valid sample size
As Verizon once put it there's a map for that!
http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/spectrum/mobile-wireless-broadband/cellular/coverage_maps.pdf
coverage is traditionally measured by % population covered last time I checked the order in decending 3g coverage was:

3
Orange
Voda & Tmob
O2

3 was in the high ninety's Orange not far behind. Voda and Tmob high eightys and O2 low 80s

but at the end of the day so long as the coverage is good where you are then that's all that matters.

 

[madhatter1689]

Wifi
download 4.3 mbps
upload 0.55mbps
ping 24

3g
download 0.02 mbps
upload 1.18 mbps
ping 654

Virgin Media,
Belfast.

These means nothing to me. Are they good/bad? How can I improve then?

 

[Jason71]

Wifi
download 4.3 mbps
upload 0.55mbps
ping 24

3g
download 0.02 mbps
upload 1.18 mbps
ping 654

Virgin Media,
Belfast.

These means nothing to me. Are they good/bad? How can I improve then?

Wifi OK

3g - unusable 0.02 is terrible. but the upload speed it very good. Check it a few times in different places. upload should not be more than download

 

[turbohobbit]

Don't forget location will probably play a massive part in speeds achieved, not many people have disclosed this unfortunately. As, i suspect, people near London will probably get better speeds (as the infrastructure will probably receive more frequent upgrades), than people in more remote locations.

Don't count on that. I'm on Orange (but also using the Orange - T-Mob signal love-in) and there are parts of the very centre of the Village where there's naff-all data signal, and I'm talking about places like walking across Hungerford Bridge from Charing Cross to South Bank, so not even sheltered...

 

[snakeeyes21]

Don't forget location will probably play a massive part in speeds achieved, not many people have disclosed this unfortunately. As, i suspect, people near London will probably get better speeds (as the infrastructure will probably receive more frequent upgrades), than people in more remote locations.

Go to the tip of cornwall, come back a couple of miles and thats where ive decided to park my arse It really is living in the sticks.

 

[Jason71]

Go to the tip of cornwall, come back a couple of miles and thats where ive decided to park my arse It really is living in the sticks.

Everyone reading this in America now thinks you live in a boat 2 miles off shore

 

[madhatter1689]

Hi Jason, just got a new router and the readings for wifi are now

download 6.58mbps
upload 0.56 mbps
ping 34

3g
download 0.02 mbps
upload 0.05 mbps
ping 631 ms

Something not good with the 3g or it could just be we have a poor signal in our area.

 

[NineToTheSky]

Hi Jason, just got a new router and the readings for wifi are now

download 6.58mbps
upload 0.56 mbps
ping 34

3g
download 0.02 mbps
upload 0.05 mbps
ping 631 ms

Something not good with the 3g or it could just be we have a poor signal in our area.

As you will have seen from my OP, those are the sort of speeds I get. I'm glad it's not just me.

 

[Cougar]

Actually, I meant mB (milliBytes)

You're measuring your broadband speed in 0.007ths of a bit per second? One miliByte per second would be a bit every two minutes. I'd suggest switching off 3G and using RFC 1149.

Just measured mine, showing HSDPA. 0.18Mbit/s down, 0.3 up. So about 23KB/s. Speedy. That's shockingly slow for HSDPA - there's different variants, but even the slowest should be maxing at ten times that on O2. I guess I'm in a fairly sub-optimal location currently.

On WiFi it fares better; 8Mbit/s (1MB/s).

 

[Cougar]

I've just rerun the tests after the phone switching randomly between GPRS, HSDPA and 3G for a few minutes. Moving the phone as little as a few feet around the room seems to impact the signal quite drastically. It's now settled on HSDPA solidly, showing a decent signal strength, and I'm getting 3.25Mbit/s. That's about what I'd expect.

I think the conclusion I'm drawing here is that data speed is massively dependent on either signal strength or network load (or both, perhaps).

 

[Cougar]

(of course, it's not just measuring speed from you to the nearest tower - latency on any of the hops between you and the thinkbroadband server or load on the server itself is also going to negatively affect your measurements).