Three using LTE Band 20 (800MHz) and throttling downloads

I am a Three prepay customer and my phone is the OnePlus One.  At a first glance, the two seem like great combination where the OnePlus is great for multimedia video and the Three network provides “All you can eat” data on the 4G network using band 3 (1800MHz) that the OnePlus supports.

In reality, my phone does not work in most rural 4G coverage areas and Three’s “All you can eat” data can slow down to a trickle very quickly, regardless of the time of day.

LTE Band 20 (800MHz)

When Three obtained 4G spectrum through the multi-band spectrum auction November 2012, it did not get any spectrum in the 800MHz band that was formerly used by analogue TV.  So when I bought the OnePlus One, I knew the lack of band 20 was not going to be an issue with the Three network.

Then Three took over O2, which completed July 2014.  So what’s this got to do with 4G?  Well, O2 (Telefonica Ireland Ltd) did purchase spectrum in the 800MHz band and it appears that Three have already put that spectrum to use in rural areas such as Co. Donegal.

I first got suspicious when I saw three showing 4G coverage in various parts of Donegal, but my phone would not pick up 4G no matter where I tried it.  Even with my phone set to ‘LTE Only’ through the hidden radio bands menu, it showed ‘No coverage’ all the way from Killybegs to Letterkenny, even in areas showing fairly strong coverage on the map such as Barnesmore Gap.

After talking about this with a friend, he e-mailed me a day later saying he got coverage in Bruckless and sent me a screenshot showing 4G with 3 bars and an impressive speed test result on his iPhone 6.  This time I took my old HTC One SV phone (supports band 20) to bruckless and tested my SIM card between the two phones.  The HTC showed a 2 bar 4G signal, while the OnePlus claimed there is no coverage in ‘LTE Only’ mode.  4G is working on the OnePlus as I used it recently in Dublin and it actually picked up better 4G coverage there than what I previously got with the HTC.

Another fairly clear sign that it’s LTE band 20 (800MHz) is that the signal goes through walls much better than Three’s 3G (2100MHz) band.  When I took the HTC to work, I pick up 2 to 3 bars 4G outside and 1 to 2 bars walking throughout the building.  With 3G, the outdoor reception is 4 to 5 bars and the signal varies from no signal to 4 bars walking about just a single room.

Both the HTC One SV and OnePlus One don’t support LTE band 8 (900MHz), so I am fairly sure they are not using band 8 (900MHz) for 4G and I don’t think any other network is using that band either due to most of the 900MHz spectrum being in use by the legacy GSM 2G network.

Update 8th June 2015: I came across this forum thread where an official Three representative has stated that Three is using the 800MHz and 1800MHz bands for LTE (4G).

Three throttling traffic (downloads)

When I conduct speed tests, I use TestMy.net.  The android Ookla Speedtest app is totally unreliable and I posted a video showing just how badly it measures my two home ISP connections, such as measuring my DSL uplink at 1.18Mbps when it’s physically synced at just 384kbps:

TestMy is fairly accurate and its linear speed test results match up very close to what I actually get on FTP file transfers to Blacknight, where I host this blog.  It can also run a multi-threaded test to find the total capacity of the line that cannot be maxed out with a single connection, but based on testing a friend’s Sky VDSL connection it has no problem measuring 70Mbps of throughput with a linear connection and possibly a lot more with a faster connection.

As TestMy is not a well-known speed test tool, most ISPs that throttle traffic don’t whitelist TestMy’s servers like they do with Ookla’s Speedtest servers, so it’s an effective tool at checking if an ISP is throttling traffic when Speedtest.net still shows a “fast” connection.

On the first day I started trying out Three’s 4G on my old HTC phone, I found it odd that after the first three speed tests, I was getting poor test results.  When I swapped the SIM card with my OnePlus, the next test gave a better result despite running on 3G and when I put the SIM card back in the HTC, it also gave a much better result until I ran a few more tests.  However, as it was Sunday evening, I figured that the variations were caused by a combination of network congestion and having just a 1 bar signal while visiting my brother in Letterkenny.

The next day I was at work, I took the HTC phone along again and this is where I discovered I get reasonably good 2 to3 bars of 4G coverage, 26dB to 28dB S/N going by the LTE discovery app.  So I started running speed tests.  After the download test completed, I noticed it took an unusually long time to download the 6MB block for the following upload test.  So I did another download test and sure enough it dropped from 16.6Mbps to something like 4Mbps.

Each test-run got progressively slower until it was getting around 500kbps in the multi-threaded test.  So I switched to linear mode just to see what the speed would be like if I was downloading an individual file from that server and the following just shows just how severely Three throttled my connection to the UK TestMy server since the first test:

16.6Mbps test result
First speed test
161kbps result
Test result after multiple tests

Just before that awful 191kbps test result, I ran TestMy’s Mercury test, where it conducts a speed test using a user-defined image link.  So I placed a 5MB JPEG image on my host and gave it the link to test with and it’s pretty clear that it’s not a network congestion issue:

7.5Mbps test result
Mercury test using 5MB image on my host

Finally, just to show it’s not a coverage issue, I ran the following test using Google’s CDN.  Three are obviously not going to throttle Google’s servers without risking disrupting other Google services such as YouTube, Google+, etc. and the following shows a stark difference to how Three treats traffic from different sources:

34.1Mbps down / 6.4Mbps up test result
Test using Google’s CDN

It’s worth noting that my phone was in the exact same spot when it gave the 191kbps result with TestMy’s UK server and the 34.1Mbps result with the Google CDN server.  These tests were also conducted Wednesday morning, when I’m sure there is little network congestion.  The upload result above was produced by the TestMy UK server as Three didn’t appear to throttle the few uploads I managed to carry out.  As TestMy needs to first download the block to run its upload test, it was taking several minutes to run each upload test, even though the upload stage of the test took just a few seconds.

So what’s my plan?

Initially I was disappointed finding out that Three is using spectrum not covered  by my OnePlus One.  But when I found out just how badly they are throttling data transfers, I began wondering – What’s the point of 4G if you can only get 2G-like speed after using roughly 50MB of data?

50MB might seem like a large file, but this is equivalent to just a few minutes of standard definition video and would make it impossible to stream on less well-known video streaming websites that Three haven’t whitelisted against being throttled.

What I plan doing is running a few more speed tests after the free 4G ends in June to see whether they relax their throttling once 4G access requires purchasing an add-on.  After that, I’m seriously thinking of switching network.  It will be pointless paying extra for 4G if you can only get the benefit of 4G on selected websites!

Update: 5th June 2015

It appears that Three has either relaxed or lifted its throttling.  I probably went through about 1GB of data running speed tests over the course of the day.  Multi-threaded speed tests started around 28Mbps in the morning, peaked at 34Mbps and went down to around 22Mb towards 5pm whether I used TestMy’s UK server or the Google CDN.  In linear tests, the lowest test result I got was 4.23Mbps around 4:20pm, compared to 0.2Mbps last week.  The majority of the linear tests gave between 6Mbps and 9Mbps:

4G UK linear speed test, 9:16am, 5th June 2015, 9Mbps down

On my way to work, I stopped in Bruckless to perform a speed test and recorded the highest 4G speed test I’ve seen on my own handset.  The upload speed was unusually low, probably due to the 2 bar signal:

Speed test in Bruckless, 8:22am 5th June 2015, 45.3Mbps down, 3.5Mbps up

Then again, as Three plan charging €5/month for 4G in July, it makes sense to make its 4G service stand out.  Even with my phone in 3G mode, I still got pretty impressive results:

3G speed test in Bruckless, 8:17am 5th june 2015 - 10.1Mbps down, 1.5Mbps up

Finally, my home ISP North West Electronics (I’m in a mobile blackspot), which I’m paying for the 50Mb service:

North West Electronics speed test 11:18pm, 5th June 2015, 7.9Mbps down, 827kbps up

Update: 11th June 2015

Three have extended their 4G promotion to the 30th June 2016.  Bill pay and prepay O2 customers will be able use the 4G band in July 2015, so it’s quite likely they have extended the promotion so these O2 customers get a year to try out 4G before deciding whether it’s worth paying for.  Had Three not extended the promotion, these O2 customers would have completely missed out on the 4G promotion since 4G has no been available to these customers.

On the other hand, three still mentions that the €20 “All You Can Eat” top-up offer ends at the end of June 2015.  So even if 4G remains free for another while, there could still be a charge to avail of the “All You Can Eat” data.  Technically, it is free like the 4G at the moment as topping up by €20 to avail of the “All You Can Eat” data and texts still adds €20 to the credit balance to use on calls, etc. Other networks such as Meteor gobble up the €20 top-up to avail of their 7.5GB and unlimited texts offer, requiring a further top-up just to add credit.

If they extend this €20 AYCE offer or make it reasonably priced, I’ll likely stick with Three for another year assuming no other issues arise.  Since the above update, I haven’t noticed any further throttling.  I have observed a few slowdowns, which are likely network glitches.  For example, the upload speed in Donegal town on 3G is typically below 0.1Mbps any time of day.  I reported the issue to Three a few months ago, but the issue still remains each time I run an upload test in the town:

TestMy test result: 5.8Mbps and 64kbps up
Slow uplink on Three (3G) in Donegal Town

Update: 12th June 2015

With the SIM back in my old HTC One SV, I manually ran speed tests on TestMy roughly each hourly interval.  For the download test, I ran a linear test letting it pick the block size, followed by a multi-threaded test with a 50MB or 100MB block.  These tests were run in the Chrome app on the handset.  The vertical axis is Mbps.

Three 4G speed in Ballybofey 12th June 2015

It is interesting seeing the dip around 1:30pm, probably many users watching video clips during their lunch break.  I ran a few more tests around that time and sure enough it was not a one off as I got roughly the same speed each time, with the linear speed no higher than 4Mbps.

Update: 16th June 2015

The 3G uplink in Donegal town seems to be fixed based on a few tests I ran on Saturday and today (Tuesday):

Test results: 7.7Mbps down, 3.1Mbps up
3G test Donegal town – 13th June 2015, 3:15pm

The above result is also the fastest uplink I’ve seen on 3G with TestMy.

Test result: 6.4Mbps down, 996kbps up
3G test Donegal town – 16th June 2015, 1:26pm

Update: 19th June 2015

Three have extended their €20 top-up offer another year, which is very nice. 🙂  So it appears their recent price increases don’t affect existing 3 prepay customers.

One problem I now have is that my HTC One SV phone is very near the end of its life.  It has been having problems powering up over the past two months where it took a second or third boot attempt as it was getting stuck on the white HTC One logo screen.  Today I’m sure it took around 10 attempts and I was just about to give up when it finally booted.  I already carried out several full data wipes and master resets, reflashing the firmware, bootloader, etc. but all with no improvement.

With the rally on in Letterkenny today, I decided to run speed tests on roughly a 30 minute interval throughout my work day.  Unsurprisingly, the network speed was well down from the above graph, but still quicker than 3G on a good day:

Three 4G speed graph Ballybofey 19th June 2015Just before leaving around 5pm, I performed one more test with the SIM back in the OnePlus to test 3G performance:

19th June 2015, 4:43pm - 3.3Mbps Down, 733Kbps Up

Update 23rd October 2015

Three seems to be throttling http traffic again and this time even multi-threaded transfers offer little improvement.  With TestMy implementing a https speed test, it’s pretty easy now to tell whether Three or any other network is discriminating between http and https traffic.

The following tests were taken this morning with a full LTE signal on the OnePlus 2 near Ballybofey, all with a 25MB test block size for consistency:

Speed test with a http connection:

2.2Mbps down / 1.4Mbps up

Multithreaded test with a http connection:

2Mbps down

Speed test with a https (SSL) connection:

18.6Mbps down / 7.2Mbps up

Even with repeated tests, the https based tests consistently deliver significantly faster results.

Update 15th June 2017

As this old article continues to get a lot of views, I thought I’ll make a quick update.  I have actually switched mobile operator twice since posting this article and am using a OnePlus Two, a superior phone with band 20 (800MHz) support.

My first move was to Meteor, which is of no surprise given my awful experience with Three’s network performance.  While Meteor’s 3G speed was like night vs day over Three’s 4G, their coverage was somewhat lacking.  I could no longer listen to Internet radio on my way to work due to some areas being limited to Meteor 2G coverage.

Towards the end of 2016, I ran into another issue with Meteor – My speed kept getting intermittently capped to about 300Kbps until I toggled airplane mode.  Unfortunately Meteor just kept blaming my handset.  When I asked about the areas lacking 3G/4G coverage, they claimed that they offered great coverage there (based on their exaggerated coverage map), again asking me to try another handset.  I gave up and made the switch to Vodafone and the 3G coverage was vastly superior.

As for Three, just before I left the Three network I got another Three SIM to continue testing and also a Meteor broadband SIM.  Basically I wanted to see how well these would work to supplement my DSL connection, particularly with a router and outdoor antenna.  To see how Three 4G compares with Meteor 3G and Vodafone 3G in my rural area, head to this article.  This includes a video showing real-world test-runs loading various websites, downloading and YouTube streaming.

23 thoughts on “Three using LTE Band 20 (800MHz) and throttling downloads”

  1. Very interesting read and test. Thank you for sharing. I didn’t know about Testmy.net nor the whitelisting of the popular speed testing webites.

    I’ve come to search about throttling after the signal suddenly stopped while watching some YouTube videos. As I almost never get any 4G signal (Bournemouth area), and never a clean one, I was thinking of going back to EE…

    1. Hi, I am having allsorts of issues with my LG G Flex 2, H959.
      It’s the international model, sourced from HK.
      The issue is that I don’t seem to be getting much in the way of a consistent data connection from Three.
      Unfortunately I did when I was using a Nexus 6. so it’s the phone.
      What bands should I make sure are enabled on the LG phone, in case they are disabled somehow, I understand this is a common issue with imported phones.
      Thanks

      1. Based on what I could find with the specs of that LG phone, it supports band 3, but not band 20, similar to the OnePlus One. This means it will only work on the 4G network in areas where Three is using band 3, such as large towns. It should work fine in 3G mode as the 3G bands seem to be the same on all geographic versions the phone.

        At the moment, Three is back to throttling http traffic again, so if it’s just very slow web browsing, then the culprit is more likely with Three’s network than the phone.

        1. My Oneplus X is running on a Three MVNO (Tello), which has no access to the 800mhz band for some reason. This means I get only DC-HSDPA with my Oneplus X, no 4g. Apparently my phone doesn’t support the band, even though my phone is specified as supporting both band 3 and 20. And Tello lists full coverage both indoor and outdoor in my area. Any reasonable suggestions. I contacted Tello but they couldnt come up with anything other than a compatibility issue.

          1. Just to rule out coverage, I suggest I checking with someone else on the Tello network to see if they get 4G in your area or better still, try your SIM in another unlocked 4G capable phone that supports band 3. The coverage maps (at least here in Ireland) tend to be exaggerated and have been in areas marked as having indoor coverage where I could not pick up the network in a network search.

            If you do get good 4G coverage with another phone, I suggest posting about this on the OnePlus forum (link) as it seems like either a fault with the phone or you received a OnePlus X for another region such as the US or China that lacks LTE band 3 or both LTE bands.

            One other possibility is that 4G is not enabled on your account, one reason I suggest checking the SIM in another phone. I know someone who had this problem with Vodafone here, where Vodafone insisted 4G was enabled, yet the SIM would only connect in 3G mode no matter what phone he tried it in. Luckily he had a work phone on Vodafone 4G which his new SIM would only connect to 3G with also, so was able to confirm it was not a coverage or handset issue.

    1. If you have an Android phone, you can force it on to the LTE network by dialling *#*#4636#*#*, then scroll down to the network type drop-down field and choose “LTE Only”. The main catch is that most networks don’t support voice calls on LTE (the phone drops to 2G or 3G until the call completes), so you’ll probably not be able to make or receive calls with the phone restricted to LTE. However, this is quite a handy way to check the LTE signal about the area, along with the app “Network Signal Info” to show the signal read-out in dB.

      There’s some further info on this in the following article:
      https://editorsean.com/articles/how-to-force-three-to-use-3g-and-4g-only/

  2. Whitelisting the Ookla Speedtest?
    That is outright cheating and it violates Net Neutrality in my opinion.
    It reminds me of Volkswagen doctoring the diesel emissions tests.

  3. Hi Sean, great article. I’ve imported a Note 5 that does support 800mhz but I’ve heard that it’ll only run on 800mhz when it receives an update from Three, which it probably never will do due to the Note 5 not being officially available in the UK. It seems your experience is different though – can’t imagine your old HTC would be officially supporter by Three and receive any update? So will any phone be able to access the 800mhz, regardless of receiving any update?

    1. As far as I’m aware of, it should work on its capable bands without depending on an update. My old HTC One SV phone was indeed not a Three phone as I bought it on Amazon. My current OnePlus 2 also works fine on the 800MHz band. One other device I successfully tried is an unlocked EE In Car Wi-Fi dongle even though Three don’t permit prepay mobile SIMs in dongles (In Ireland, they currently don’t block tethering or usage in Dongles even though they say it’s not allowed.)

      One app worth trying is called ‘LTE Discovery’, which might be able to show what LTE frequency you are using, which from what I heard works on some Samsung phones.

      1. Thanks Sean that’s great news, will give the app a shot and see what happens. It’s interesting though, as I remember when Three were initially rolling out 4G and stating that you’d need an update. This turned out not to be the case though, as I used several phones not from Three and they all connected to 4G no problem.
        I’m guessing VoLTE may be a different matter though.

  4. Sean,

    Did you notice since ca 24-48h they seem to be throttling uploads heavily.
    I cannot get more than 1-2Mbps anymore, usually easily 10-20.
    I tested this on my home b315 and samsung s5.
    Please let me know what you get.
    I am prepping a ticket to them with all technical data and results including RSRP & RSRQ, SINR etc.
    Annoying as i just signed up 7 days ago with a 250GB LTE deal with them and it was amazing for the week.

    Thanks

    1. If you bought the 250GB package online, you should be able to cancel that within 14 days of signing up as explained here.

      I will certainly have a check. Three is still throttling downloads based on my most recent tests. I would also suggest giving a test on http://testmy.net:8080/upload If this gives a faster upload speed than the http://testmy.net/upload, then this means they are throttling the upload on regular HTTP, but not port 8080 which Ookla’s Speedtest uses.

      For example, Vodafone gives substantially quicker speed tests on port 8080 both down and up, which along with their tight monthly caps allows them to give impressive speed test figures even though they are doing the equivalent to VW’s emissions scandal for speed tests. Then again, Vodafone generally gives around 16Mbps to 20Mbps down (40Mbps+ on port 8080 in some 4G areas) and 12Mbps up on plain HTTP with TestMy which is a heck of a lot quicker than Three in Ballybofey.

      If I get a chance on Friday, I’ll do some upload tests on the Three LTE network in Ballybofey.

        1. I did an upload test just before heading home from work about 5:30pm, thinking it would be a great time to run tests as I was working a little later than usual. Unfortunately I did a mistake of not checking what server it connected with and for some reason it decided to default back to the Texas server. Even still, this is a dreadful result even from the Texas server:

          TestMy with Three

          So I’m not sure whether that low upload speed is due to it using the Texas server or Three’s performance.

          The following was a download/upload test early in the day where I used the UK server:

          Three TestMy over http port

          I also re-ran the test over port 8080 which is the port number Ookla’s test uses. As I expected, Three prioritises downlink traffic over this port, but even still, the download speed is nothing exceptional considering this is over 4G:

          Three TestMy over port 8080

  5. Hi Sean, I have both Three Uk and Three Ireland contracts. What I noticed after the merger with O2 Ireland, Three’s default carrier is 3Ireland! When I do a manual carrier search 3 and 3Ireland show up seperately, but when you speed test each one the result is that 3 is way faster than 3Ireland.

  6. Hi Sean,
    Just wondering if you have any more information on three throttling their downloads. We are on contract with Vodafone 4g 250 gb for 55 euro. The download speed is always decent and I can run IPTV with other family users without any problem. The problem is that we up use our vodafone data allowance before the end of the month due to IPTV. So I have another router with external LTE antenna and using a three voice sim 20 euro top up to helps us out in the last week. I can get a signal on LTE 1800 mhz and on speedtest I get results showing over 60mpbs I can usually use this for all that I do online and I have no problem with youtube but our IPTV struggles. When I download using speedof.me the real speed varies between 3 and 5 mbps. Im not sure if its because its a voice sim or if the 3 Broadband sim would be different especially with the new three package 750gb for 30 euro. Hopefully vodafone will increase their package but happy to try any other suggestions. (Based in Rural Sligo)

    1. From my own testing, I don’t see any difference between the performance of a Three phone SIM in a router compared to a Three broadband SIM as I have that 750GB Broadband plan and a Three prepay SIM. The only advantages with the contract would be getting the router for “free”, technical support (although not great based on my experience) and not having to top-up every 28 days to keep the connection active.

      I get that same traffic shaping with my Three broadband SIM and the provided Huawei B525 router. They prioritise certain services such as Google/YouTube’s CDNs, Cloudflare, etc. over other traffic. For example, try downloading VLC (vlc-3.0.3-win64.exe) from the following two links and spot the difference in the downloading speed.

      https://www.fosshub.com/VLC-Media-Player.html
      https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/videolan/vlc/last/win64/

      At my end, the Fosshub gave me about 2.8MB/s and the Heanet hovered about 400KB/s (0.4MB/s) at this time of checking (8:05pm). The Fosshub is on a Cloudflare CDN which Three prioritises. Heanet in Dublin has 10Gbps connectivity and I certainly doubt the bottleneck is at their end!

      Ookla’s Speedtest makes many simultaneous connections to its test server, so unfortunately it does not represent what you get streaming which only makes a single connection. Speedof.me makes a single connection to its test server (similar to TestMy and Measurement Labs), so its test indeed represents what you would get if you were streaming or downloading from their server.

  7. Hi Sean,

    Thanks for the detailed and very informative info. I tried both the links and had the same result as you, and now I know why I have no problem with youtube when using the three sim.
    At least I wont need to spend anymore time trying to figure out if something was wrong at me end and Ill keep my finger crossed that Vodafone will increase their data allowance sometime soon as this will resolve my issues.
    Appreciate to you taking the time to answer my questions Sean.

    All the best.

    Tom

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