Question 4g router speeds vary wildly for no particular reason

[Aethosity1]

Hi all,

I have recently bought Vodafones 5g Gigacube to replace the Three 3g that I am using at the moment. 5g isn't available in my area yet (hopefully it will be soon, if people stop burning the towers down), so I am using Vodafones 4g. The speeds have been varying wildly every few minutes. It can be anything from 18mbps down 12mbps up, to 0.05mbps down and 12mbps up. What I find strange is that the upload is fairly consistent.

At the moment, the Three 3g is a consistent 20mbps down and 5mbps up, so I don't really know what to do. I have ordered an external aerial to see if that will help, but in the meantime can someone suggest what this lack of stability might be stemming from?

 

[bill001g]

You could just put the unit outside for a while if the weather is good to see if external antenna are really going to help.

It is likely a load related thing. Most cell towers do not have a direct internet connection to them. They use radio to connect to other towers that then use more radio links to connect to a more central tower.

Many times there just is not enough bandwidth. What is unfortunate is that rural areas where people need to use this type of service the most because of lack of good internet the ISP has the same problem getting internet for their cell towers.

It is not uncommon for mobile broadband to vary huge amounts from minute to minute. The technology being mobile where you have users say in cars moving from tower to tower can greatly affect the traffic. The system is designed to favor mobile users to prevent them from completely losing signals.

Hard to say why the 3g signal is more stable. It could purely be that the tower that it is located on has less congestion issues than the 4g signal.

5g should help this if they ever get it done. It actually is more useful for fixed non mobile installations.......the cell phone handset makers of course pretend otherwise. The main problem though is the signals do not go very far and they have massive issues going though walls so outdoor antenna will likely be required. That is part of the cell handset issue of 5g, they will work very poorly indoors and even inside many cars the signal is so easily blocked.

 

[Aethosity1]

My phone is also with Vodafone so I decided to venture outside to see if the speeds improved. They were more stable, but they were actually slower than the Gigacube! Ive checked to see if there is any work going on in my area and there isnt. I am hoping its due to congestion, with everyone working from home, but I now have 12 days to cancel the contract and its a big risk to take.

as a side note, I wonder if anyone can tell me anything from the following stats;

RSRQ = -10.0dBm
RSRP = -98dBm
RSSI = -69dBm
SINR = 0dB