4G vs 5G speeds

[Mr_Mike]

I recently moved to Virgin from Vodafone and am suffering from notably slower 4G speeds.  Where once it would be a 20-40Mbps on Vodafone, it's now 2 Mbps at best.  Upload speed is double that, so there must be some kind of throttling in play - it's a long way from the stated 'average' of 37Mbps in Virgin's page on traffic management.  From the forums this seems very common, although it is disappointing to see full signal strength and such poor speed.  This is in the City area, central London, and there is a whole bank of masts about 100m away on top of a nearby building, with direct line of sight to my 6th floor office desk.

I have an iPhone 11 which doesn't do 5G, but if I was to buy an iPhone 12 or newer, would I likely see a sharp increase in performance?  It would only be for 'out and about' stuff as at home I have fibre broadband, but if I'm tethering to my laptop then it needs to be adequately fast for work stuff.

[Carley_S]

Hi @Mr_Mike

Welcome back to the community forums. 

Sorry to hear of your speed concerns on the 4G. Does this occur only at your workplace? Do you have any 4G speed issues at home or other areas? 
You can check the coverage and for any issues in the area here if needed. 

5G does have a minimum download speed of 20mbps whilst 4G has 1mbps, so it is faster, you'll need to look at the differences to see if 5G does work for you and your device better than 4G as there are pro's and con's to both. 

[enlli]

Your data speeds are typical of O2 in many places where the network is oversubscribed. I run both Vodafone and O2 and Vodafone is generally faster and sometimes O2 is unusable. I sometimes find 3G faster!

Have a look at https://status.o2.co.uk/

As to 5G it is generally better where it is available, but O2 are behind the curve on deployment so check https://www.o2.co.uk/coveragechecker to see if it is available where you need it 

[Mr_Mike]

I've only had the SIM a few days so can't claim widespread testing in various locations.  But it's notably slower at home and at work.  As it's a brand new SIM (and VM account) I guess I'm likely to be on O2 rather than Vodafone?  Not sure how I can tell, both home and work are areas of saturation coverage, so it's not as though the signal level showing on the phone is any different.  The signal is strong everywhere I have tried to use it, just slow.  Not much point having a 25GB data allowance if I can't even reliably use it for Amazon Music on headphones while I'm working.

I am using the same phone, a fully unlocked iPhone 11, I just swapped the SIM over and ported the number.  The handset was markedly quicker on Vodafone in the same locations.

[enlli]

@Mr_Mike Yes you are on O2. In fact you will become an O2 customer later on this year as Virgin Mobile closes in its present form.

This from the website

"Virgin Media and O2 have joined forces so, at some point soon, you'll be moving from a Virgin Mobile plan to an equivalent O2 plan."

[Carley_S]

@Mr_Mike you can still check the coverage checker links provided to see if there are any issues that could be causing your slow speeds. 

Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns, we'll be here to support further if needed.