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Appalling 4g speeds - am I stuck?

ruswit
On our wavelength

I've been with virgin for years, and the 4g has been consistently fine. I recently bundled my mobile contract into my broadband and TV - seemed a great deal, except it's now 18 months locked in. 

Turns out since then, my 4g speeds have absolutely tanked, even outside. I get around 1 megabit/s download (often less). In the past it would be in the teens or higher.

Using the virgin coverage checker I should be getting good coverage indoors and outdoors.  I usually have strong signal according to the bars on my phone, but the speeds are just unusable. 

By switching my phone into 3g only I actually get faster speeds which is utterly ludicrous (4megabit/s)

Am I suffering because of the migration to vodafone instead of EE, and if so, am I essentially stuck for the remainder of this 18 months?

 

16 REPLIES 16

jb66
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

It may be that EE had better service than Vodafone in your area, you will have a 14day cooling off period 

ruswit
On our wavelength

That may be so, but given that I am in London and that even Virgin's own tools reckon there should be good coverage in the area, I would expect to get significantly more than 1megabit/s download. 

I also have tested this in other parts of London and it is still stupidly slow.

As I mentioned before, that speed is even slower than the 3g speeds I get - this isn't exactly a good solution given that I am paying for 4g/5g on my sim, not 3g.

enlli
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Over the last few months I'm starting to suspect that there is something wrong with the way Virgin interface with Vodafone. Too many people complaining of ridiculously slow speeds. The only way to prove it is to see what speeds a Vodafone customer gets at the same location. I'm 18 months with Vodafone direct, travelling a lot of England and I've never seen such low speeds.

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enlli
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

This is Vodafone in a poor signal area. This is pretty standard on 4G for me

Screenshot_20210913-173040_Speedtest.jpg

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ruswit
On our wavelength

I can only dream of getting such speeds. I'd even be chuffed with half of that currently.

For some perspective, here's my Vodafone speed test sitting at home in rural notts.

20210914_095827.jpg

Natalie_L
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi Ruswit, 

 

Thank you for reaching out to us here on the community. 

 

I am very sorry to hear you are experiencing issues with your data speeds since making changes to the account. 

 

I appreciate you have stated this issue happens everywhere but I have ran a check on your postcode area to help with our investigation. On checking, you do have quite a few cell towers in your area and they do all appear to be in full working order. This is also the case for the surrounding areas, other than a couple of them having planned maintenance work. 

 

That you know of, does anyone in your property or the area have our services? If so, do they experience the same issue?

Have you tried the SIM in a different handset?

 

We would be happy to arrange a replacement SIM to rule out a potential equipment issue if required.

 

Let us know and we will be happy to assist further 🙂 

 

Thanks 

 

 

Nat

ruswit
On our wavelength

I'll let you know once I've tested my sim in a friends phone and their vodafone sim in my phone. Ta.

ruswit
On our wavelength
Natalie_L, I have tried the sim in another 4g handset and I still am only getting speeds of around 1-1.5 megabit/s download.

Coincidentally, I have already tried a new virgin sim with a different number. I was sent a new sim for my Oomph bundle when it was set up, but it had a different number associated with it (I was promised I could keep my old number), so a phone assistant advised I just carried on with the original sim card.

The newer sim card also suffered from the same slow speeds and obviously had the wrong number.