Low bandwidth despite good signal

Hi Darthmaul,

Consider yourself lucky!

I have been using my my Homespot router since July and apart from the first month I have been on nothing better than 2Mbps!!

o2 are also insisting that all is fine in my local area and that 2Mbps is an acceptable level of service and therefore I am stuck with them until July 2022.

Please have a look at my Youtube video:

Have a look at my thread “Homespot stuck at 2Mbps”.

I have already ordered DSL from another company as this speed is useless for anything other than reading text only webpages.

Cheers.

Hi,

I watched your thread, it’s crazy… After watching so many complaints, I regret that I signed a contract with O2.

My speed is better than yours, but I will not consider myself lucky. I paid for a service that should deliver up to 225 Mbps, and I’m getting less than a quarter of it. This is unacceptable, especially considering the exaggerated tariffs. 

They don’t even bother responding to my thread...

Hi Darth Maul,

I've only been in Germany since June but I can tell you that Germany has a notorious reputation for its atrocious customer service and not looking after you after they lock you into these long two year contracts.

If you are truly unhappy with your service, there are routes for formal complaints. The German consumer advocate and the telecoms regulator. This is the route I have taken

The culture over here is to have to constantly have to fight for your rights or the big companies will simply walk over you ..

Good luck

Hello,

According to my many daily measurements, it looks to me that you basically considering the Average as maximum. Legally you’re okay, but this is cheating towards your customers. Even your own monitoring site shows that you have a problem in my area, but instead of fixing the issue, you hang onto that part of the contract and declare the issue as non-existant. Not very professional. 

It seems that it’s already too late to cancel the contract anyway...

Better signal, but even lower bandwidth 

Hi Again Darth,

Remember me? Stuck on 2Mbps?

The speeds you get are usually not the result of distance/signal quality in relation to the phone mast.

Where I live, all the phone companies share a single location for their phone mast, and consequently the signal strength I received when cycling through the different carriers during my speed test shootout was identical.

The important technical term is "contention".

That 3g/4g mast you connect to has to carry your data to the internet using a physical cable, which you then share with everyone connected to the same mast.

For simple math, say the mast has a fiber connection running at 1gbps, and there are 20 users connected, the mast will throttle each user's connection at 50Mbps each to share the bandwidth out fairly.

There is significant underinvestment in the actual fiber infrastructure in Germany. So even if they upgrade the mast technology to 5g if the fiber infrastructure does not keep up you will see yourself throttled like this.

Launch a formal complaint if you are unhappy. See what sort of speed you can get with an alternative carrier in your same area. From my experience the different carriers can deliver wildly different speeds. If you can access pay as you go Sims to run a speed test you can check reliably for yourself.

I had the luxury and convenience of simply changing preferred carrier on my UK SIM on roaming.

Telekom came out way ahead of the competition in my area at 80Mbps.

If one of them is significantly faster, consider a switch to a different carrier.

If none of them are significantly faster, hmmmm.

DSL or cable?

Bear in mind that the contention issue affects wired broadband as well. 

Hi @DarthMaul, 

thanks for your reply and your screenshot. 

You are right that a withdrawal of your contract is now too late. 

I just checked your LTE-connection in our livecheck . For your o2 Home Spot-router you have a good connection. The error is only for 3G-connections. Therefore, your homespot-tariff should run smoothly. 

I guess that you expected a better connection at your place. I regret that we cannot fulfill your expectations. @o2_Andrea already gave you the reasons why an extraordinary termination of your contract will not be possible. 

Loving greetings,

Tobias

Hello,

Is this some kind of a joke? My expectations are what’s written in the contract. You promised a maximum of 225 Mbps and yet I have to reach 50 Mbps on a good day! There is nothing wrong on my side, like you already admitted, so I am axpecting you to do your job and fulfill the contract. Is there a ticketing system? Is there an SLA?

How about me paying for the actual speed which is ¼ of what’s in the contract? I have a feeling that would be unacceptable for you, right? Well, bad news, ¼ of the bandwidth is unacceptable for me as well. :(

I was wrong about the speed, now I can barely reach 30 Mbps, with identical signal

Hi @DarthMaul, 

thanks for your reply. 

I think your expectations are unrealistic. 

@o2_Andrea already translated to you the average connections that should be most of the times possible: 

“Included is an internet access with up to 225 MBit/s (download up to 225 Mbit/s, average 40 MBit/s; upload up to 50 MBit/s, average 19.6 MBit/s) in the German o2 mobile network.”

“Up to 225 Mbit/s” does not mean that you definitely get this download-rate. Even the average-rate of 40 MBit/s may vary frome time to time. 

But of course, we can check the network-connection for you, if you send us a letter to the following address: 

Telefónica Germany GmbH & Co. OHG

Kundenbetreuung

90345 Nürnberg

Loving greetings,

Tobias

Excuse me, but your understanding of techical terms is totally backwards. 

A connection that is Up To X Mbps and average of Y Mbps means that the speed can fluctuate UP TO 225 Mbps. My banwidth fluctuates with a max of 45 Mbps!

 What you are doing here is limiting the maximum bandwidrth at 40-50 Mbps because if there was no such limitation, I would occasionally get more than that. 

To say to a customer that to expect what’s in the contract is not realistic si simply a slap in their face. I will take this further and I will make this discussion public so people will avoid this terrible company in the future! People need to see how are you treating your customers, after tricking them and force them into a 2 years contract. You need to justify these high prices with a decent service, which is not your case, sorry!

Look at the download and upload graphs, which are basically linear. If that’s not traffic shaping set at max 45 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload I don’t know what it is.

Dear @DarthMaul ,

as we mentioned several times before, the maximum ist not what you definitvely get, ist ist the maximum what is possible in or net and maybe not at your position. With your 45 MBi/s down and 20 MBit/s upload your quite good. This may not be the answer you want to hear, but we cannot tell you anything else.

Kind regards,

Andrea

Any idea when is this going to be fixed? I had my internet down almost all day and it’s still down:

And here we are, another day has passed, the tower is still down. Zero communication from O2, no email, no SMS, no ETA provided. I, like everybody else, have to work from home and I cannot do it.

But of course, this must be another unrealistic expectatiion!

Dear @DarthMaul ,

there is a restriction at your contact address for a base station since November 11th. Unfortunately it is not specified how long this will last. Therefore I cannot give you an end time and have to ask you for patience.

Kind regards,

Andrea

Hello @o2_Andrea ,

It was obvious to me since day 1 that there’s a problem with the station. It looks that I don’t have any other choice than wait and hope it will be fixed. By the way, the period without service because of O2’s fault should not be charged, I hope this will reflect in my next bill.

Regards

Max 225 only mean, if there are circumstances that you where able to get 300 Mbit (with 5G), a speedlimiter would be activated. 
 

i am customer since 20 years and never ever heard that someone got the 225!

Well, this is what they advertised and I trusted them. Here is a proof, from the day they sent me the details. Do you think that getting tricked like that is normal? We should not accept this behaviour. This is what gets you here such expensive and slow internet. You should know already that there are countries not far away from here in Europe, where you get 500 Mbps for 10 euros a month, you get the speed that was advertised and also decent customer support.

On Vodafone Czech Republic I was able to get over 100 Mbps quite easily without any special contract or modem, just from my Galaxy S10 phone, so I was expecting at least similar experience. 

Possibly you tricked yourself bei not speaking German or be to naiv. 
 

it is labelled as

up to

that is worldwide the phrase for 

you will not get it, but never more than that

yes, Germany is at the bottom in Europe with internet, but we got Mrs. Merkel instead of Orbans and friends, so I am glad to live here. ,

I am glad to live here too, just don’t like being lied to, like above.

And please, I would like not to bring politics in here. Just know that I am with you on Orbans and friends.,

Politics off.

There is no lying, only to naiv in thinking what you get. 

This is not worldwide, here is what “up to 300 Mbps” looks like in another place (CZ).

Okay, than my sayings are only for Germany.

in Germany you test via prepaidkarte the big 3, and decide than, where to sign.

someplaces, Telekom is king, other places vodafone and o2.