London (UK) HSPA+ testing - giffgaff vs. 3

[smileman]

i have the nexus 4 and live in London and have been testing 3's network vs. my current network, giffgaff.

i'd been reading reports that 3's data was 2-3x faster than giffgaff, and this would seem to make some sense given that 3 is very data oriented and giffgaff supposedly get's O2's leftover data speed scraps.

well, the results with 3 have been very disappointing. both around Covent Garden and in SE London i'm getting much, much slower data speeds on 3 than giffgaff. and worse signal strength to boot.

i've been using my Italian 3 SIM card to do the 3 network test so i'm hoping that maybe somehow this explains 3's poor showing?

i went into a 3 shop to get the Italian SIM cut and they said there shouldn't be a speed performance difference between an Italian and UK SIM cards but i wouldn't say the rep i spoke to seemed 100% reliable.

 

[TheSammyE]

Hi Smileman. Thanks for this comparison. I hope to purchase a Nexus 4 (when possible) and use it on giffgaff so I would be very interested to hear what Up/Down speeds your getting? I'm in Sheffield so I know the speeds won't be the same but it would be interesting to know how your fairing. Cheers and again thanks for thinking to do this thread.

 

[cinek]

speeds with 3 are all over the place, e.g. at work I get around 6-8mb/s on my iphone (haven't tested it with the nexus) and at home I get 0.5 - 1mb/s so I wouldn't just conclude your tests as you only tested it in 2 locations

 

[Richard Devine]

London data speeds suck generally though. In a rural area I've been seen 21mbps down on 3 which drops to 4 on London

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[cinek]

just got 17mb/s down on 3 at work on the nexus!

 

[smileman]

Hi Smileman. Thanks for this comparison. I hope to purchase a Nexus 4 (when possible) and use it on giffgaff so I would be very interested to hear what Up/Down speeds your getting? I'm in Sheffield so I know the speeds won't be the same but it would be interesting to know how your fairing. Cheers and again thanks for thinking to do this thread.

on giffgaff i'm getting a pretty consistent 2.5-3 Mbps down and 1Mbps up both in SE London and near Covent Garden. in terms of what this means for real world performance i was streaming Spotify on Extreme Quality setting for over an hour tonight and i didn't have a single buffer, which was pretty awesome and a big change from my SGS2 (also on giffgaff) which buffered all the time.

definitely staying with giffgaff for now although i'd happily switch if i could get the 2-3x faster data speeds that some people are reporting on 3.

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just got 17mb/s down on 3 at work on the nexus!

where are you? everyone who posts in this thread needs to give their location.

 

[smileman]

speeds with 3 are all over the place, e.g. at work I get around 6-8mb/s on my iphone (haven't tested it with the nexus) and at home I get 0.5 - 1mb/s so I wouldn't just conclude your tests as you only tested it in 2 locations

location?

 

[cinek]

- - - Updated - - -



where are you? everyone who posts in this thread needs to give their location.

NW London

 

[Steve_S_T]

So out of interest what constitutes decent speed on HSPA? The phone and data signal in my office can be a bit intermittent but I just installed Speedtest and got 12543 kbps down 2362 kbps up. And what does the 68ms ping mean please?

Thanks.

Steve.

 

[smileman]

So out of interest what constitutes decent speed on HSPA? The phone and data signal in my office can be a bit intermittent but I just installed Speedtest and got 12543 kbps down 2362 kbps up. And what does the 68ms ping mean please?

Thanks.

Steve.

Where are you located?

Those speeds, particularly the download speed, are very good from the reports I've seen!

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[Steve_S_T]

I live and work near to Wolverhampton in the West Mids. I did a further speed test on wifi and the HSPA is over twice as fast as that, so pretty decent (plus BT Broadband is a bit rubbish I find).

Steve.