UK Broadband

I have been a 3 user for the last 2 years and a half. Originally I used the N95 that came with the 3 contract, but lately I've been using two android phones, a G1 first and a Nexus one later.

Everything worked as expected until approximately one month ago, when I started noticing that in some specific areas in London I couldn't get almost any data. I downloaded a network monitor and verified that the connection works, it's just incredibly slow (4-500bit/s max). So, for example, if I try to get to http://bbc.co.uk my browser (slowly) receives the data for various HTTP redirects which point me to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile but then the page loading fails because the connection is too slow and it times out.

The strange things are:
- this happens when I'm in the Victoria area and in other zones in London (Chiswick, parts of Islington, etc.), but not for example in Oxford Circus or Covent Garden. If I'm on a taxi from Oxford Circus to Victoria the connection initially works and then starts crawling approximately halfway through the road.
- it happens all the time, that is there's no way to get decent data speeds in the Victoria area (web pages don't load, map tiles do not get shown, etc.)
- it's not related to 3G bars (it's happening regardless of me having 0 or 4 bars, and in the areas where it doesn't happen I get data even with weak 3G connection)
- when it's happening, if I switch to 2G the connection works at a reasonable pace (for a GPRS connection)
- the problem happens on *both* my Nexus one and my G1, but NOT if I put the SIM into the N95 that I originally had bought from three
- if I try to access directly the 3 support site using the same url I have on the N95, it works even on the Nexus one or the G1, so there clearly is some throttling happening after that.

Now, given that
- three keeps calling me asking me to upgrade and sign up for a new 18 months contract (which I don't want to do)
- the customer care refuses to give *any kind of support* for problems on the Nexus one (or any phone not issued by 3)
I'm starting to think that 3 boycotts the Nexus one (or at least all non-3 phones).

Is anyone else experiencing this?

And also: is there any way to have support? How can they have SIM-only contracts and PAYG cards, if they refuse to give support to non 3 phones?

I have no idea why that would happen unless 3 are doing something fishy at their end... There could be other explanations but I cant think of any myself. I have been using 3 ever since they launched. I remember paying 35 a month for 750 any network mins per month.. I have also been using their 3g connection on my laptop and never had an issue.

But I have always has a phone supplied by 3 so I cannot verify your claim but I will try my chip in a different phone when I am in or around Victoria some time and see how it goes..

By the way, did you manage to get any logical explanation from 3 or any other source?

Yes, the problem has since been solved. It was a problem on 3's side indeed. Someone in another forum suggested it might have been an MTU Path Discovery problem, that is that 3 network had an MTU lower than the one my phone was using, and a problem in their networking configuration was blocking the messages asking the phone to lower the transfer unit.

Basically, the Nexus 1 (and probably lots of other Android phones) has an MTU of 1500 by default, while the 3 network probably has (or had) 1492 as a maximum. When the phone starts communicating it uses its default MTU, and the network is supposed to send back messages to the TCP/IP stack asking to lower the max transfer unit when it's above its max.

3 was probably not doing this, so my phone would send messages in 1500 bytes fragments, and then waited for answers that would never come, until timeout. This also explained why short communications (such as request/redirect interactions or very short requests) would go through.

When I proved this was the problem (using a rooted G1, which allowed me to change the MTU via ifconfig) I contacted 3, spoke to a customer care guy that strangely listened to me and didn't only try to sell me the usual blurb ("we don't support non-3 phones", etc.), I gave him "a message for the networking department" hinting to the problem, and 2/3 days later the problem was solved.

So before Three set their MTU value to >1500 there must have been thousands of subscribers wondering why their all singing and dancing android OS based mobile phones wont let them access any sites..

Three has their customer service call center based in India and most of them are only trained to advise customers to switch the phone off and turn it back on and if the problem persists keep repeating the previous step again.. Accounting issues are the worse ones to deal with because customer care guys don't have the authority to amend the bills and they have to pass on such complaints to their counterparts here in UK and it just goes round and round in circles.. Thankfully I haven't had any issues since last 4 years and its just an occasional phone upgrade call only

My family lives in UK and in Brighton, but, I am staying Aus. I just wan tthem to stay connected with me for that, I am finding a better plan through my dad will stay connected with me through mobile.

Can anyone tell me, what can be better option for them.