Joined this morning - disappointing 4G speed :(

[#1]

After migrating the family from VM to GG last year (mainly becos of dreadful VM customer service)  I was looking forward to 4G  speeds (not possible with VM unless I went onto another contract - long story!) Transfer of number went thru smoothly this morning but when I did speed check how disappointed am I !!

4G @ 1.79/1.37 Mbps

3G @ 2.76/0.54 Mbps

I didn’t expect ‘mega speeds’ in the real world (maybe 10-12 Mbps) but this is pretty wet - even olde worlde 3G is faster ?!

Rubbish VM did better than this on 3G ... and yes, I did a 4G coverage check before pressing ‘the big red button’ to move. 

Will 4G speeds on the O2 network improve over time/usage or is this it?

Kew/Richmond area (semi urban west london)

iPhone 5 SE

Looking on the bright side at this rate I’ll be able to go to the cheapest goody bag as no chance of using a 8GB data allowance. 

Reassurance anyone?

[#2]

By comparison speed check on Virgin this morning, prior to switching:

3G @ 8.16/1.16 Mbps
3G @ 9.11/1.29
3G @ 6.00/2.39

[#3]

Unfortunately thats quite normal - it has improved over this last year or so, but its not ideal.

Quite common to find 3g faster than 4g too

[#4]

what's VM ?

[#5]

@fenns1 giffgaff is definitely not about speed. It's quite normal to see the GPRS-like speeds on 4G whilst someone standing next to you will be getting full speeds on their O2 sim.Giffgaff, unfortunately, stay silent about it.

What's more, I strongly suspect giffgaff doing some heavy traffic shaping behind the scenes as well (whether this is in breach of Net Neutrality rules or not), as, say, you might notice certain services being absolutely unusable (the aforementioned GPRS speeds) as certain others (such as Facebook) look and feel quite fast and annoyance-free.

[#6]

@tradertall

I would hazard a guess at Virgin Media ?

[#7]

Oh dear - this doesn’t sound at all positive 😬 Really shld have done more homework methinks? Just did a speed check comparison using Ookla and O2’s own - fascinating - O2’s shows much better results. Why on earth might that be I wonder 🙄 

Well, I doubt anyone senior from GG will read and absorb a complaint from one tiny customer so I’ll just bin the dozen or so SIMs I was going to pass out with some hi-level advocacy as an act of new customer defiance.

Appreciate the community feedback and good to see it isn’t of the  “fan boy” only type👍

BTW, VM = Virgin Media (truly dreadful) and sorry for slow response to prior posts but my 4G internet has been disappointingly slooooow !

[#8]

Hi @fenns1 you should be getting faster speeds than those so firstly check that your phone has the correct internet/MMS settings for giffgaff (and not the O2 ones) http://giff.ly/gg_settings

If it does then you can ask an agent to investigate by submitting this form https://support2.giffgaff.com/app/ask/Calls-texts-and-data/Data-is-slow/form/

Agents reply within 4 hours in the majority of cases but can take up to 24 hours, in the worst case, to reply (but they do work 7 days a week from 8am to 11pm). You will see when an agent has replied in the "Messages: From Agents" box which is half way down the right hand side of your "My Giffgaff" page or go here https://giffgaff.com/support/questions

Good Luck!

[#9]

virgin moblie

[#10]

well both O2 and giffgaff are both owned buy telifonica. telifonica also rent out o2 bandwidth to many other virtual networks who..supprise suprise are faster than giffgaff.