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Data Throttled Abroad

jsmyth16
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

Hi all, first post here. Took out a vodafone contract around 2 months ago to be able to get proper, unrestricted 4G in France this summer. Was previously with Three and 3G roaming & throttling was awful, so I switched. 

 

I've arrived in France via Eurotunnel, and a group of 5 of us have driven right down to the south of France. 2 of us are on vodafone, 2 on giffgaff, and 1 on BT mobile. The problem is, the 2 vodafone phones are getting awful speeds, on both 3G and 4G, while all other phones work perfectly.

 

Friends on giffgaff can easily load pages, maps and Spotify easily, all on 3G. Friend on BT Mobile gets 4G and is getting 40+ Mbps. But myself & the other vodafone phone, have not once seen a speed above 0.2 Mbps.

 

I have tried SFR, Bouygues and Orange, all are the same. The other phones have tried all networks too, and they all work fine.

 

Vodafones website literally says "We never throttle abroad, so you'll enjoy full speed roaming". This is clearly not the case? I have a Global Roaming plan, and 20GB of data. Could anybody help me?

 

As an example, I've just taken my vodafone phone and friends BT phone and put them beside each other. Both are connected to exactly the same Cell ID, and using 2600MHz 4G on Orange F. Speed test on BT gives 45Mbps consistently, and loads everything flawlessly. Speedtest on vodafone, gives 0.15 Mbps, and things like Maps, Facebook etc take a few minutes to load. What is going on? :smileysad: I'm going to have to buy a local SIM at this rate, I'm so disappointed in vodafone. 

109 REPLIES 109

Hi Brian, 

 

FYI - EU rules and regulations on roaming charges and open Internet.

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/new-rules-roaming-charges-and-open-internet

Regards,

John

All. 

When running a speedtest can you check your Vodafone public address. My public IP address is Vodafone 85.255.237.126 - if you are running speedtest from a phone, you will find your external IP address under settings (at least on IOS)

 

 

Jenny,

Can our profiles be amended to be a different server? Also can our traffic not be routed back to the UK to allow a local breakout to the Internet? 

Thanks

John 

 

 

PedroC1999
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

Here are examples of the Vodafone UK roaming performance I got in Germany, France, Austria and Belgium: https://twitter.com/VodafoneUK/status/897571543659794434

 

Here are examples of Vodafone roaming on SFR, Orange and Bouygues around the same period (late July): https://twitter.com/mastexploration/status/890259464418447360

 

Local breakout comes with a lot of disadvantages and limited advantages compared to the current network routing approach.

 

PedroC,

The people on this forum are achieving about 1% or 2% of your astonishing figures, which to be honest I do not even expect to see as an average DL figure in the UK. These are not either the figures I am expecting now; I would be more than happy with a reliable 8Mbps for example.

 

According to a report published by Victoria Woollaston in May 2017 the UK would place Stoke-on-trent at the top of the leader board with an average DL of 26.6Mbps; I found her results to be consistent with my personal experience of 4G on average. I cannot say the same of your results however. In perspective, with roaming latency added, you are achieving about 470% of the UK best average; 470% based on your 124Mbps achieved in France. I then ask myself what is the point of your input. I cannot see how your data is in anyway helpfull to the issue at hand but I would welcome a rational explanation.

 

 

With respect to your point about my routing, see below - you are welcome to provide a constructive analysis on the routing table and latencies.   

 

traceroute to 85.255.237.126 (85.255.237.126), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  fw-55-1.netsample.com (185.133.55.1)  0.133 ms  0.095 ms  0.079 ms
 2  185.133.52.252 (185.133.52.252)  0.702 ms  0.682 ms  0.647 ms
 3  78.153.240.108 (78.153.240.108)  2.179 ms  2.172 ms  2.160 ms
 4  ge501-0-0-34.er02.mar01.jaguar-network.net (193.151.86.40)  1.062 ms  1.676 ms  1.142 ms
 5  185.84.18.25 (185.84.18.25)  0.781 ms  0.772 ms  0.795 ms
 6  ae-1.r24.amstnl02.nl.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.90)  20.930 ms  20.900 ms  20.870 ms
 7  ae-1.r02.amstnl02.nl.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.113)  21.214 ms  21.184 ms  21.150 ms
 8  ae11-xcr1.att.cw.net (195.2.2.57)  21.658 ms  21.653 ms  21.725 ms
 9  ae14-xcr1.hex.cw.net (195.2.28.165)  23.007 ms  23.184 ms  23.050 ms
10  ae7-xcr1.man.cw.net (195.2.27.170)  33.315 ms  33.217 ms  33.211 ms
11  * * *

 

Thanks,

John 

PedroC1999
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

John,

I am merely pointing out that the experiences of this post's contributors are not representing the entire gamut.

Furthermore, the speeds I attained abroad in the screenshots are substantially not the least bit impressive; many regularly achieve significantly higher in the UK and vastly higher abroad would have been possible had I tested in locations with better signal conditions.

 

A basic overview of LTE roaming is:

Roaming   Roaming  Home

E-UTRAN-->MME -->HSS

                       |

E-UTRAN-->S-GW-->P-GW-->Internet

 

Even with local breakout, components of the home network continue to be used.

A tracert to a more standard domain would have been useful. I do not have any concerns about it at this time, however.

Jenny
Moderator (Retired)
Moderator (Retired)

@amh13 and @JOHN-1970 – We’ve received your replies and will be in touch as soon as we can to investigate further.

Thank you Jenny. 

 

Regards,

John

Hi Jenny

You had set an initial expectation of 48h to produce an initial assessment which is now behind. I am not loosing hope :Smiling: that our issues can be resolved but could you shed some light on what's going on and help us understand how long the investigation is likely to take and where it is going; a rought order of magnitude will suffice.

Regards,

John  

Hi Jenny 

I have emailed at your eforum.web address my data throughput at 3:35am which is 14.4Mbps DL. My public IP add with this performance is 85.255.237.174 (not sure if it is relevant but just in case). I have been running more speedtest and can confirm the DL speed to be systematically >12Mbps on average. It would be great to have this level of speed as an average during daytime as well. 

I have also been running a few tracert and see no significant difference between day/night time leading me to exclude congestion as a possible explanation. It feels more like traffic shaping but I await your return on your investigation of the last few days.

Regards,

John 

Hi Jenny 

For completeness I have also ran speedtest on Bouygues 4G and can confirm an average DL of >12Mbps at 04:16am. 

Regards,

John