TLDR: Is Voda is throttling mobile devices on wifi? My ios devices during peak times and evenings throttle to 1/10th of download speed whilst upload speed remains stable. Laptop speeds on ethernet AND wifi are unaffected in the same positions. This appears to be in contradiction to Vodafone's 'unlimited' and no-throttling policy, and has so far not been acknowledged by anyone in support who have blamed external influences and user error (which, you never know).
I had some problems over Christmas with very low internet speed, spent three days dancing around with tier 1 support-script operators, switching everything on and off, splitting ssid's etc, swapped out my functioning and legitimate Netgear router for the 'Vodafone Wifi Hub'. Was escalated to tier two who have requested speedtest.net results for ethernet only connected laptop speeds.
Well I've managed to get a stable speed (mostly) with my laptop, both on wifi and ethernet in all corners of my flat, 50mbps down and 20 up approximately, give or take a megabit or two depending on wireless or wired, this is great!
However there is a big 'but'. I am now witnessing, and have evidence of ramped slowdown during peak hours that drops the speed of my ios devices, from full 48down 18 up, to approx 4-5mbps down whilst maintaining a solid 18.5. Support themselves have said that the connection to my devices is good. (by peak hours, I mean weekend afternoon and evening till approximately midnight, and during the week between 6-11pm.
This result is agnostic of distance from router, and repeats in a fairly mechanical fashion, between 6pm ish onwards from 50 down to 5, and ramping back up, over maybe half an hour, till 11pm, where its back to a full 50mbps. I've tried this with a VPN on and off and the VPN makes very little difference to the results outside of a couple megabits variance.
What frustrates me is that support have told me repeatedly that this is wifi interference, that it is outside of Vodafone's hands, but this appears to be device based throttling. The devices are 2 iPhone 6s' and an iPad Pro 10.5. Whilst this is happening my laptop will still get a 50/20 connection, no dips across my apartment. I've signed up to a second 24month period and am conveniently outside my cooling off period. I'm not happy that Vodafone appear to be throttling my devices. I use my laptop for work and use my ipad/phone in the evenings and this makes them sluggish and unusable.
There is certainly no mention of such a throttling policy here:
https://www.vodafone.co.uk/cs/groups/public/documents/webcontent/pdf_broadband_and_talk.pdf
I'm keen to hear from anyone at Vodafone who can clarify the above or provide a sensible alternative theory as to why this might be happening. I'm not willing at this point to proceed through the existing support channels as even a simple questions online take about 45 minutes and longer interactions can take closer to 90minutes/2 hours. I've spent way too much time during my Christmas break on this.
I'm also keen to hear from anyone else who is experiencing these slowdowns. I can't test on android devices, as I don't have any on-hand, but if anyone else has witnessed this please let me know.
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Vodafone Wifi Hub
Macbook Pro 15" 2018 - Big Sur 11.1
iPhone 6s - ios 14.3
iPad Pro 10.5 2017 - ios 14.3
location - East Sussex- Hastings
Vodafone servers contacted during most speedtest.net results - Vodafone Bracknall
