Three 5G vs Eir 5G

[Corklad]

Anyone have any experience with Eir 5G ? I was with Three 5G for a few months and speed were generally impressive getting over 500mb regularly.

I moved to Eir 5G this week as it’s half the price bundled with my home broadband and speeds are absolutely horrendous - I get about 150mb if close to a few masts but in most areas I’m getting less than 5mb on 5G when I was getting >400mb on Three 5G.


I know Three have 100mhz vs Eir with 85mhz in the 3.6ghz range but that shouldn’t account for such a change.

Is it possible the iPhone 12 is showing 5G but not actually using it ? The field test menu on the iPhone 12 doesn’t give much information anymore.

[Seán]

I wonder if your nearby Eir masts are using band 3 refarmed for 5G. On 5G, it would be called band n3. Eir has just 15MHz of bandwidth on band 3 which tops out around 126Mbps (2x2 MIMO), plus whatever bandwidth it aggregates from its 4G bands (1, 20 and 28 depending on the site). This would explain getting that speed near the mast, unless it's relying on congested microwave backhaul.

I originally thought it was just Three using band n3 for 5G, but saw a few posts by Luke Kehoe such as this mentioning that Eir is using 5G band n78 on 3/4 of its 5G sites, which means the rest are using 5G band n3.

You can try going through the field test menus to see if it reports the 5G band, i.e. n3 or n78 and its signal reading.

[Corklad]

Yeah the field test just shows band 3, when I disabled 5G and set mobile mobile data to 4G only I get the exact same throughput. Makes me wonder if the 5G icon only indicates 5G NSA is available on the mast but not in use.

https://ibb.co/hRhs5d7

[Seán]

That's a good possibility also after my experience with Three when I bought their Samsung A51 5G. During the first month it would show an outlined 5G logo when I was in a 5G area, whereas it should solid when it has a 5G data connection. I had little luck trying to get Three to enable 5G on my phone despite it being a model they sell, especially since the 5G icon was giving a false impression that the phone is using 5G. About a month later (mid December) I saw the 5G icon turn solid for the first time in one spot outside Donegal.

I just want to check if that screenshot is with your Eir SIM. The readings from the "SCC_STATE_ACTIVATED" line down are from aggregated carriers. What surprises me with this screenshot is that it's showing an EARFCN of 1275, which is a Three network EARFCN (they have both 1700 and 1275 on band 3). Eir's band 3 EARFCN is 1875.

[Corklad]

Yeah that dashboard seems to have stopped updating in November, these are more updated figures.

https://ibb.co/SRWPTfj

https://ibb.co/XYDJ0HT

I’m using an esim for access to the Vodafone network and I’m getting better speeds on a 5mhz block of 2100mhz 3G on Vodafone than Eir 5G.

[Seán]

I see what you mean by the limited readouts. Going by the screenshots, it appears that the field test menu hasn't been fully updated to handle 5G as it appears to be reading the info as a 3G cell. For example, even though it shows Eir's 1875 EARFCN, it's showing this as a UARFCN, which is a UMTS (3G) channel number. The channel # is called EARFCN on 4G and NR-ARFCN on 5G. It's also missing the RSRP and RSRQ figures, probably due to trying to read non existent 3G-specific RSCP and ECIO figures.

Assuming that is connected on Eir's 4G EARFCN, this means that the 5G should be coming on the n78 band. On the positive side, it means that once you manage to get 5G access on Eir, you should get similar speed to what you were getting on Three's 5G, assuming the mast has fibre backhaul. The challenge would be getting through to the right person on Eir to enable or fix 5G access on your account profile.

[Corklad]

Thankfully I got onto someone in support who agreed things weren’t right, they contacted the mobile tech team and came back with an update that it’ll take another 48 hours before it’s enabled.

It’s very deceiving having the 5G icon but not actually CA’d with n78 or n3.

On the other side of things VoLTE and WiFi-calling are working very well.

[Corklad]

Thankfully I got onto someone in support who agreed things weren’t right, they contacted the mobile tech team and came back with an update that it’ll take another 48 hours before it’s enabled.

It’s very deceiving having the 5G icon but not actually CA’d with n78 or n3.

On the other side of things VoLTE and WiFi-calling are working very well.

Didn’t have much luck with Eir 5G. It was enabled on my account and I was able to pick it up in very few locations around Cork City. I got >300mb in a few locations close to fibre feed sites. 4G was considerably less than impressive getting roughly 15mb and down to less than 1mb in some locations.


I moved back to Three today and already seeing 5G in much more locations and getting >100mb on 4G alone.

I’ve noticed Three are using 15mhz of band1 in a good few locations. So it looks like they have B3 and B1 broadcasting 5G.

Unfortunately the lack of spectrum and less sites Eir have when compared to Three and Vodafone has a very clear impact on performance.

[Seán]

That's a bummer with Eir, especially as they have the cheapest 5G enabled plan of the three major operators. It also shows just how much upgrade works Three has put into their network and backhaul capacity to leapfrog Eir in most areas, especially with Three not having any fair use limits during the pandemic.

Once the lockdown finishes, I cam curious to check out what bands Three are operating on around here as I've only come across 4G band 1 in use in a few areas back in December. With the distant mast I pick up at home, it operates on band 1 and 3 (20MHz band) and 20. I really wish they used band 28 here like both Vodafone and Eir do.

Based on tests carried out by Emilia in various areas, Three appears to pair 4G band 1 as the primary band with 5G band n78 and 4G band 20 with 5G band n3.

According to ComReg, the temporary spectrum rights cannot be used for 5G or any other new technology. I saw that Eir suggested that ComReg should limit Three's liberalised temporary spectrum rights to just one of its band 1 blocks. ComReg went against this proposal, so it's possible that Three could operate two band 1 carriers on 4G in some areas.