Wireless Internet - Letter from Bell - Decreased speeds coming?

[SG]

Has anyone received a letter from Bell today saying that "due to new limitations affecting wireless service providers, your Wireless Home Internet service may experience decreased speeds as of June 6, 2022". The speed is barely functional at times already and I have been a customer for less than a year. I wouldn't have switched if I knew this was coming.

Anyway, does anyone know what this is about? It appears to be a violation of the contract I have with them.

Thanks!

[AlexS]

What speeds were u promised and actually given b4 this notice?

[SG]

Download up to 25 MBPS, upload 5

Getting that or slightly better. Checked right now  27.7 and 5.6

[AlexS]

Maybe just a glitch. I thought it was overselling bc even in Montreal there r condos with security guards (not like Toronto, most condos have empty lobbies) having 10/0.98-Mbps-max plans exist after the rollout of 3Gbps plans, so it might be possible for remote subscribers get lower than that.

[Frustrated2]

I have wireless internet in the Guelph area. I should be getting download speed of 25 Mbps. Lately I am getting around 2 Mbps. Called tech support and was told that they are aware of this issue since June 6, that's 6 weeks ago! The tech said that it's a province wide issue! Frustrated that I wasn't notified and even more frustrated that they cannot tell me when they would fix the issue. 

I managed to get a credit for the past six weeks. Is anyone else in this situation?

[Schnubzer]

I received this same letter.  Wireless Internet with HH2000. South end of Guelph.  No real impact on speeds until early July.  I called in when speeds became unacceptably low.  Service is very spotty now, sometimes as advertised, sometimes not even close, sometimes like today the service has cut out about 20 times.  Since about 4 months before the pandemic (Sept 2019) through the July 2022 the service was absolutely bullet proof; probably only four or five outages in almost 3 years and 25/5 speeds continuously. Brutal as of July.  Slow I can deal with, constant disconnects I cannot.  The service is becoming unusable for busines use.       

[DQ_Wireless-Home]

Bell Wireless Home Internet on the East side of Campbellville, with some trees preventing clear sight lines, since March 2022, and the service has been very good until just after Thanksgiving.  Started with some slower speeds (1-3 Mb/s or unable to speed test) and disconnections (internet LED either rapidly flashing blue or red), which could sometimes be corrected through antenna and HH200 reboots, sometimes not. To me, it seemed to be worse in wet and/or windy weather and often more prevalent in the early afternoon to early evening. Anyways after the phone-based technical troubleshooting and losing all of my SSID settings etc. through HH200 resets, a technician came out repositioned my antenna from the side of my house to my old TV tower and although it has been better, it is still on/off (slow or not able to do a speed test) mostly in the afternoon, but speed can generally can be re-established through reboot (I still need to figure out if I need to reboot just the HH200, the antenna or both).  

The case has been escalated to the Network Group and I did receive a call last week from them which resulted in another technician visit this past weekend. He reregisterd my system components and  we will see how the performance is over the next week or so, but he did confirm that there can be seasonal effects such as changing/blowing/wet leaves on the trees that can impede the cell signal. I would say that this makes sense with what we have seen since our initial slow downs. He suggested that after the leaves have fallen we should have fewer issues, and it will wait to be seen if reboots are still required.   Yesterday afternoon (a very nice day with light winds), sometimes speeds would drop but come back in several minutes, but had unusable speeds (HH2000 showing still connected) between 4:00 and 4:45 pm, when I rebooted both. Good since then.

I will update as more info comes in......

[DQ_Wireless-Home · Accepted solution]

A quick update, on the same "unstable" wireless home internet in the Campbellville area for the last month. A technician came yesterday (3rd), and after listening very patiently to my Bell internet saga and observations, regarding speeds and connectivity degradation on both my WHI and my cell phone (I used to get cell data phone speeds outside of 40-60 Mbps and now 1-6 Mbps......  😞      ), he looked at me and said "What we have here is a tower issue."

In the end, the technician disabled 5G on my HWI antenna so that it relies only on 4G, on the premise that the 4G signals have a greater range than 5G and should be more consistent at our distance from the tower. So far it has been very solid and no reboots required since he left. I will update this in about a week to confirm or refute the effectiveness of this change.

[AlexS]

Man, hope there’ll be fiber around that area soon. Cannot believe such a saga happens right next to some major highway, and there’s a casino with 2k+ Google reviews just 3 or 4 km away.

[DQ_Wireless-Home · Accepted solution]

After a week of uninterrupted Bell Wireless Home Internet service, I think that it is safe to say that switching our wireless antenna to 4G was the solution to our intermittent disconnection and painfully slow speeds. Since the change. last week, I haven't had an internet speed test (on the router) less than 24 Mbps. I still have a "low signal" on the 4G, but it seems to be enough to get the stability and speeds for our service. The only downfall is that I've started to put on some weight, without all of the exercise of running up and down the basement stairs rebooting the router/antenna 10-15 times per day...... 🙂

Doing a bit of research, it appears that the short range of 5G waves and their inability to penetrate obstacles makes it suitable if you are outside and in line of sight of the tower, but otherwise signal degradation can be significant. This doesn't explain the change in 4G/LTE speeds on my cell phone, outside and inside, at home, but that will be another "conversation".