Youtube using mobile internet
 

Hi i really need help as I took out a contract with 02 with unlimited internet so i would be able to stream youtube and bbc iplayer when not at home. However the problem is when streaming either website it always needs to pause and buffer. My brother on the n97 vodafone contract can stream bbc iplayer perfectly.

I was wondering if anybody else on contract has these problems with mobile internet and any advice on what i should do as the 14 days i have to cancel ends tomorrow. Thanks

Re: Youtube using mobile internet
 

Well, initial buffering is always needed but if it's slow then maybe o2's network is slow? On my N900 I have to wait three seconds, then it pretty much works flawlessly(Youtube, that is).

EDIT: You could always try http://speedtest.net/ and see what results you get...

Re: Youtube using mobile internet
 

Thanks for the reply. I tried the website, it took about a minute to load and while doing the test the mobile internet went from 2.5 to 2.0 and gave me the results of

Download
0.07 mb/s

Upload
0.02 mb/s

Ping 583ms

Also what contract are you on?

Re: Youtube using mobile internet
 

I live in Sweden, so I don't have o2 :p
I got pretty much a standard contract I think, I get ~20$ to do whatever I want with every month and I have unlimited 3.5G. Needless to say, I mostly browse the web with it.

I get around 6mBit/s download and 1mBit/s upload, so that's roughly 1 megabyte per second download and 125 kilobyte upload. Ping is somewhere around 30ms.

Re: Youtube using mobile internet
 

You need about 512-1024mb/s speed for your 3G dataplan to be able to use YouTube without a hitch on your N900. These speeds would be shown by speedtest.net as 0.5Mb/s and 1.0Mb/s respectively.

The reason that the mentioned N97 can stream videos from YouTube a lot better, is that the video you see on that device is of significantly less quality, at least in the way of bitrate and so on. You might not be able to notice the lesser quality because of the smaller size of the screen and/or smaller playsize of the video. The N900 pretty much drags down content from the web "as is", meaning that the videos are of a higher quality and thus requires a faster speed.

I suggest you request an offer for a faster data plan from your operator.

Another thing that affects your 3G speed is the available network for your phone. If you don't see a "3G" or "3.5G" next to the bars that show reception, you're not in an area that supports fast enough use of YouTube without the buffering. :)

Sorry if you knew a lot of this, hope some of it is useful to you.

Re: Youtube using mobile internet
 

Thanks for that, learnt sumat new :D
Weird thing is my brother on Vodafone has 3g on his. o2 say I should have 3g available to me, yet the highest i've reached is 2.5. I'll have to contact o2 tomorrow because 3.5 would be a dream come true for me.

Re: Youtube using mobile internet
 

If you never see 3G or 3.5G despite your location, check if you've accidentally forced the phone into 2G mode:

Go to settings -> Phone, scroll down a bit and there's a setting called "Network Mode". If that's set to GSM you're restricting the speed from your end, in that case just set it to Dual and all should be fixed.

Re: Youtube using mobile internet
 

O cheers dude thats sorted it out, thanks alot duno how it got to that setting. thank you thank you thank you :D