Loading ...Cell C halves data prices
Cell C has more than halved the prices of some of its most popular data packages in a promotion introduced today
10GB for R199 mobile data promotion extended
8ta has extended their 10GB, 3GB and 120GB data promotion by more than six months
It’s official – broadband caps cause problems
A new academic study shows that capping monthly broadband usage trigger uneasy user experiences
WirelessG explains in-flight Wi-Fi meltdown
The maiden Mango in-flight Wi-Fi voyage in South Africa was a disaster when the system buckled under the load. WirelessG explains.
MTN 2GB for R189 promotion extended
MTN has extended its 2GB internet bundle deal for an additional three months
Cell C 21 Mbps HSPA+ tested
| Rudolph Muller | September 5, 2010 | No comments |
Rudolph Muller
Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...
| Full Profile |
What does 21.1 Mbps really mean? We find out when we test Cell C’s new 900 Mhz HSPA+ network.
Cell C officially switched on its so-called “4Gs” HSPA+ network in Port Elizabeth last week.
Laptops equipped with Cell C’s new black Huawei E1820 21.1 Mbps dongles were available for attendees of the launch event to put the operator’s new network to the test.
According to Ron Reddick, Chief Information Officer at Cell C, the coverage at the event venue was all provided by a single sector of a base station.
One stand had 3 laptops connected to a single dongle to demonstrate simultaneous usage of social networking, video streaming, and “cloud-based” applications such as Google Docs. Another stand was dedicated to running Ookla’s speed tests.
The real test, however, was when we were given E1820 modems to test in our own computers.
Installation was relatively painless on my Ubuntu machine. Once the connection was configured there were two tricks to get it to work: Delete the username filled in by default and specify DNSes.
Testing confirmed what was seen on display at the event: YouTube videos buffered faster than they were played back in 360p resolution and speed tests to the Speedtest.net server in Johannesburg yielded great results.
Speed tests to international servers told a different story, however.
| Destination (Host) | Downlink (Mbps) | Uplink (Mbps) | Latency/Ping (ms) |
| Johannesburg (Cell C) | 13.10 | 1.30 | 86 |
| London (Namesco) | 4.81 | 0.33 | 364 |
| New York (Optimum Online) | 4.01 | 0.17 | 457 |
| Cape Town (Vodacom) | 3.31 | 0.67 | 139 |
| San Francisco (Unwired) | 2.96 | 0.21 | 517 |
| Washington (Speedtest.net) | 2.67 | 0.22 | 468 |
The fact that a download from Cell C’s servers in Johannesburg attained speeds over 10 Mbps shows what the network is capable of.
The decrease in throughput to international servers raises some questions, but Cell C wasn’t immediately available for comment over the weekend after the tests were conducted. MyBroadband will provide updates as and when we receive comment from Cell C.
Upon returning to Gauteng it turned out that the modem still connected to a 3G network.
| Destination (Host) | Downlink (Mbps) | Uplink (Mbps) | Latency/Ping (ms) |
| Johannesburg (Cell C) | 2.47 – 4.65 | 0.35 – 0.40 | 60 – 78 |
| London (Namesco) | 2.36 – 3.52 | 0.28 – 0.33 | 334 – 354 |
| New York (Optimum Online) | 1.97 – 3.12 | 0.08 – 0.15 | 411 – 445 |
| Cape Town (Vodacom) | 1.82 – 3.90 | 0.30 – 0.53 | 95 – 121 |
| San Francisco (Unwired) | 1.80 – 3.66 | 0.08 – 0.17 | 477 – 500 |
| Washington (Speedtest.net) | 2.02 – 3.05 | 0.12 – 0.22 | 400 – 429 |
While speeds in excess of 10 Mbps weren’t achieved from the suburbs of Pretoria, the results outside Cell C’s official launch area remained quite good.
Cell C’s 21 Mbps broadband service speeds << comments and views
