Vodacom’s broadband speeds: Surprising results
The ASA recently ruled that Vodacom’s services may not be advertised as Broadband. MyBroadband takes a look at the real-world speeds on Vodacom’s network
Vodacom’s true broadband speeds revealed
Vodacom’s broadband speeds: Surprising results
The ASA recently ruled that Vodacom’s services may not be advertised as Broadband. MyBroadband takes a look at the real-world speeds on Vodacom’s network
As a follow on we are trying to get hold of the raw data from a few speedtest.net servers as well which will allow us to do a comprehensive speed comparison. Not easy though
The questionable variable is really how many users cellular providers have on what tower during peak usage hours. Each tower is a shared pool of bandwidth, and with only 21 Mbps to play with the effects of users coming and going will create a noticeable variance in the throughput each user experiences at a given time on each tower.
The tower can handle more than 21MbpsOriginally Posted by Aragon
... and they make you pay for that... big time.
Exactly what I get with with Vodacom.
At one point, I used to get 2mbps ... but the many, many months I've received about .8mpbs ... regardless of the 3.6, 7.2, 21 or whatever claims they make. I actually just just shrug everytime I see a 'Vodacom upgrading all clients to xx mbps'
Research in the UK by Broadband Genie in late 2009 revealed that the average speed is only 0.87Mbits/sec a far cry from the reported advertised speeds of between 3.6 Mbps and 14 Mbps.
Another research project in the UK, this time by Epitiro, shows that the average mobile broadband speed in the UK clocked in at 0.9 Mbps (Megabits per second). The fastest 20 test agents recorded an average speed of 1.8 Mbps.
Similar results were achieved in the US. Results from research conducted by PC World in late 2009 showed that the real average speed of mobile broadband services in the US was below 1 Mbps.
Is this a sponsored article to mitigate the effects on Vodacom of no longer being able to use the term Broadband? Could we have some real empirical data and real world examples, times and places if this is meant to be at all useful?
Yeah well if you charge people R2 per MB or R300 per GB of mobile data, they're simply gonna use as little as possible. This results in less traffic to the base stations, less traffic over the backhaul network, and overall better performance for the select few that can afford to hammer their mobile broadband connections.
Also, remember that in the US and UK, they have very high caps on their mobile broadband pacakages. Some of them are even uncapped. So getting just under 1mbps [B]average[/B ]is a huge feat for these overseas networks, and in fact makes Vodacom's and MTNs slightly better results look paltry at best. I wonder what will happen to Vodacom's and MTN's networks when they are eventually forced to drop prices by competition from Cell C. I reckon they won't even be able to sustain 512kbps AVERAGE throughput. Forget 21mbps.. they will hardly achieve half a megabit.
Bring down the cost per GB, in line with international norms, then do some speed tests, and then you can gloat about your network, if there is reason to.
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Nothing of the kind. We gained access to the actual data from their speed test results, and Vodacom in fact did not want us to do an article on it.
I would love to get access to this type of data from all the providers, but as a test you may want to ask them to release it and see what the result is
Who is "their", Vodacom?
I would like to know the average speed OFF-NET, as very little internet traffic are actually ON-NET.
Well, the HSDPA standard, using 64-QAM and 15 codes per channel achieves 21 Mbps per channel. So how many channels does a typical tower support?The tower can handle more than 21Mbps
Firstly, let us assume that we are only looking at a single 120 degree sector of the tower. In the 850 MHz band, it appears that the total bandwidth is around 70 MHz. At 2100 MHz, the total bandwidth appears to be around 90 MHz. Since each HSDPA channel is 5 MHz, this gives you between 14 and 18 channels. I am not qualified in radio engineering, but I suspect that you will have to leave some room between those channels, so the total number will probably be slightly lower, maybe around 12 to 14 channels to allow gaps between the channels.
Next, we have to assume that you can only use 1/4 of the available channels per group of 4 neighbouring towers (4-colour problem). This puts the "safe" number of channels per sector at between 3 and 4. Some googling revealed that many operators only use two channels per sector, but let us use an absolute maximum of 4 channels.
This means is 4 * 21 Mbps will be shared amongst all users in that sector, giving a tower an absolute maximum capacity of 252 Mbps. While this seems like a reasonably large number, the typical capacity (2 channels per sector) is likely to be half of that at 126 Mbps. You also have to consider that you will only be serviced by one sector, so the bandwidth in a single sector is between 42 Mbps and 84 Mbps, which is not so great if you have to share with 10 other users.
You also have to consider that the actual rate achievable by users will probably be below the maximum of 21 Mbps per channel, since SNR will not necessarily be good enough to allow 64-QAM to work.
Then you also have to remember that voice calls consume some of this bandwidth. These consume between 8 kbps and 12 kbps per call, so this also adds up quickly in a densely populated area.
Over and above all this, I recall a rumour that many towers in SA were in fact limited by backhaul capacity a year to two ago. This may have been addressed since. Even if you have sufficient backhaul capacity, the above constraints imply that you are always sharing a 42 Mbps theoretical capacity with the other users in the sector, and you can only see half of that at any give time because you are limited to a single channel.
Last edited by fvdbergh; 03-09-2010 at 10:12 AM.
Registered Linux user #54110. Gentoo or nothing.
I think these speedtests are kind of biased. You would expect people who get faster speeds to be more prone to testing the speed of the connection.
Definitely the case - which is why we want to gain access to 'global' stats...comparative analysis evens things out
Yeah it's amazing how fast it can be when everybody is trying not to use it because it's so damn expensive per GB.
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