Are sim cards limiting our speeds?

O

Otherman

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Hi there to all

I would like to what is the point of having hardware with a band of DC-HSPA+ being able to theoretically reach speeds of 42mbps, when instead south african sim cards cannot theoretically go above 21.6Mbps. Lets exclude LTE as it didnt exist when DC-HSPA+ came about.

If should anyone know of a website showing benchmarks of 42mbps devices exceeding speeds of 21.6mbps or a similar thread please point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance
 
Otherman said:
I would like to what is the point of having hardware with a band of DC-HSPA+ being able to theoretically reach speeds of 42mbps, when instead south african sim cards cannot theoretically go above 21.6Mbps. Lets exclude LTE as it didnt exist when DC-HSPA+ came about.
Click to expand...
Where did you hear this?
 
A SIM card is not a throughput device. Subscriber Identity Modules are for identifying you on the network.
A more reasonable argument would be using a usb2 device with speeds about 21mb considering the ports dont transmit faster than that in the real world.
 
I've only ever seen my HSPA+ device connect at 21.6mbps.
 
Being assured that the usb modem or mobile is 42mbps capable, how do i get past this implementation, which network do i choose
 
Otherman said:
Being assured that the usb modem or mobile is 42mbps capable, how do i get past this implementation, which network do i choose
Click to expand...

None of the above, obviously.
Anyway, the only way you'll get full speed is if you live inside the tower, and even then the backhaul probably can't handle it.
 
So i guess inorder to come close to 42mbps in real life the best bet would be LTE regardless of the theoretical 100mbps. But wouldnt it be very useless geting the latest galaxy s4 which has LTE advanced which is said to double the speed of the known lte. SA only fully implemented lte like yesterday after years of upgrading network systems and what not. Lte-A will get to see SA in a couple of years so if u import an lte-A device now no network will support that speed
 
grim said:
I have a 28.8 3G dongle, it connects at 28.8. Highest throughput I've seen was around 14Mbps though.
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In Soth Africa 28.8Mbps dongle will connect maximum 14.4Mbps. Reason is that 28.8Mbps is a 14.4Mbps connection with MIMO and no SA network use MIMO with Rel. 7 HSPA+. For this reason many 28.8Mbps dongles (which are also capable 21Mbps) are advertised as 21Mbps.

Here we talk about carrier (signalling) speed. Real user data transfer is 15% lower at the best. Fact that you see 14Mbps indicate that your modem is negotiating 21Mbps speed, not 28.8Mbps.
 
Despite the fact that current Vodacom broadband
users’ SIMs only have 22Mbps profiles (and are
hence restricted to peak speeds not exceeding
22Mbps), Delport said that it is very easy to
upgrade their full subscriber base to 42Mbps,
which will be done when needed. Users with 42Mbps HSPA+ modems may still benefit from the
higher speeds the technology has to offer – just
not higher than 22 Mbps.

Above is a quote here is a full report:

mybroadband.co.za/news/broadband/18305-42mbps-hspa-in-south-africa-surprising-news.html

It was written by Rudolph Muller in 2011 one of my broadband editors i think. Ofcourse its now 2013 a lot has changed, but for I who is using an old sim card which might still have a base of 22Mbps profile, how do i upgrade it to 42Mbps? Do I call my ISP and he does OTA or do I go to a network shop? Maybe they will give me a new sim card which is fully capable or do something with my old one
 
Otherman said:
for I who is using an old sim card which might still have a base of 22Mbps profile, how do i upgrade it to 42Mbps? Do I call my ISP and he does OTA or do I go to a network shop? Maybe they will give me a new sim card which is fully capable or do something with my old one
Click to expand...
Just phone them and ask.
From your side you can check if your modem is negotiating dual carrier 42Mbps during transfering data. Download latest MDMA beta http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/517805 and check whether your modem support ^SYSINFOEX and ^SYSCFGEX commands, post results in the above thread. If it does, MDMA will report in the RAT field current connection speed according to the output of these commands, by example DCHSPA (Dual Carrier HSPA) instead of HSPA+.
 
Last edited:
sajunky said:
Just phone them and ask.
From your side you can check if your modem is negotiating dual carrier 42Mbps during transfering data. Download latest MDMA beta http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/517805 and check whether your modem support ^SYSINFOEX and ^SYSCFGEX commands, post results in the above thread. If it does, MDMA will report in the RAT field current connection speed according to the output of these commands, by example DCHSPA (Dual Carrier HSPA) instead of HSPA+.
Click to expand...

Thanks when i get home next week will be sure to try this out.
 
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