Cell C 21 Mbps mobile broadband service tested

What? 21.1 Mbps is exactly 10 x 2.11 Mbps. Its like selling the cheapest car in the country and claiming its top speed is 1400Km/h. They should definitely be told to retract those claims.
 
stricken said:
What? 21.1 Mbps is exactly 10 x 2.11 Mbps. Its like selling the cheapest car in the country and claiming its top speed is 1400Km/h. They should definitely be told to retract those claims.
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+1.

I hope they improve their network...because once thousands of people sign up to use this service imagine the speed drops, especially to the international servers. If this is how they are NOW, what about in Jan 2011? Hopefully that 40+Mbps is rolled out by then. But these companies really need to sustain and maintain their network. They have the money to do it!
 
stricken said:
What? 21.1 Mbps is exactly 10 x 2.11 Mbps. Its like selling the cheapest car in the country and claiming its top speed is 1400Km/h. They should definitely be told to retract those claims.
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2.11 Mbps? Where does this come from? :confused:
 
The best download speed of 13Mb/s falls quite short of the 21Mb/s max, taking into account the test was on-net in a controlled environment. It should have been within 80% of the max speed.

Testing to non-Cell-C servers show how much their backhaul still lacks. AS well as international connectivity.

But what's really of interest are the very poor upload speeds. For a HSPA+ network, this should have been closer to 5Mb/s and here the network is of little impact as the 'upload' tests are donw against the normal flow.

RPM, have you guys confirmed the spec of the modem? Or asked Cell-C why the uploads are so very low? These numbers are in normal (and very old) 3G-R99 ranges, i.e. the 1.8Mb/s modems which would give 384Kb/s in the uplink. It looks like they are not running HSUPA in the uplink?

Clearly these are not even close to HSPA+ expected speeds, let alone their claim of "4G speeds". These speeds are in the 3.6/7.2 HSPA ranges available from MTN, Telkom and Vodacom, just with much poorer uplink speeds.

Not very encouraging for a controlled launch to some journalists. Where is the promised 4G network?
 
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Im glad to C that outside their launch station the speeds remained decent... Hope it stays that way and CellC keeps it together ...
 
omegaselect said:
The best download speed of 13Mb/s falls quite short of the 21Mb/s max, taking into account the test was on-net in a controlled environment. It should have been within 80% of the max speed.

Testing to non-Cell-C servers show how much their backhaul still lacks. AS well as international connectivity.

But what's really of interest are the very poor upload speeds. For a HSPA+ network, this should have been closer to 5Mb/s and here the network is of little impact as the 'upload' tests are donw against the normal flow.

RPM, have you guys confirmed the spec of the modem? Or asked Cell-C why the uploads are so very low? These numbers are in normal (and very old) 3G-R99 ranges, i.e. the 1.8Mb/s modems which would give 384Kb/s in the uplink. It looks like they are not running HSUPA in the uplink?

Clearly these are not even close to HSPA+ expected speeds, let alone their claim of "4G speeds". These speeds are in the 3.6/7.2 HSPA ranges available from MTN, Telkom and Vodacom, just with much poorer uplink speeds.

Not very encouraging for a controlled launch to some journalists. Where is the promised 4G network?
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Boet... tell Trevor :|
 
omegaselect said:
RPM, have you guys confirmed the spec of the modem? Or asked Cell-C why the uploads are so very low? These numbers are in normal (and very old) 3G-R99 ranges, i.e. the 1.8Mb/s modems which would give 384Kb/s in the uplink. It looks like they are not running HSUPA in the uplink?
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Hi Omegaselect

I was not involved in the testing, but the modem is the official Cell C modem (Huawei E1820) which is HSPA+ capable.

I think Jan asked Cell C for feedback about some of the issues in the article, but for some reason Cell C stopped answering media queries outside of their controlled media events. I hope they start again this week which may clear up some issues.
 
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omegaselect said:
Testing to non-Cell-C servers show how much their backhaul still lacks. AS well as international connectivity.
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I doubt it's backhaul related.

The tester indicated that he loaded it on his Ubuntu laptop - this is all fine and good, but did he make the required changes for latency across high speed links? I bet not - this is something the windows installer will do that automatically. Under Linux, you have to enable those optimizations to achieve high speeds over latent links (eg. international links such as SAT3 and SEACOM).

See this link on how to do it under various Unices:
http://www.psc.edu/networking/projects/tcptune/

The above article does not include some additional adjustments that can be made for the more modern Linux kernels, but this is left as an exercise to the reader.

--deckert
 
rpm said:
Hi Omegaselect

I was not involved in the testing, but the modem is the official Cell C modem (Huawei E1820) which is HSPA+ capable.

I think Jan asked Cell C for feedback about some of the issues in the article, but for some reason Cell C stopped answering media queries outside of their controlled media events. I hope they start again this week which may clear up some issues.
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The fact that a HSPA+ modem only gave 3Mb/s is most likely due to poor back-haul network capacity, or they are using a small section of the 900MHz spectrum.

But the really bad up-link is surprising. Instead of the ~300Kb/s upload speeds myADSL measured, one would have expected at least 2Mb/s.

I suspect this is not a 'normal' HSPA+ deployment, most likely due to the re-farming challenges they must be facing. And remember, this is with a few friendly users. What's going to happen when 20+ normal consumers hit the tower expecting a '4G' or '4Gs' network (whatever that means ;))

For sure, it falls rather short of the claimed 4G speeds. Which is defined as 100Mb/s!
 
Hi Omegaselect

I am not certain if it is possible, but it may well be that Cell C has allocated more spectrum to the downlink (hence taking from the uplink) to ensure better download performance with the limited spectrum through the refarming of their 900 MHz 2G spectrum. But as I mentioned I don’t know if this can be or was done…
 
I must admit that given I seldom get more than around 400Kbits/sec on Vodacom's network at my home, I'm more concerned with per-GB pricing, advertised max speeds are already a bit of a joke in SA anyway, but they aren't the biggest problem for customers - pricing is. What is a bit worrying is that these tests are on a relatively 'clear' network, i.e. very few users. On the other hand, they're still working on the network heavily. Of course one might argue that if they're differentiating on price that one can't expect mich greater quality (i.e. speeds) relative to the competition also, but if they want to market it as 4G<fineprint>s</fineprint> though, people are going to ask questions and have higher expectations with respect to speeds. In reality though, as long as they're much cheaper than the competition, they don't need to be faster, people will buy it anyway. If the other providers drop their prices too, then actual speeds become more of a differentiator.
 
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Upon returning to Gauteng it turned out that the modem still connected to a 3G network.
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I WAS thinking the same thing! So it seems that once a sim in connected to the Cell C 3G network its unlocked for the whole S.A (time to visit P.E for and unlock)
 
rpm said:
Hi Omegaselect

I am not certain if it is possible, but it may well be that Cell C has allocated more spectrum to the downlink (hence taking from the uplink) to ensure better download performance with the limited spectrum through the refarming of their 900 MHz 2G spectrum. But as I mentioned I don’t know if this can be or was done…
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BTW, the link for the modem above shows no support for UMTS-900. Are you sure this is what was tested and not 2100?
 
omegaselect said:
BTW, the link for the modem above shows no support for UMTS-900. Are you sure this is what was tested and not 2100?
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I am fairly certain it is 900 MHz - the service is clearly indicated as UMTS-900 on the packaging if I am not mistaken. It may well be that Huawei has a version of the modem which supports 900 MHz.

I know that Cell C may use 2100 MHz in areas where additional bandwidth is needed, but one would assume it will not immediately be the case.
 
I dunno if I'm the only one wondering this... But how do you get faster ping to Cape Town from Johannesburg and not PE!?
 
So far the results are promising. Remember that 21mpbs is the theoretical maximum. As more users are added, the radio network starts get busy and throughput per user decreases. Also, as more users are added, the local and international backhaul links start to get saturated, and this again affects throughput per user. Remember that this is a contended service, as most internet connections are. Don't expect to achive theoretical maximum's - you're fooling yourself.

Overall, a decent, if not good, first rollout/testing by Cell C. I can expect things to improve slightly. I'm also very surprised that they have 3g/HSDPA (but not HSPA+) coverage in Johannesburg. This gives me even more reason to go out and buy a Cell C sim card and purchase this package. I can set it up on my laptop and use the built-in 3G/HSDPA modem.

As pointed out by others, the most important thing is price, followed by a decent reliable service. This is where Cell C hits the nail on the head. Speed is not the main issue, in fact it is the smallest issue right now. I bet that 95% of South African's will be happy if they can achieve downlink speeds of at least 4mbps and uplink speeds of at least 1mbps, as long as it is consistent and reliable.

We are one step closer to being able to give Vodacom and MTN a nice firm middle finger. Finally.

Well done Cell C. Don't drop the ball on this one, and FOR GOD'S SAKE please don't treat your newly acquired customer and fan base the way Neotel did. We're putting our trust in you. Don't burn us.
 
For me personally, provided it can maintain 1 -2 mbps of international, then I am happy and would sign up with them....but I would need to see their coverage first - and I would think 90 % of average users would be happy. Most users just want affordable internet, and I wish the other providers would understand that
 
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