Cell C coverage - Rural areas (esp E Cape)

[milomak]

I am thinking of switching to Red Bull Mobile. But need to get a sense of what coverage is like in rural South Africa (especially Eastern Cape). tbf i won't need coverage in these areas that often, but would like to have an idea of what I might face.

 

[MickeyD]

Dismal. Once you leave EL, PE, George urban areas, that's it - off the EDGE you go.

 

[Terencek]

Cell C's agreement with Vodacom means you have coverage wherever there is a VC tower if there is not a dedicated Cell C one. But beware that this 'roaming' agreement means you will only get EDGE (or in some cases simple GPRS) data from these towers. There is no 3G or 3G+ 'roaming' for Cell C even if the local VC tower offers it to VC customers.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Might have been a fluke, but we once got cellc 3g from a vodacom tower in the Greenbushes area. Don't know what happened there, or how it happened... and this was before cellc rolled out their 3g network.

Best you can do is to cough up and get a voda prepaid SIM for country use. GPRS/EDGE is not usable at all - take it from me. You can only do basic IM like gtalk/skype, but web browsing and other things are totally out.

And don't use Windows, rather use Ubuntu/Linux to minimize bandwidth "noise". The less you try to pump out to clog up that tiny EDGE/GPRS pipe, the better.

 

[milomak]

Thanks guys. It pretty much confirms what I expected would be the case.

 

[flarkit]

And don't use Windows, rather use Ubuntu/Linux to minimize bandwidth "noise". The less you try to pump out to clog up that tiny EDGE/GPRS pipe, the better.

I'm not sure what that means. Are you referring to using the device for online access from your PC, ook?