Cellc max tower speeds

[cavedog]

So I'm creating this topic to find out why Cellc towers are so different from MTN,Vodacom and Telkom Mobile?

The speeds:

Its so obvious that Cellc towers can't get even get speeds close to that of the other networks. I have tested in many areas and I seen a Cellc tower can get about MAX 12Mbps with no congestion[I assume no congestion in the area I did the test due to it being a remote area and speedtests done in a week on different times].

MTN got like 19Mbps and Vodacom gets like 18Mbps maybe faster depends on the tower.

Is this the hardware the Cellc uses at the tower that has this limit? I seen a MAJOR difference in Cellc tower and the other networks.

Cellc has like a small box that all the cables feed into and a very small box next to it that feed the power to the tower.

MTN,Vodacom and Telkom Mobile has these big white boxes that has a door and is usually fitted atleast 1 aircon.

Is this the reason they have more speed cause of better hardware? I'm asking cause its very puzzling and hard to figure out.

I'm going to get photo's of a Cellc tower and a tower shared by the other 3 networks and you will see the difference not only physically but in speeds too.

 

[GoofySmurf]

So how do you test when the towers are congested or not for interest sake or do you have SNMP details for the routers the tower uses to monitor the usage ? Whats the capacity on the Cell C Fibre backbone that the tower runs on compared to MTN and Vodacom.

It might be slower or not but judging a towers capability on what it looks like is a bit naive ...

Did you try doing a speed test, traceroute, ping etc. it could also be a peering issue between ISP's ...

All I am trying to point out is that there is so many variables in wireless/wired connections that its really hard to always pinpoint the problem and making wild accusations wont help your case ...

 

[ginggs]

I have tested in many areas and I seen a Cellc tower can get about MAX 12Mbps with no congestion.

I've seen speed test results in the Cell-C Speed Test Results in the region of 18-21Mbps.

How can you be so sure there is no congestion? Just sharing the sector with one other user downloading at 8Mbps would limit your maximum speed test result to 12Mbps.

 

[cavedog]

I'm not sure what you did read but maybe you misread my whole post or something?

Where did I judge a towers capability on looks in my post? I asked why is there such a big difference between them. Its a question not a statement.

I'm not sure what wild accusations I made when I'm asking for a answer. I KNOW for a FACT MTN and Vodacom is fast on some towers. I have proof. I KNOW for a FACT that the Cellc towers I tested NEVER exceeded 12Mbps.

The reason I assume congestion is when you have full signal but get 2Mbps its HIGHLY unlikely that that is the towers max capacity whether it be fibre backhaul or hardware related.

 

[Bern]

I must say to add anecdotal evidence my Cell C general connection speed and quality between Stellenbosch, Pinelands and Bellville has been pretty poor of late, huge areas of Edge only access and generally slow. Not scientific, but I would have thought they would be better in these high density areas by now.

Also why no LTE in Stellenbosch?

 

[cavedog]

I've seen speed test results in the Cell-C Speed Test Results in the region of 18-21Mbps.

How can you be so sure there is no congestion? Just sharing the sector with one other user downloading at 8Mbps would limit your maximum speed test result to 12Mbps.

I totally understand that. I assume that there won't be congestion since its on a farm 50km from the nearest town with no informal settlement in sight and tests were done everyday for a week on verious times and the max speed was like 10Mbps with full signal and clear LOS to the tower.

There is also the possibility that some one downloaded something somehwere when I was doing the tests. I don't have access to tower stats so I just assumed it is highly unlikely but still possible.


That said since I'm being attacked cause I assumed no congestion why does MTN and Vodacom perform so well then? Its a fact that they have more users than Cellc so its likely that their towers has more users connected to them compared to Cellc but their towers does not suffer the slower speeds.

 

[ginggs]

I totally understand that. I assume that there won't be congestion since its on a farm 50km from the nearest town with no informal settlement in sight and tests were done everyday for a week on verious times and the max speed was like 10Mbps with full signal and clear LOS to the tower.

It could be that this base station has limited backhaul bandwidth, but you did write that you had tested in many areas.

 

[cavedog]

It could be that this base station has limited backhaul bandwidth, but you did write that you had tested in many areas.

Yeah I kinda have very limited knowledge of how the networks work and stuff but these type of things facinates me. I would be like driving to work and see a tower and say ooo a tower lets see how fast it is right now. So I do a TON of speedtest every single day. Its like a obsession....

Thats is why I have noticed over time that areas which has low population like the beach or farms or toll routes between cities and places like that when covered by cellc 3G is usually in the 10-12Mbps range and city towers are down like to the sub 5Mbps speeds. So I had to assume that these slow speeds was a result of congestion and the higher speeds are less or no congestion hence my question why are we not seeing more of the 19 - 22Mbps speedtests on Cellc when you can very easily get them on the other networks?

That is why I initially asked what Cellc towers are capable of since its not something you see often.

 

[RichardG]

cavedog, back in the day when CELL C first launched their Woooosh network their network was super fast, achieving over 18 megs - 20 megs on a modem that supports speed of 21 megs Huawei E180(if I recall correctly), those were the good old days but now with so many promotions on data, everyone is shopping around for the best deal. example prepaid users who recharge with supercharge get free data, giga 100/200, 2 gigs of data for R99(on contract). I tested the network back in the day when I only had 2 bars no more than that, recently I tested their network and was getting on average about 4 megs, not faster than that but it was still acceptable to me had to deplete the giga 200 in less than a month before expiry and actually did manage it with a lot of sacrifice and lack of sleep..



Recently visited a small town & my tablet has a CELL C (Redbull Mobile) thought the tablet would roam on Vodacom once arrived to destination was damn CELL C actually has service in the town(population probably less than 30 thousand), no CELL C store anywhere! .

Must admit sites were loading faster on CELL C than MTN! Woooooosh!