Cool example of Vodacom prioritizing it's own traffic (shared tower)

[ENIAC]

So I'm pretty fortunate having a Vodacom tower really close to my house, which is never congested it seems.
I'm always getting around 90mbps from Rain( LTE on B135s) and around 100-130mbps from Vodacom(Iphone7)

Last night I was gaming on the rain package, and I noticed huge ping spikes whenever I did speedtests from my phone(vodacom),
so it got me wondering how much does Vodacom actually prioritize it's own traffic.

And so I fired up some torrents on my PC using rain, whilst randomly doing speedtests from the Iphone, which is what's happening in the video down below, keep an eye on the torrent speed as the speedtest gets going.

I didn't expect such drastic results, however I guess it is a given that vodacom would cater to their own clients first.

( Not shitting on vodacom or rain) if anyone's keen to see how this effects latency, let me know.

 

[Kiemo]

Interesting I called rain and they said they had there own towers

 

[ENIAC]

Yes they have their own towers, but on top of that they also have a roaming agreement with vodacom, which alows rain’s customers to connect via vodacom’s towers.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Yes they have their own towers, but on top of that they also have a roaming agreement with vodacom, which alows rain’s customers to connect via vodacom’s towers.

No, Vodacom roams on rain, not the other way around.

 

[ENIAC]

“The agreement initially envisaged that Rain would have at least 500 sites active on Vodacom’s infrastructure and facilities by March 2017, 2,000 by the end of 2017, and 5,000 by 2020.”

From - https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/337534-vodacom-extends-its-roaming-agreement-with-rain.html


Unless they have another agreement?

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

“The agreement initially envisaged that Rain would have at least 500 sites active on Vodacom’s infrastructure and facilities by March 2017, 2,000 by the end of 2017, and 5,000 by 2020.”

From - https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/337534-vodacom-extends-its-roaming-agreement-with-rain.html


Unless they have another agreement?

Oh, missed that. When I had rain last year it was as above, seems to have changed.

 

[ld13]

“The agreement initially envisaged that Rain would have at least 500 sites active on Vodacom’s infrastructure and facilities by March 2017, 2,000 by the end of 2017, and 5,000 by 2020.”
From - https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/337534-vodacom-extends-its-roaming-agreement-with-rain.html
Unless they have another agreement?

Same article,
"The agreement is using Rain’s 1,800MHz and 2,600MHz spectrum bands to enhance the capacity and performance of Vodacom’s network."

Seems to be a mix.

 

[charlieharper]

Super interesting... considering I get like 2mbps on Rain and 90mbps on Vodacom.

 

[Sthandiwemnguni]

Yes they have their own towers, but on top of that they also have a roaming agreement with vodacom, which alows rain’s customers to connect via vodacom’s towers.

Only Vodacom roam via rain towers but not the other way around

 

[cavedog]

This is an oldish thread but thought I'd just weigh in.

Rain does not roam on Vodacom towers. If they did then band 1 LTE will be available on Rain. It's not so there goes that theory.

The test is flawed in the fact that the B315 is not an LTE-A router and then iPhone is LTE-A. Vodacom on the iPhone is likely roaming on the Rain tower and aggregating both Rain bands while the B315 is just connected to one band. So there is that.

The nature of the tower is split traffic accordingly when more and more uses data the radio on the tower is shared between everyone and their roaming customers too.

I did a similar test on Telkom. Do a speedtest or download on one phone router and then do a speedtest on my phone with with another Telkom simcards the download speed drops. It's how it works.


The real question should be how are you getting close to 100Mbps on Rain on a B315. That is the real question is there no one else on that tower wow. Also the download was done because after the speedtest your torrent speed did not pick up again. <1min left means it was done.