Degrading Telkom LTE Uncapped speeds

[cpbotha]

I have one of the capped Telkom LTE-A packages (in an LTE-only area) with the Huawei E5186 and a Poynting XPOL 0006 external antenna pointing at the Telkom tower about 1km away. Speeds initially were fantastic (50Mbit/s+ any time of day or evening; SINR >=30dB)

Lately however, my connection has degraded to just under 10 Mbit/s, which is still very usable, but not 50Mbit/s+ (SINR 0dB)

I noticed that the great connection is on cell_id 16945153 (PCI 310), whereas the not-so-great connection is on cell_id 16945152 (PCI 309). Initially I was able to get the modem to reconnect on the great cell by disconnecting antenna, power cycling router, and reconnecting antenna. This does not work anymore, I'm stuck on the bad cell.

Does anyone know what I could do about this? Either my modem is being silly (the connection on 310 is MUCH better, it should associate with that), or that cell is being silly. It would be great if the router had more advanced options to be able to scan for cells, and to whitelist / blacklist cells, but does not.

 

[FlashSA]

I have one of the capped Telkom LTE-A packages (in an LTE-only area) with the Huawei E5186 and a Poynting XPOL 0006 external antenna pointing at the Telkom tower about 1km away. Speeds initially were fantastic (50Mbit/s+ any time of day or evening; SINR >=30dB)

Lately however, my connection has degraded to just under 10 Mbit/s, which is still very usable, but not 50Mbit/s+ (SINR 0dB)

I noticed that the great connection is on cell_id 16945153 (PCI 310), whereas the not-so-great connection is on cell_id 16945152 (PCI 309). Initially I was able to get the modem to reconnect on the great cell by disconnecting antenna, power cycling router, and reconnecting antenna. This does not work anymore, I'm stuck on the bad cell.

Does anyone know what I could do about this? Either my modem is being silly (the connection on 310 is MUCH better, it should associate with that), or that cell is being silly. It would be great if the router had more advanced options to be able to scan for cells, and to whitelist / blacklist cells, but does not.

I had a similiar issue - antenna suddenly chose a different, slow tower instead of my line of sight 150m across the road.

Eventually out of frustration, I unscrewed both antenna cables, swapped sides on the back of the router and rescrewed in. Back to good tower immediately. That was a week ago.

Try it

 

[Saba'a]

58.66 mbps

 

[Muttley]

I have one of the capped Telkom LTE-A packages (in an LTE-only area) with the Huawei E5186 and a Poynting XPOL 0006 external antenna pointing at the Telkom tower about 1km away. Speeds initially were fantastic (50Mbit/s+ any time of day or evening; SINR >=30dB)

Lately however, my connection has degraded to just under 10 Mbit/s, which is still very usable, but not 50Mbit/s+ (SINR 0dB)

I noticed that the great connection is on cell_id 16945153 (PCI 310), whereas the not-so-great connection is on cell_id 16945152 (PCI 309). Initially I was able to get the modem to reconnect on the great cell by disconnecting antenna, power cycling router, and reconnecting antenna. This does not work anymore, I'm stuck on the bad cell.

Does anyone know what I could do about this? Either my modem is being silly (the connection on 310 is MUCH better, it should associate with that), or that cell is being silly. It would be great if the router had more advanced options to be able to scan for cells, and to whitelist / blacklist cells, but does not.

I had the same issue as you. Someone here suggested that I call 081180 and give them both CellID's. Telling them that you performance was good and now it's bad and that you want to connect to the good CellID. They'll think you're mad or highly clued up- just make sure that they pass this info onto the tech dept.

They may also suggest that you reset the router but it'll make no difference. After calling them, 24 hours later, I was connected to my great tower again.

 

[cpbotha]

I had a similiar issue - antenna suddenly chose a different, slow tower instead of my line of sight 150m across the road.

Eventually out of frustration, I unscrewed both antenna cables, swapped sides on the back of the router and rescrewed in. Back to good tower immediately. That was a week ago.

Try it

Thanks very much for the tip!

In desperation I had already tried swapping antenna leads (based on previous experience jiggling the antenna) but it didn't help.

I ended up putting the Telkom SIM in my LG G3, which immediately connected to the good tower. So that confirms that the tower is not being funky.

I then put the SIM back in the router and let it boot up with antenna detached. This time it attached to the right tower, after which I could re-attach the antenna for even better signal on the good tower.

My guess is that the good tower had intermittent issues recently, and that my router connected to the "bad" tower instead, which still has a pretty good signal with the antenna. It wouldn't surprise me if, when the good tower came online again, the router was happy to stay on the old one because the signal was more than good enough, just not great. When I booted up router without antenna, the bad tower signal was not good enough anymore, so it tried the better one.

TL;DR: LTE / cellular tower switching algorithm works to maintain usable signal, not best signal.

 

[cpbotha]

I had the same issue as you. Someone here suggested that I call 081180 and give them both CellID's. Telling them that you performance was good and now it's bad and that you want to connect to the good CellID. They'll think you're mad or highly clued up- just make sure that they pass this info onto the tech dept.

They may also suggest that you reset the router but it'll make no difference. After calling them, 24 hours later, I was connected to my great tower again.

Calling Telkom (actually rather PMing their webcare here on MyBB) was on my todo list (brrrr...

However, Telkom SIM in telephone attached to good tower without issues, so it looks like my issues were more down to my own equipment than to Telkom.

 

[Saba'a]

Cant do a speedtest at 1am. Eish!

 

[marhsava]

So do you have to wait for a Telkom technician to come install the antenna or can we do it by yourself ..

 

[FlashSA]

So do you have to wait for a Telkom technician to come install the antenna or can we do it by yourself ..

I did it myself

 

[Sneeky]

It cant possibly get any worse.
R900 pm for this capped.
I missed the clause where it said only between 0100 and 1700 in the contract.

 

[Saba'a]

It cant possibly get any worse.
R900 pm for this capped.
I missed the clause where it said only between 0100 and 1700 in the contract.

Regularly or just sometimes? Get this sometimes but its normally an aberation. Normally great speeds.

 

[Muttley]

I'm also having issues tonight- went from 70mb/s to barely 5mb/s and now back to 49mb/s.
I'm certain that mine is tower congestion... I'm not sure why yours is so bad... have you called Telkom to complain?

 

[Sneeky]

Regularly or just sometimes? Get this sometimes but its normally an aberation. Normally great speeds.

Every night around 1900 till 2300. During the day 40+.
Im not expecting full speed. I would like to open netflix or showmax or maybe a webpage in the evening though.

 

[Saba'a]

Every night around 1900 till 2300. During the day 40+.
Im not expecting full speed. I would like to open netflix or showmax or maybe a webpage in the evening though.

Call telkom as its either tower congestion or throttling.
Can you switch to the uncapped promo. Ask them to end current contract in return for retaining you on promo? Worth a try. Cheaper uncapped and throttling. Still crappy sometimes but better than current product.

 

[Sneeky]

Call telkom as its either tower congestion or throttling.
Can you switch to the uncapped promo. Ask them to end current contract in return for retaining you on promo? Worth a try. Cheaper uncapped and throttling. Still crappy sometimes but better than current product.

Thx, the reasons I went with capped is uncapped wasnt offered at the time from memory, and even if it was I didnt want throttling.
Nothing can be worse than this rubbish so maybe worth a try. Currently this is a strangle.

I have sent @TelkomZA a pm. I'm honestly not holding my breath though, but will humbly retract that if anything is done to correct the situation.

 

[grantbu123]

Sitting with 0.3mbos in Northriding again this evening on uncapped. Been complaining to Telkom for 3 months, logged calls, phoned 180 customer services dozes of times emailed 180@telkom, Tweeted, complained twice on hellopeter, spoken to many team leaders, escalated calls dozens of times and even went to a store and got detials of regional manager and sent him emails Eventually after 3 months and two technicians taking readings, they say signal and coverage is good, but packet loss is causing slow speeds and tower is at fault, tower is being upgraded.
Now we will see how long that takes. Waiting, again, for them to give me an answer on ETR.

 

[Saba'a]

Thx, the reasons I went with capped is uncapped wasnt offered at the time from memory, and even if it was I didnt want throttling.
Nothing can be worse than this rubbish so maybe worth a try. Currently this is a strangle.

I have sent @TelkomZA a pm. I'm honestly not holding my breath though, but will humbly retract that if anything is done to correct the situation.

Promo is linked to dedicated towers.

 

[Sneeky]

Promo is linked to dedicated towers.

My tower has 125 slots left

 

[Sneeky]

Sitting with 0.3mbos in Northriding again this evening on uncapped. Been complaining to Telkom for 3 months, logged calls, phoned 180 customer services dozes of times emailed 180@telkom, Tweeted, complained twice on hellopeter, spoken to many team leaders, escalated calls dozens of times and even went to a store and got detials of regional manager and sent him emails Eventually after 3 months and two technicians taking readings, they say signal and coverage is good, but packet loss is causing slow speeds and tower is at fault, tower is being upgraded.
Now we will see how long that takes. Waiting, again, for them to give me an answer on ETR.

You see, I just don't have the patience for this telkom run around anymore.
Been down this road before.

I will be happy just to exit the service, actually, I would be happier to have some recourse for the lack of provision.

It wont help them coming to my house, unless my house moves to mars during 1900-2300 ish. Its in the same place it always is, and everything works fine then, but somehow they will tell you its your pc and your router and your this and that.

Nah.
Someone enlighten me on what they are legally compelled to provide as a minimum.
That is the starting point.

If the above is 'legally acceptable' on LTE, then fine, Im starting an ISP company with dialup internet backbone from these jobo's, and will sell to a million people at R1 uncapped. 24 month contract of course.

 

[Sneeky]

Warp speed Mr Sulu, back to earth.

My house is now moving closer to the blue planet from mars it seems.

My regular like clockwork evening trips to Mars are completely unappreciated or acceptable.

Maybe my router or Poynting antenna decided to miraculously do something different.
Maybe a reset will help, or , or , or.

Absolute horse s!!it