HELP!! Agonisingly slow 3G speeds

[Spitfire77]

I have a Cell C speed stick (MF 190) capable of 7.2Mbps but have never reached anywhere close to this. During the day, I'm still able to browse the net but when ever the weather is bad or after around 7pm, my connection is soo slow that even google fails to load! The funny thing is, the modem dashboard will show its on HSPA with 3 bars reception but download speeds (shown on the dashboard) is crawling at less than 5kbps and sometimes at 0kbps!! I did a speed test yesterday on www.speedtest.net and had a download speed of 0.46Mbps and the upload speed test never complete because.. well speeds were too slow or connection problem. I repeated the test earlier today and had much better results : Download speed = 1.68Mbps and Upload speed = 0.54Mbps. Unfortunately my modem dashboard does not have anything to check the RSSI.

Is there too much congestion on the cell c network that results in such slow speeds? I read that a 3G antenna can improve reception and speed, will this help? Poynting has quite a few antennas but I dont know if it will be compatible with my usb stick and their high gain antennas are quite pricey.

Im also considering moving over to Vodacom but I dont know if I'll still have the same problem.

What would be the best compromise?

 

[Cell_C]

Hi,

Please PM your contact and cellc cell/SIM number as we want to assist.

Regards,
CellC|TM

 

[Slootvreter]

Who has ever reached 7.2 with a 7.2 modem?

 

[guest2013-1]

Who has ever reached 7.2 with a 7.2 modem?

People in range of towers capable of running at that speeds. And those towers not being overused by others etc