Is rain throttling my speed?

H

henrynoss27

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Hi. I've been an avid user of the rain product for over six months now. Internet speed, for the most part, has been relatively decent, with rates averaging 15-25 MBs down and 8-14 MBs up. However, during the past month, the internet speeds have drastically dropped, making it very difficult, if not almost unusable at this point. I now have rates averaging 2-3MBs down (5 if I'm lucky) and 1-2MBs up.

I've sent out emails with no luck. Tried all the troubleshoots and have looked online for possible issues like the servers being down, maintenance or the sim connecting to wrong towers, etc., but there seems to be no issue with the network or the towers on their end, and the sim is connected to the correct tower in my area. So this leads me to believe that either my sim has an issue or, my speeds are being throttled by Rain.

It is very frustrating to navigate as I am a student in need of the internet to do research and my studies online.

Any help or assistance would be much appreciated.
Thanks
 

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Hi @henrynoss27, we cannot confirm anything as barely any info is transparent to end users, but it's most likely tower congestion. On average the more outskirt you are with the highest probability of being alone on a tower the greater you experience will be. One theory however that's entertained a lot 'round social media is that rain entices users for the first 6 to 12 months of good service, before eventually hammering them down to make way for other new users, but this is not confirmed. Rain does state that this is a best effort service but doesn't go in to too much detail with how throttling is engaged, contrary to the ToS and 24/7's streaming service shaping. This is just bad luck in your case and you can try getting an external antenna to connect to another tower if possible, but otherwise that's how it's been rolling for a lot of us having to get off the network now.
 
henrynoss27 said:
Hi. I've been an avid user of the rain product for over six months now. Internet speed, for the most part, has been relatively decent, with rates averaging 15-25 MBs down and 8-14 MBs up. However, during the past month, the internet speeds have drastically dropped, making it very difficult, if not almost unusable at this point. I now have rates averaging 2-3MBs down (5 if I'm lucky) and 1-2MBs up.

I've sent out emails with no luck. Tried all the troubleshoots and have looked online for possible issues like the servers being down, maintenance or the sim connecting to wrong towers, etc., but there seems to be no issue with the network or the towers on their end, and the sim is connected to the correct tower in my area. So this leads me to believe that either my sim has an issue or, my speeds are being throttled by Rain.

It is very frustrating to navigate as I am a student in need of the internet to do research and my studies online.

Any help or assistance would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Click to expand...

Good afternoon,

I'm sorry to see your speed have dropped recently and there could be many factors to cause the drop but I will do mt best to try and improve it.

Please DM your details so that I can have my team assist you're further with your network query.
please note due to the time you might only be contacted back tomorrow but once I have your account details and locations, we will start looking at it urgently.

thanks
 
IceQB said:
Welcome to the club
Click to expand...
What adds to the frustration is how vague and misleading their response is to the issue by their CEO when asked by broadband on the subject of throttling, especially considering that they advertise that there is no throttling on their network, and yet here we are.

mybroadband.co.za

We clearly state the limits of our unlimited data products – Rain CEO

Rain CEO Willem Roos explains that their “unlimited” claim is not misleading as they clearly state the limits around times of use, speed levels, and video quality.
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za
.
 
Hi, @Crumbl0x thank you for the insight. However, I'm very sure that my issue is a throttling one as my area has multiple rain supported towers with good network coverage.

To add, I've done multiple speed tests with my and a different rain sim card and found that the speeds were different on both ends. One reported an average download speed of 17mbs and the other (mine) 4mbs.

What is odd as well is when I tried downloading a video, I found that when using my rain sim, the speeds were capped to 50KBs max, and when I switched to a different carrier on the same download, the speeds drastically increased to 1.7MBs.
 
henrynoss27 said:
Hi, @Crumbl0x thank you for the insight. However, I'm very sure that my issue is a throttling one as my area has multiple rain supported towers with good network coverage.

To add, I've done multiple speed tests with my and a different rain sim card and found that the speeds were different on both ends. One reported an average download speed of 17mbs and the other (mine) 4mbs.

What is odd as well is when I tried downloading a video, I found that when using my rain sim, the speeds were capped to 50KBs max, and when I switched to a different carrier on the same download, the speeds drastically increased to 1.7MBs.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that useful piece of info - now I know why my service is pretty poor this month
 
It seems Rain does have that option to 'speed limit customer' - from their now disabled rain debug site.
Apologies -'spend limit' looked like speed limit - anyway I'm just frustrated with the service.


debug rain_LI.jpg
 
Last edited:
Same problem with speed. Used to be fine intill recently.
I bought a playstation and had to update system and 3 games as well. Plus I have downloaded some videos to learn how to play these games. I guess these large downloads caused throttling.
If I stop with downloads will it get back to 2 or 3 mb per second so I can watch netflix again? And how long will it take to improve? I wish I knew this before buying playstion. And I have also tried differant locarions in house resets etc.20200726_233036.jpg
 
Do you know what their support is going to tell you ? I can already tell you they going to say reboot your router that is apparently the ONLY support they can give , they have no issue selling sims giving away sims etc while the speed gets worse and worse for the clients who was with them a long time , meanwhile every website I go to with ads got an add for rain every youtube clip I watch got an add for rain , so obviously all the money is going towards advertising and to hell with improving the towers or hiring REAL SUPPORT technicians .
 
Hi Carlo,
Thanks for reply.
I checked speed this morning, results at bottom. Started ok but now very low again. I still think i get good value for money if i can get 2 or 3 mb per second, there is nothing else available for R470. Wether to many large downloads affect my download speed is acknowlged or not does not really matter to me, I will try and keep it reasonable. I am hoping rain staff can look in to this and fix it for me. There are just to many things happening in this country right now and for my health sake i try to remain posetive.
I am living on a small pension and cant afford more expensive options.
And i have already cancelled my dstv - too expensive to afford both.
 
wschneider said:
Hi Carlo,
Thanks for reply.
I checked speed this morning, results at bottom. Started ok but now very low again. I still think i get good value for money if i can get 2 or 3 mb per second, there is nothing else available for R470. Wether to many large downloads affect my download speed is acknowlged or not does not really matter to me, I will try and keep it reasonable. I am hoping rain staff can look in to this and fix it for me. There are just to many things happening in this country right now and for my health sake i try to remain posetive.
I am living on a small pension and cant afford more expensive options.
And i have already cancelled my dstv - too expensive to afford both.Screenshot_20200727-074822_MyBroadband Speed Test.jpg
Click to expand...
 
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