MTN Speed Test Results

LoL so that's how they look like...

I hate to say this but for the past week MTN has been giving me better connections and latencys then Vodacom (i have a vodacom contract, using a MTN prepaid card at the moment).

They might not be getting the 3.6Mbps but at least connection has been stable and latencys amazing. I can't say that about Vodacom :(

Latencys for example in World of Warcraft. Vodacom I get latencys of around 1000ms during the day, around 2000 ms from around 19:30 - 1:00, from 1am latency drops to around 500 - 600ms. This is like clock work, it seems like someone is sitting somewhere switching a switch at specific times. Ho yea and i get great downloading speeds tough around 2.4Mbps.

With Mtn a constant of 400 - 500 ms during the day and just over 300 ms late a night. Speeds are crappy tough just over 700 Kbps.

Both networks are screwed up i thinks. But loving MTN a bit more then Vodacom at the moment.
 
Neo said:
Like any fanatical fanboy, skeptik is just trying to deflect the topic of this thread: viz the complete lack of MTN 3.6 and 7.2 capability (up to now, at least) and their blatant lies as to the availability of the service over the last 2 weeks.
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Nope, read the topic title again instead of hijacking it.
What speeds have you measured today Mr. Robinson?:D
 
Skeptik said:
Nope, read the topic title again instead of hijacking it.
What speeds have you measured today Mr. Robinson?:D
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The title is MTN 3.6 Mbps HSDPA here [please post your speed test results here]

So far no-one has been able to measure 3.6 or 7.2 speeds and any attempts to find where to get these speeds have been thwarted by MTN.

I've given up on trying to measure any 3.6+ speeds as they patently don't exist. :rolleyes:
 
07/02/08
Cards in 3G mode only

9:53am
811kb down
229kb up
506 ping
800miles

9:57am
1903kb down
326kb up
394 ping
50 miles

I used to get max uploads of 50K+ up until about week ago.
 
what card ?
e620 pcmcia , e220 usb , and where in ZA are you.

gpe said:
07/02/08
Cards in 3G mode only

9:53am
811kb down
229kb up
506 ping
800miles

9:57am
1903kb down
326kb up
394 ping
50 miles

I used to get max uploads of 50K+ up until about week ago.
Click to expand...
 
69db with Ginggs software and by line of sight roughly 5km from Roeland Street. I don't really notice that much of a difference in speed downloading (depends on time of day and how busy) but I notice the upload speeds have changed specially when I attach a 4mb file to Gmail etc. Well thats what I've noticed.

E220 USB (I'm in Gardens) so just on edge of CBD.
 
I am on -99dbm.

Best way to test upload is to do a ftp to a site locally.

There was a ftp://ftp.iafrica.com/pub/incoming and then you could create your own directories and upload but it seems to have dissappeard.

gpe said:
69db with Ginggs software and by line of sight roughly 5km from Roeland Street. I don't really notice that much of a difference in speed downloading (depends on time of day and how busy) but I notice the upload speeds have changed specially when I attach a 4mb file to Gmail etc. Well thats what I've noticed.

E220 USB (I'm in Gardens) so just on edge of CBD.
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MTN vs Vodacom - Round 1

Morkhans and I went and did some speed tests around Cape Town last night.

We used a Huawei E220 with the 7.2Mbps-enabled MTN firmware version 11.117.03.00.67 for the MTN tests, and an Option GlobeTrotter 3.6 Max for the Vodacom tests. Tests for both networks were done on speedtest.net and we always chose the Cape Town server, we also ran the Vodacom Speed Test for the Vodacom card only.

Our first stop was outside the MTN Service Centre at Century City, we had clear line of sight to the MTN tower (3970A/SPOORNET CTC ACASIA PARK) across the N1 from us. Tests started at approximately 19:00.

Network/TestDownload (kbps)Upload (kbps)Ping (ms)
MTN/speedtest.net83751677
MTN/speedtest.net64851663
MTN/speedtest.net82551635
Vodacom/speedtest.net1003100156
Vodacom/speedtest.net991307174
Vodacom/speedtest.net703325162
Vodacom/Vodacom2615346N/A
Vodacom/Vodacom1770338N/A
Vodacom/Vodacom2088298N/A
Next stop was near the MTN Network Group building in Harrington Street, we had clear line of sight to the MTN tower (416C/HARRINGTON STREET) as you can see in this photo. Tests started at approximately 19:30.

Network/TestDownload (kbps)Upload (kbps)Ping (ms)
MTN/speedtest.net973300365
MTN/speedtest.net973303341
MTN/speedtest.net511307348
Vodacom/speedtest.net665333166
Vodacom/speedtest.net633105162
Vodacom/speedtest.net995295201
Vodacom/Vodacom542342N/A
Vodacom/Vodacom1161125N/A
Vodacom/Vodacom757166N/A

Notes: These tests were geographically skewed towards MTN as our primary goal was to prove the existence of a 3.6/7.2 MTN tower.
The Vodacom results in Harrington Street suffered as a result of this as the Vodacom signal strength was only -88dBm, while the MTN signal strength was -55dBm and we could have cooked a packet of microwave popcorn on the dashboard of Morkhans's car.
Without Vodacom's speed test results we could easily have concluded that neither network have 3.6Mbs HSDPA, so either MTN need to come to the party and provide a local speed test, or we need to find an alternative speed test that can cope with 3.6Mbps and higher.
The Harrington Street tower clearly no longer suffers from the 64kbps upload limitation, this disappeared sometime around the middle of December 2007.
We hope to do some more tests soon in a location where both MTN and Vodacom have adequate coverage, hopefully one where draught is sold.
 
Last edited:
fismail said:
Tyger Valley Waterfront , E620 and speedtest.net.
Location and device will remain the same , seem my other replies in this thread unless tested elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Cool, just makes it easier to sum up the post with all the info in once place :)
 
So what have ginggs and I discovered? Well I for one have not seen anything to let me believe MTN have a 7.2 or 3.6 service. Given the fact that they have no on network test (e.g. speed.vodacom.co.za) there is no way to determine the theoretical speed. However what matters at the end of the day is real world experience which is what the speedtest.net tests will hopefully give us. If we had to take the best out of 3 in both speedstest.net results then Vodacom is the winner and remember we went looking for MTN towers! I had really bad signal in Harrington St as you can see from the overall result so on consistency MTN gets that one but as ginggs pointed out at the time "we must be in MTN country".

So all in all when looking for MTN towers Vodacom performs better than MTN. :p What is however encouraging is that MTN might finally be giving up on their stupid upload cap policy.

I stand by my statement: MTN you have no 7.2/3.6 service. I don't see why your clients should have try and to prove that that you do!
 
That's the reason why I got rid of my MTN prepaid sim and slapped a Vodacom prepaid sim in my Huawei E220 modem.

Much better. :)
 
I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
morkhans said:
Well I for one have not seen anything to let me believe MTN have a 7.2 or 3.6 service.
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The only evidence that Vodacom have a 3.6 service was their own speed test. If MTN had a similar test, we could compare apples and apples.
morkhans said:
If we had to take the best out of 3 in both speedstest.net results then Vodacom is the winner...
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If we had to take averages, I'd declare it a tie.
 
ginggs said:
I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
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:D

ginggs said:
The only evidence that Vodacom have a 3.6 service was their own speedtest.
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Not so. I have a screen shot in the Vodacom speedtest thread of me downloading a file at 310kB/s and others have reported similar findings. http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php?photo=2411

ginggs said:
If MTN had a similar test, we could compare apples and apples.
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Which is what a number of forumites have asked for, but has MTN delivered? If they were confident in their offering then surely they would be eager to provide people with all the resources necessary to test it (like tower locations and speedtest tools).

ginggs said:
If we had to take averages, I'd declare it a tie.
Click to expand...

I could live with that, but it doesn't change the fact that MTN does not have a 7.2/3.6 service ;)
 
morkhans said:
Not so. I have a screen shot in the Vodacom speedtest thread of me downloading a file at 310kB/s and others have reported similar findings.
Click to expand...
You didn't do a similar test last night. The speedtest.net results from last night could not prove that Vodacom have 3.6Mbps, therefore they cannot prove that MTN don't have 3.6Mbps.

I think we have to come up with another method of testing. Maybe downloading a firmware update from MTN's website? I'll look into it.
 
ginggs said:
You didn't do a similar test last night. The speedtest.net results from last night could not prove that Vodacom have 3.6Mbps, therefore they cannot prove that MTN don't have 3.6Mbps.

I think we have to come up with another method of testing. Maybe downloading a firmware update from MTN's website? I'll look into it.
Click to expand...

I went into this testing assuming that we already knew (and accepted) that Vodacom had a 3.6 network. I didn't think it needed to be proved again. Otherwise we should have gone looking for the best Vodacom towers as well.

What I wanted from the testing was to prove or disprove the existence of the MTN 7.2/3.6 service. What we did discover was that:
a) Vodacom and MTN perform similarly in "real world" conditions and effectively pointed at both offering somewhere in the region of a 1.8 service. (When testing in MTN country)
b) That unless MTN have an on network test, we won't know for sure, which in my mind leaves the onus on MTN to prove that it exists.

The firmware download is a good idea, might be the closest we get to an on network test. Maybe you should do some traceroutes to see how close you are to it when connected to MTN?

I don't think the testing was flawed, but perhaps we should have been more clear about our objectives before we started :)
 
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