My excellent Rain 5G experience

[thomas37]

Here’s my Rain 5G update.

I ordered the service (5G uncapped @ R 1000 month-to-month) on Tuesday night around 21h00. By yesterday (Thursday) afternoon my router was delivered around 17h00. By 18h30 my SIM was activated and I could get the 5G activated on the router. This took about 10 minutes as I was stumbling around with the Ethernet and WiFi settings. Once I had the new router in and the old 10 Mbps ADSL router out, I could start my testing. Consistently getting 500+ Mbps download speed with 40+ Mbps upload speed. It works extremely well so far. I’ll run like this for a few days and see how it goes. Now I have to upgrade my home WiFi network to be able to serve my client devices at the new uplink speed.

I am a happy camper!

 

[HibiscusTunes]

Your upload speed is amazing compared to other’s

 

[cavedog]

Here’s my Rain 5G update.

I ordered the service (5G uncapped @ R 1000 month-to-month) on Tuesday night around 21h00. By yesterday (Thursday) afternoon my router was delivered around 17h00. By 18h30 my SIM was activated and I could get the 5G activated on the router. This took about 10 minutes as I was stumbling around with the Ethernet and WiFi settings. Once I had the new router in and the old 10 Mbps ADSL router out, I could start my testing. Consistently getting 500+ Mbps download speed with 40+ Mbps upload speed. It works extremely well so far. I’ll run like this for a few days and see how it goes. Now I have to upgrade my home WiFi network to be able to serve my client devices at the new uplink speed.

I am a happy camper!

10Mbps adsl to 500Mbps Rain 5G must be quite an experience.

 

[Dretastic06]

10Mbps adsl to 500Mbps Rain 5G must be quite an experience.

datsun go - bmw m3

 

[mrlgm007]

wow to be getting 40+ upload speed your signal must be really good.

 

[thomas37]

And then it all went to crap. Yesterday afternoon by service just dropped from 550 Mbps to less than 2 Mbps. Latency on pings to Google and other sites went as high as 80000ms from 20ms. Internet unusable. With the estimated location of the tower that Rain gave me (looks to be co-located on a Cell C tower), it looks as if I am about 750m from the tower. Called Rain support this morning. According to them, my router shows great signal, even though the 5G signal basically disappeared from the router's site optimizer screen. To be fair, they tried calling me back twice, both times I was in meetings and could not take the call. This evening I'll wire in my Peplink Load Balancer with the 10 Mbps ADSL as backup for the 5G service. That way I'll have Internet if Rain dies or at least until the issue is resolved. This is a developing story...

 

[SeaSickMama]

wow to be getting 40+ upload speed your signal must be really good.

Got rain to give me that Outdoor CPE and the upload went from 4-20mbps to 71mbps all the time. The outdoor thing is a beast in size and weight

 

[Supes]

Got rain to give me that Outdoor CPE and the upload went from 4-20mbps to 71mbps all the time. The outdoor thing is a beast in size and weight

How'd you manage that if you don't mind me asking? When I mailed them asking about it they flat out said nope, try finding it elsewhere.

 

[SeaSickMama]

How'd you manage that if you don't mind me asking? When I mailed them asking about it they flat out said nope, try finding it elsewhere.

I just told them i had to literally put the router on the roof to get signal and then when i did that it would overheat and kinda stop working.
They came out yesterday saw the signal for Vodacom was even bad in the house and then ran some tests, they have got a really cool site testdrive.rain.... that shows them all the people connected to the tower and the speedtests etc. They did some info checking and then we walked all over the roof till we found a sweet spot. I can tell you now that outdoor CPE is kak expensive and then the router they give you for inside is really nice and quick. They do take your 5G CPE Pro which i was a little sad about.

The main hurdle seems to be getting them to come to you although i phoned them spoke to support they asked for a few test results by placing the router at a windows that was towards the tower and then also i think i emailed them 3 times complaining about speed etc.

Week or so later i got a email saying hey we coming on Saturday at 10am i said no come Monday and sorted.


What i can maybe recommend is placing the router in a really **** place in your house where you "WANT IT" and then when they do tests from their side it will determine if they gonna come or not. Plus i was apart of the VIP launch so no idea if that helps.

Apparently with that outdoor thing you can see speeds up to 900mbps the installer told me. So i will fiddle around in due course to see what i can get.

Attached are some images of it all.

The outdoor unit alone sells for $1999

 

[Supes]

I just told them i had to literally put the router on the roof to get signal and then when i did that it would overheat and kinda stop working.

Thanks for the super in-depth reply, I suppose they can't go around giving $2k pieces of equipment to everyone.
It's mainly my upload speed I want to improve, but it almost seems easier to just get a cheap fibre line going just for that.