Rain 5G great, but it is the reason Rain LTE is now slow!

[TheSentinel]

Just for the record. I used to get 40-50Mbps any day, any time of day. Then since the start of this month everything fell apart. I now get 20-25Mbps tops at night.

I contacted rain and their networks team said

"The user is connected to a site that is 1.014 km away from the address given by the user which is the closest site user is connected to."

"Site is alarm free with normal utilization."

The picture below shows that their tower is around 50% use and has no load. Then how does anyone explain the sudden loss of speed?

Just look at this rain forum and see how lately people have been complaining about the same issue of speeds less than 20Mbps sometimes less than 10Mbps from 40-50Mbps.

Rain has not got a surge in LTE subscribers, mybroadband would have written an article about that.

 

[mzamz]

Interesting conversation and thanks to Mr Maph for the insight I have noticed many complaints on other platforms around the network qaulity and recieving the same speeds you've mentioned.

 

[Swa]

Hahaha, so with that you are saying Rain 5G since is on their LTE infrastructure right now is sharing the same the same capacity as 2G?

Wow where did you get that?

Rain doesn't have 2G. Only 3G LTE and I'm not certain about 4G.

Just for the record. I used to get 40-50Mbps any day, any time of day. Then since the start of this month everything fell apart. I now get 20-25Mbps tops at night.

I contacted rain and their networks team said

"The user is connected to a site that is 1.014 km away from the address given by the user which is the closest site user is connected to."

"Site is alarm free with normal utilization."

The picture below shows that their tower is around 50% use and has no load. Then how does anyone explain the sudden loss of speed?

Just look at this rain forum and see how lately people have been complaining about the same issue of speeds less than 20Mbps sometimes less than 10Mbps from 40-50Mbps.

Rain has not got a surge in LTE subscribers, mybroadband would have written an article about that.

View attachment 716123

Tower utilisation isn't the only factor. Rain has had an influx of LTE subscribers since their uncapped which would explain the slower speeds. Funny how you're complaining about speeds that are far higher than Vodacom. Vodacom's 3G has gone to absolute sh|t around here and you're lucky if you get 2G speeds during peak so it's not just Rain.

 

[The_Librarian]

Still have OK speeds at my location.

Will have to wait and see.

 

[Napalm]

Those graphs just mean ... out of all the 100% capacity... they only using 50-60% of it. (leaving 40-50% on the backbone for some meat)

It could be that they shaping or "limiting" people connected to towers so that their capacity doesn't all get used up. Possibly only specific protocols. {try downloading something big from http source}

The graph itself could also be wrong... well sortof.. it doesn't state what "resources is available" , so if it's 1gbit. 100% would be the full 1gbit. It could be that graph is configured for 2gbit incorrectly.... graph showing 1/2 being used.. meaning 1gbit full capacity is 50% on the chart.. We just don't know what the backend is.

Other alternative is they maybe have tower capacity going for other things also.. (maybe Vodacom/other isp's sharing the rest of the capacity... those graphs will show the rest.)

Just for the record. I used to get 40-50Mbps any day, any time of day. Then since the start of this month everything fell apart. I now get 20-25Mbps tops at night.

I contacted rain and their networks team said

"The user is connected to a site that is 1.014 km away from the address given by the user which is the closest site user is connected to."

"Site is alarm free with normal utilization."

The picture below shows that their tower is around 50% use and has no load. Then how does anyone explain the sudden loss of speed?

Just look at this rain forum and see how lately people have been complaining about the same issue of speeds less than 20Mbps sometimes less than 10Mbps from 40-50Mbps.

Rain has not got a surge in LTE subscribers, mybroadband would have written an article about that.

View attachment 716123

 

[H1TMANlol]

They better cover the country soon with 5G else I'll be cancelling my rain SIM

 

[Polymathic]

Anecdotes. Whether at home or elsewhere where there's coverage most people's connections are just fine. Think about it for a sec. 5G has just been launched with very few users so even if this was a possibility it could not be affecting anyone yet.


Which does not back up your claim and only briefly mentions the part you're latching on to. And I just wasted 5 minutes reading it to prove that.


It's your knowledge that's limited to nothing more than a home router setup. Your analogy proves it. You're viewing it as a case were you have direct access to the backhaul and now some 5G users are interfering with this. You're even nonsensically blaming 5G for your Rain experience for the time when 5G wasn't even available yet. LOL

It's not the backhaul that's the issue here but spectrum. 4G backhaul is underutilised because of insufficient spectrum that's the real bottleneck. 5G can only help that. I can tell you it will be a long time (if ever) before there's a standalone 5G network. It's simply not how things work. Even 4G still shares capacity with 2G.

What you're looking for is for LTE to have its own 1Gbps backhaul and 5G to have its own 10Gbps where it's much more feasible to just have 10Gbps shared between both. Apart from new deployments this won't happen.

5G will only really achieve its full potential when we have the spectrum for 10-100m micro cells. Then we will see it alleviating strain on the 4G and LTE networks rather than the other way around. It has nothing to do with not sharing a network but only having sufficient backhaul.

10Gbps seems woefully low considering they marketing their services at 1Gbps maximum

 

[Swa]

10Gbps seems woefully low considering they marketing their services at 1Gbps maximum

Don't think the spectrum can handle 10Gbps in any case.

 

[TheSentinel]

Still have OK speeds at my location.

Will have to wait and see.

I am in Pretoria, where is your location? I think location matters a lot in this.

Also what is your ok speeds? speedtest results please

 

[TheSentinel]

10Gbps seems woefully low considering they marketing their services at 1Gbps maximum

Yeah, with just that 10-20 5G users will take all the bandwidth and nothing for us on LTE since our devices are older and faster 5G devices will get priority on the network.

Lets not forget that they don't just launch such things without serious testing for months, so they started selling this to select customers now but a lot more people have been using this Rain 5G under non-disclosure agreements for months.

 

[NathanL]

Since the 9th of September I have been unable to even use my rain sim card. They say I'm connected to a congested network however the truth is the tower is no longer accepting a connection from LTE devices (I used the HManger app to check). I get 5 bars and over a period of 3 weeks could not download 1kb. I have resorted to moving the router outside the premises to connect to another tower just to be able to even use it.

5G sounds great on paper but the consequences are going to be bad for everyone.

 

[TheSentinel]

Since the 9th of September I have been unable to even use my rain sim card. They say I'm connected to a congested network however the truth is the tower is no longer accepting a connection from LTE devices (I used the HManger app to check). I get 5 bars and over a period of 3 weeks could not download 1kb. I have resorted to moving the router outside the premises to connect to another tower just to be able to even use it.

5G sounds great on paper but the consequences are going to be bad for everyone.

Yeah its killing the rain experience, right now there is no difference in using rain and cellc from my area

I am having the same experience as you and mine started on the 7th this month, The spot where i used to put my router had 40-50Mbps downloads. But now it totally does not work, can't even get 1kb just like you. Had to move it to another spot which atleast gets 10-20Mbps on a good day.

Rain knows this problem but they simply don't care. Their customers don't matter anymore when it comes to their reputation of launching the first 5G network in Africa.

This is South Africa where companies sell you a service even if it does not work the way they said it would and they get away with it without any consequences and accountability.

 

[Zurg]

Yeah its killing the rain experience, right now there is no difference in using rain and cellc from my area

I am having the same experience as you and mine started on the 7th this month, The spot where i used to put my router had 40-50Mbps downloads. But now it totally does not work, can't even get 1kb just like you. Had to move it to another spot which atleast gets 10-20Mbps on a good day.

Rain knows this problem but they simply don't care. Their customers don't matter anymore when it comes to their reputation of launching the first 5G network in Africa.

This is South Africa where companies sell you a service even if it does not work the way they said it would and they get away with it without any consequences and accountability.

Cancel your service we all knew it was only a matter of time before Rain went to ****. Guess it's time to jump ship.

 

[TheSentinel]

Cancel your service we all knew it was only a matter of time before Rain went to ****. Guess it's time to jump ship.

Jump to which network? They are all expensive or slow & capped, and i am already used to the uncapped life.

 

[Speedster]

Jump to which network? They are all expensive or slow & capped, and i am already used to the uncapped life.

Please cancel. The more moaners who jump ship, the less congestion for the rest of us

 

[Napalm]

More data's for the rest of the peeps

 

[TheSentinel]

Please cancel. The more moaners who jump ship, the less congestion for the rest of us

Stupidity like this is what makes network operators not give a damn about upgrading their networks. People just accept mediocrity from South African ISPs and are happy to pay premium for it so they don't have incentive to upgrade their networks?

Many of you don't have 5G in your areas yet so keep laughing. But just hope you get to upgrade to 5G before this affects you too.

 

[Speedster]

Stupidity like this is what makes network operators not give a damn about upgrading their networks. People just accept mediocrity from South African ISPs and are happy to pay premium for it so they don't have incentive to upgrade their networks?

Many of you don't have 5G in your areas yet so keep laughing. But just hope you get to upgrade to 5G before this affects you too.

No. Stupidity is thinking that moaning on a forum will bring about any change. If the service doesn't work for you, take your money to a service that does. I'm certainly not paying a premium for rain, in fact they are easily the cheapest option for me.

 

[TheSentinel]

No. Stupidity is thinking that moaning on a forum will bring about any change. If the service doesn't work for you, take your money to a service that does. I'm certainly not paying a premium for rain, in fact they are easily the cheapest option for me.

In my post there is no moaning, i am sharing info so that people can understand what is happening to their Rain experience since i saw many people complain about the same thing i was experiencing. So people like you who are not experiencing that come here to drag us down for outlining the sudden speed problems rain has. That is stupid, this was not intended for you who have no problem with slow internet speeds.

So if you are not experience speed drop with your rain then go boast about that on the speedtests forum.

 

[Dianysis]

Just ordered a Rain sim card on Friday...
Hope the performance I get is decent.
Some of these speedtests are scary.