Rain denies throttling 5G speeds on Premium package

[Hanno Labuschagne]

Rain denies throttling 5G speeds on Premium package

Customers on Rain’s 5G premium package are accusing the operator of throttling their connection speed – a claim the company vehemently denies.

Rain launched its Unlimited Home 5G Premium package in September 2019, promising “unlimited” and “ultra fast” 5G download speeds for R999 per month.

The company is also offering a more affordable Unlimited Home 5G Standard product with speeds throttled to 30Mbps and limiting streaming to 720p.

 

[ProfA]

LOL'cano

 

[Johnatan56]

They don't need to throttle it, congestion does it for them.

Haven't read the article, but they definitely do shape, VPN traffic. That directly contradicts that unlimited.

 

[Apogee]

That is the unexplainable nature of a wireless connection.

You can rarely control the outcome and stability of the speed.

If you want stable, go with cable.

 

[cavedog]

The new towers that come online is an issue. The CPE sometimes prefer a tower further away and that causes the drop in speeds. The website does not update with this change immediately and still shows you are connected to the tower closest to you but it's not.

I think Rain needs to work with Huawei to implement a way to lock to towers via the dashboard especially since they are offering this a fixed broadband solution. That or they need to densify way more to make sure the average distance that clients are from a 5G tower is 500m or less and then naturally the speed and congestion issues will be gone.

 

[Solitude]

Here by me congestion is a problem. It will be blazingly fast in the morning but in the evenings the speed drops considerably.

 

[Illegal Allien]

Having never ever had a speed above 20Mbps, I kind of wonder what experiencing 100Mbps+ feels like. Is this just a novelty the first few days and you get jaded?

 

[Mr Scratch]

The new towers that come online is an issue. The CPE sometimes prefer a tower further away and that causes the drop in speeds. The website does not update with this change immediately and still shows you are connected to the tower closest to you but it's not.

I think Rain needs to work with Huawei to implement a way to lock to towers via the dashboard especially since they are offering this a fixed broadband solution. That or they need to densify way more to make sure the average distance that clients are from a 5G tower is 500m or less and then naturally the speed and congestion issues will be gone.

Ok but how does this explain the test router being fine

 

[Gtx Gaming]

Having never ever had a speed above 20Mbps, I kind of wonder what experiencing 100Mbps+ feels like. Is this just a novelty the first few days and you get jaded?

Just get supersonic fixed lte then you could probably reach 100mbps, if you use b618 or b818

 

[Johnatan56]

Having never ever had a speed above 20Mbps, I kind of wonder what experiencing 100Mbps+ feels like. Is this just a novelty the first few days and you get jaded?

Not ever really jaded.
It gives the ability for someone in a friend group in the morning or lunch time to say let's play x, and everyone can have it downloaded if they start it up when they get home and have dinner, by the time dinner is done most games are downloaded.

 

[r00igev@@r]

Damn strange troubleshooting mechanisms for an operator. Sounds like the are clueless. Sounds like interference and packet loss to me and their equipment should be able to identify that easily.
But in this case assumption and the MyBB speedtest isn't what they should be using. Can't they afford a spectrum analyzer?

 

[cavedog]

Ok but how does this explain the test router being fine

I think that question should be directed to the vendor Huawei.

I have Rain 5G and tested with 2 CPEs next to each other. They had both different Cell IDs. I'm not sure if it's random, signal related or load balancing but 2 routers right next to each other with the identical settings connect to different towers. Swapping sims made no difference at all.

 

[Kawak]

You darn peasants are beneath me, an all you can eat buffet is not gourmet, you get what you pay, let them eat cake.

 

[Kawak]

I think that question should be directed to the vendor Huawei.

I have Rain 5G and tested with 2 CPEs next to each other. They had both different Cell IDs. I'm not sure if it's random, signal related or load balancing but 2 routers right next to each other with the identical settings connect to different towers. Swapping sims made no difference at all.

My understanding is, being a fixed product, a sim is locked onto a tower, Rain call center also mentions this to me quite a few times when I was fighting them, I ended up canceling after they won't fix the tower closest to me and I had to keep driving with a backup battery bank to the next tower while being promised a call from technical for weeks.

 

[ProfA]

Award winning journalism (advert writers). Why not ask them why if they throttled speeds to 30Mbs, they throttle streaming to 720p when 30Mbs is more than enough to stream 4k?

 

[blunt]

Rain told MyBroadband its network was managed to ensure all customers received good experiences in line with their product selection.

This is just a different way of saying they throttle, no?

 

[Mr Scratch]

Damn strange troubleshooting mechanisms for an operator. Sounds like the are clueless. Sounds like interference and packet loss to me and their equipment should be able to identify that easily.
But in this case assumption and the MyBB speedtest isn't what they should be using. Can't they afford a spectrum analyzer?

mybb speedtests are gospel

 

[Mr Scratch]

This is just a different way of saying they throttle, no?

yes they're hiding behind semantics just like Vodacom

 

[shearder]

Sounds like Telkom a few years ago. I tried lte+ the guy came, did a demo and speeds were great. I signed up and I was getting 20mbs and then it fived below 1mbs then they same to test and used my router and then said they were upgrading the tower and have no idea when it will be fixed. I cancelled the contact

 

[The Jam]

They don't need to throttle it, congestion does it for them.

Haven't read the article, but they definitely do shape, VPN traffic. That directly contradicts that unlimited.

Rain technician's router got 400Mbps (same make and model), clients router 100mbps. Same location.
Maybe RAIN needs to rethink it's reliance on Huawei hardware.