Request for rain support – unusable for 6 weeks.

ScrooV

ScrooV

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This is a last-ditch plea to rain_support - please can you request a special investigation - or at least see if there is anything that could be done to allow a usable service? (We seem to have been diverted to an unusable tower).

We are in an area with no Fibre or ADSL access, so rain was a brilliant product on launch. For nearly 2 years, whilst not perfect, was very acceptable.

Now it's completely unusable and has been like this for nearly 6 weeks. Phone support telling us to reboot the router does not help. The best hope we had was that whatever issues were at rain would eventually be resolved. Now I think we shall have to cancel and look at perhaps satellite internet, unless you can help.

We used to get between 4mbs - and 15mbs until switching to the 24/7 product - initially we saw between 4mbs and 10mbs (acceptable and usable).

For six weeks it has been 90% unusable with speeds between 0.01Mbs and 0.1mbs - and the very rare occasional max of 6mbs.

We have tried everything from:
* Switching between rain sim cards (we have two different 24/7 4G accounts, one intended for mobile now paused while unusable)
* 1000's of router resets / reboots - after a reboot we may get a few minutes of connectivity until message says" No Service: Connected: "
* Replacing the router with same model
* Purchase of external Poynting Antennae - no difference, returned antennae.
* Regular testing of all available router channels and frequencies using LTE_Tools
* We have only tried two identical models of the Huawei B315s-936 (lacks the B38 2600 frequencies - will a router with that frequency help?)

Biggest change we have seen in last 6 weeks:
We used to connect to Cell_ID: 233512451 PCI:44 (Good Tower / Good Speeds)
https://imgur.com/Dpwgzpt

Now we can only connect to Cell_ID: 63452518 PCI:155 (90% unusable) (Bad Tower, Very unreliable)
https://imgur.com/nz9wpPt

Have we been removed access from tower Cell_ID 233512451?
Was the hardware at that tower replaced causing the start of our issues?
Is the tower over subscribed?
Are we being heavily shaped or diverted making the product unusable?

The signal strength whilst not great, has not deteriorated over the last few years - only since The Cell:ID changed to Cell_ID 233512451.

Cell_ID: 233512451 signal strength was between 2 and 3 bars (RSRP: about -110dBM, SINR: around 4dB) - best connection using routers standard "external" antennas
Cell_ID: 63452518 signal strength between 1 and 2 bars (RSRP: about -115dBM, SINR: around -5dB) - only ever connects using routers "built-in" antennas

Please help!

At night (early hours) we will see on average between 0.5mbs - 1.0mbps - or "No Service: Connected”, with very occasional bursts of up to 6-7mbs

During the day - completely unusable - a single web page may take 10min and multiple refreshes to load (0.01mbs)
Speed tests generally fail 90% of attempts when connected.

Typical speeds from nearly 2 years ago:
https://imgur.com/hK5pgBT

(Successful) recent speed tests:
https://imgur.com/QZsSuLN

We are only 2km from closest tower, with another 3 within 5km (Lanseria, Gauteng area)
Please can I send you our email, location map screens, or any other required info that may aid investigation?

In desperation - thank you!
 
ScrooV said:
This is a last-ditch plea to rain_support - please can you request a special investigation - or at least see if there is anything that could be done to allow a usable service? (We seem to have been diverted to an unusable tower).

We are in an area with no Fibre or ADSL access, so rain was a brilliant product on launch. For nearly 2 years, whilst not perfect, was very acceptable.

Now it's completely unusable and has been like this for nearly 6 weeks. Phone support telling us to reboot the router does not help. The best hope we had was that whatever issues were at rain would eventually be resolved. Now I think we shall have to cancel and look at perhaps satellite internet, unless you can help.

We used to get between 4mbs - and 15mbs until switching to the 24/7 product - initially we saw between 4mbs and 10mbs (acceptable and usable).

For six weeks it has been 90% unusable with speeds between 0.01Mbs and 0.1mbs - and the very rare occasional max of 6mbs.

We have tried everything from:
* Switching between rain sim cards (we have two different 24/7 4G accounts, one intended for mobile now paused while unusable)
* 1000's of router resets / reboots - after a reboot we may get a few minutes of connectivity until message says" No Service: Connected: "
* Replacing the router with same model
* Purchase of external Poynting Antennae - no difference, returned antennae.
* Regular testing of all available router channels and frequencies using LTE_Tools
* We have only tried two identical models of the Huawei B315s-936 (lacks the B38 2600 frequencies - will a router with that frequency help?)

Biggest change we have seen in last 6 weeks:
We used to connect to Cell_ID: 233512451 PCI:44 (Good Tower / Good Speeds)
https://imgur.com/Dpwgzpt

Now we can only connect to Cell_ID: 63452518 PCI:155 (90% unusable) (Bad Tower, Very unreliable)
https://imgur.com/nz9wpPt

Have we been removed access from tower Cell_ID 233512451?
Was the hardware at that tower replaced causing the start of our issues?
Is the tower over subscribed?
Are we being heavily shaped or diverted making the product unusable?

The signal strength whilst not great, has not deteriorated over the last few years - only since The Cell:ID changed to Cell_ID 233512451.

Cell_ID: 233512451 signal strength was between 2 and 3 bars (RSRP: about -110dBM, SINR: around 4dB) - best connection using routers standard "external" antennas
Cell_ID: 63452518 signal strength between 1 and 2 bars (RSRP: about -115dBM, SINR: around -5dB) - only ever connects using routers "built-in" antennas

Please help!

At night (early hours) we will see on average between 0.5mbs - 1.0mbps - or "No Service: Connected”, with very occasional bursts of up to 6-7mbs

During the day - completely unusable - a single web page may take 10min and multiple refreshes to load (0.01mbs)
Speed tests generally fail 90% of attempts when connected.

Typical speeds from nearly 2 years ago:
https://imgur.com/hK5pgBT

(Successful) recent speed tests:
https://imgur.com/QZsSuLN

We are only 2km from closest tower, with another 3 within 5km (Lanseria, Gauteng area)
Please can I send you our email, location map screens, or any other required info that may aid investigation?

In desperation - thank you!
Click to expand...
Hi @ScrooV

May you please provide me with your email address via PM, let’s see what we can do for you
 
I actually asked my husband if he secretly typed this question. You basically described our entire experience with rain in the last 3 months. Their only solution is to reboot the router or move it???? And we were in Mitchells Plain Cape Town. Yet, when we used both Vodacom and MTN sims, connections were always above 7mbs. We eventually just said "You are the weakest link, goodbye rain. Had a good thing going, but something has changed in the last few months, and their failure to accept and fix the problem is frustrating. Hope you get yours sorted.
 
Nawaar said:
I actually asked my husband if he secretly typed this question. You basically described our entire experience with rain in the last 3 months. Their only solution is to reboot the router or move it???? And we were in Mitchells Plain Cape Town. Yet, when we used both Vodacom and MTN sims, connections were always above 7mbs. We eventually just said "You are the weakest link, goodbye rain. Had a good thing going, but something has changed in the last few months, and their failure to accept and fix the problem is frustrating. Hope you get yours sorted.
Click to expand...

I just posted here thinking mine was an exceptional case but it seems the horror stories about. Its sad because this was truly a great service but now is unusable.
 
Report Back:

Thank you rain_mobile - it took a a while, but finally the problem is resolved.

Michael S at rain was able to supply us with a B2338 router which allowed locking to a tower - the router is now installed, optimised and locked to a tower - we are now seeing 10Mbs up and down.

Thanks again for your help - we would have given up if you had not found us the right technician that understood the problem.
 
ScrooV said:
Report Back:

Thank you rain_mobile - it took a a while, but finally the problem is resolved.

Michael S at rain was able to supply us with a B2338 router which allowed locking to a tower - the router is now installed, optimised and locked to a tower - we are now seeing 10Mbs up and down.

Thanks again for your help - we would have given up if you had not found us the right technician that understood the problem.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the feedback.

I am glad that things are looking good.
 
ScrooV said:
Report Back:

Thank you rain_mobile - it took a a while, but finally the problem is resolved.

Michael S at rain was able to supply us with a B2338 router which allowed locking to a tower - the router is now installed, optimised and locked to a tower - we are now seeing 10Mbs up and down.

Thanks again for your help - we would have given up if you had not found us the right technician that understood the problem.
Click to expand...
I envy you. My problem is that I'm connected to a tower that is 4.9km away. I think that the tower is congested in any case. Meanwhile, 200 metres from our home, there's an unutilized Vodacom tower.

I've DMed my details to @rain_mobile, I'm hoping that rain would install a base station closer to our home. That could certainly improve my area's experience.
 
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