Slow speeds in Pretoria

S

stcac980

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Equestria, Pretoria
Being the cautious person I am, last week I purchased a CellC prepaid card loaded 50 bucks to test before I commit. I tested it in my friends white speedstick device and was dumb struck with whoooosh when I saw 5.5 down and 2.7 up. I was even more delighted when I noticed that this was consistent over 2 days! Sold on the new whooooosh, I scrapped Telkom DSL and happily handed R1499 over to the wooosh vendor for a 2gb/pm speedstick deal.

I got home all starry eyed over my new next to dirt cheap whoosh and began speedtesting the bananas out my new white speedstick and was chuffed.

Then came Monday 27th. No more whooosh. 0.3 to 2.7 down, constant 2.5 up (I don't give a rats about the up speed) and shaky, shady and shoddy at best.

Posted a few rants on twitter on Monday and got the following dim response on Tuesday "Has the problem been sorted out?" I presumed this was the Trevor way of asking if the speeds were still bad. I replied in the negative and have yet to hear from them.

Anyone Else? Even outside PTA?

 
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One of the problems of cell networks, they get slower the more people are connected to the same tower. All wireless networks actually. Maybe you should mail them or see someone in a store directly? Also, Speed stick is an anti-perspirant.

Edit: Never mind, I see they actually call it a Speedstick on their website. It seems respecting trademarks just isn't Cell C's thing. First they steal the copyright symbol itself, then claim a standard which wasn't even finalised yet, now they call a wireless modem by another trade mark. Naughty naughty
 
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What OS are you running? I found that Vista somehow screws it up.

XP, Ubuntu/Linux and Windows7 all will work fine, except the abomination they call Vista.
 
Do you have a Ubuntu live CD from which you can boot and test? Preferably 10.10 or better.

The idea is to test it using a different OS - if you still get the same results then it's something else. But if you get better speeds with Ubuntu, then the problem might be with your Windows installation.

ps - the same happened to my Vista install - great speeds, then all of a sudden poor download speed and high upload speeds. Found that XP and Ubuntu doesn't share this anomaly.
 
your coverage on the map looks a little dodge. You're probably going to need an antenna of some sort to get a stable conn. Whats you signal strength when you get good and bad speeds?
 
I feel like bashing my head against the wall for being such an idiot and buying one of these "speedsticks". It is almost impossible to load a webpage and more often than not it will time out half way through and I'll have to reconnect. My 3G USB stick is showing solid blue, occasionally switching to light blue, and the speeds are...... Slower than EDGE! most of the time I sit on about 4kB/s and about 1% of the time I might get 400kB/s out of it.

And don't tell me some sop story that I must have patience with Cell C because their network isn't ready yet: WHY THE F%#K did they sell 3G sticks in the first place? My connection is less stable and more often than not slower than EDGE!
 
I feel like bashing my head against the wall for being such an idiot and buying one of these "speedsticks". It is almost impossible to load a webpage and more often than not it will time out half way through and I'll have to reconnect. My 3G USB stick is showing solid blue, occasionally switching to light blue, and the speeds are...... Slower than EDGE! most of the time I sit on about 4kB/s and about 1% of the time I might get 400kB/s out of it.

And don't tell me some sop story that I must have patience with Cell C because their network isn't ready yet: WHY THE F%#K did they sell 3G sticks in the first place? My connection is less stable and more often than not slower than EDGE!
 
Sasands said:
I feel like bashing my head against the wall for being such an idiot and buying one of these "speedsticks". It is almost impossible to load a webpage and more often than not it will time out half way through and I'll have to reconnect. My 3G USB stick is showing solid blue, occasionally switching to light blue, and the speeds are...... Slower than EDGE! most of the time I sit on about 4kB/s and about 1% of the time I might get 400kB/s out of it.

And don't tell me some sop story that I must have patience with Cell C because their network isn't ready yet: WHY THE F%#K did they sell 3G sticks in the first place? My connection is less stable and more often than not slower than EDGE!
Click to expand...

I feel like you, I've sent mine back already.
Call the tech support, and if you have the time & money try getting a 3g router/antenna.
In my case I would've done that but I got paid later this month, plus I'm waiting for adsl.
 
agreed, ADSL is the only way to do it. Earlier this month after lodging a complaint I got a call from somebody possibly from the technical department who gave me some story about how their network wasn't ready yet etc etc. I also said that my 3G stick was getting really hot, to the point that you almost couldn't pick it up, I was told that this is normal... IT ISN'T!!! when curcuits get hot they perform worse and get damaged. Huawei has made faulty products and clearly want to avoid the embarrasment of a recall. The network in my area is shocking. I am getting great signal, -75dBm yet I believe the signal tower is faulty. It keeps dropping calls and quite often when making or recieving a call you encounter terrible digital distortion. You have to hang up and call again. Cell C really isn't living up to their multi million rand marketing campaign.
 
MMk looks like I'm not alone. @jem I'm running on an external Omni from Poynting 98% signal. No response from CellC on Twitter, I did point them to this thread. When Trevor gets back from Seychelles I'll call him :p

Anyway have a happy new year guys. Here's a bit of sluggish whoooooosh for everyone.

 
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