Telkom 3G any good for gaming?

[Scotty28]

Hi guys I've recently moved to Kimberley and been told that I cannot get ADSL. I enjoy online gaming and was looking at 3G as an option. Is there terrible lag with telkom or should I go somewhere else? I've heard satellite Internet has terrible ping. Pease, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Rickster]

Hi guys I've recently moved to Kimberley and been told that I cannot get ADSL. I enjoy online gaming and was looking at 3G as an option. Is there terrible lag with telkom or should I go somewhere else? I've heard satellite Internet has terrible ping. Pease, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

It depends how utilised the tower is and signal strength, I suggest you buy a gig from MTN and telkom and test the pings.

I get about 100ms ping on 3G in my area with full strength.


Have you asked about LTE?

 

[Johnatan56]

It depends how utilised the tower is and signal strength, I suggest you buy a gig from MTN and telkom and test the pings.

I get about 100ms ping on 3G in my area with full strength.


Have you asked about LTE?

+1
If anyone can offer you LTE instead you should go for it rather than 3G, it is a lot more stable latency wise, a lower latency and a faster throughput.

 

[nicbst]

Hi guys I've recently moved to Kimberley and been told that I cannot get ADSL. I enjoy online gaming and was looking at 3G as an option. Is there terrible lag with telkom or should I go somewhere else? I've heard satellite Internet has terrible ping. Pease, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I've been using Telkom Mobile for gaming since around 2011 iirc, when they used to be called 8ta. It's 3G, and to US servers I'm used to 300ms latency on a good day, around 400 on bad ones. EU servers are way less, sometimes down to 200 or so.

Been using MTN's LTE by tethering my phone lately when gaming, as pings to the US then drop to 280 and it's very consistent, which is heavenly. I also seem to suffer from less packet loss. If I could advise you, stay away from 3G and get LTE. I'm getting Telkom LTE next week, uncapped. So looking forward to that.

 

[Scotty28]

Thank you so much for the help! Telkom cannot offer LTE in the Northern Cape according to them but I get quite good LTE signal here with MTN. Would using my phone as a hotspot be the best option then? I'll try it a post the ping

 

[Johnatan56]

Thank you so much for the help! Telkom cannot offer LTE in the Northern Cape according to them but I get quite good LTE signal here with MTN. Would using my phone as a hotspot be the best option then? I'll try it a post the ping

You might want to get an Axxess/Afrihost mobile data then.
As long as your phone supports the LTE bands you can do so. I do the same at my uni (they block non-http traffic).

 

[Scotty28]

I did a speed test on my phone with LTE and got a ping of 37 which seems very good to me. I used my girlfriends phone with 3G on Vodacom and got a download of 7mbps and ping of 38. I'm not sure what route to follow now... I'm scared I go the Telkom 3G route and get terrible latency, but on the other hand, mobile data is really expensive for a small amount of data. Any ideas?

 

[Rickster]

I did a speed test on my phone with LTE and got a ping of 37 which seems very good to me. I used my girlfriends phone with 3G on Vodacom and got a download of 7mbps and ping of 38. I'm not sure what route to follow now... I'm scared I go the Telkom 3G route and get terrible latency, but on the other hand, mobile data is really expensive for a small amount of data. Any ideas?

Afrihost mobile

 

[Scotty28]

I'll give it a look. Thanks for all the help guys Much appreciated

 

[nicbst]

I did a speed test on my phone with LTE and got a ping of 37 which seems very good to me. I used my girlfriends phone with 3G on Vodacom and got a download of 7mbps and ping of 38. I'm not sure what route to follow now... I'm scared I go the Telkom 3G route and get terrible latency, but on the other hand, mobile data is really expensive for a small amount of data. Any ideas?

That ping was local, try selecting a US server and it should be around 280ms. From my experience (I have also used Vodacom for gaming when my 8ta cap ran out, work SIM. ) the three major players (MTN, Vodacom and Telkom Mobile) have their ups and downs. For instance, one evening telkom might be lagging and vodacom is fine, then vodacom lags while mtn is fine, etc. Can't really have a consistent ping with just one SIM, in my experience. I'm in Pretoria though so congestion might have been responsible some of the time.