Telkom Slow 4G

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Blindwitness

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Hey guys. So I have a Huawei B618s with a Vodacom Sim on contract that I normally average 15-20Mbps speeds comfortably with sometimes hitting up to 50Mbps. After running out of data this month I decided I would try Telkom Mobile because their 4G only prepaid prices are very competitive compared to Vodacom's top up per gig. My B618s is connected to an Xpol-6-10M. I live in Palm Beach, KZN.

Popping the sim in and resetting the device, I get full signal on the 1800MHz band but the speeds during the day are poor. Getting 5Mbps down at best and but a solid 20Mbps up. I tested it after midnight last night and was getting very good speeds, similar to the experience on Vodacom. I had a very frustrating experience trying to speak to Telkom support. First spoke to them on chat and was told to reset the device and set it to manual network selection which I did but it made no difference. I then called Telkom and the agent basically told me that there is nothing they can do, the performance is what you get, end of story. This is very unsatisfactory and terrible customer service. They made no attempt to check that the performance was related to the network (it is cause I know what Im doing but had I been a layman it might be a different story) and just tried to get me off the line as fast as possible.

I think I'll just pay the extra to Vodacom next time because this customer service along with the poor speed of the connection and the hassle of getting a sim and swapping it all over is just not worth it.

Has anyone had anything similar?

Edit: So switching to 1800+2100Mhz with 2100Mhz upload seems to give me the best performance. 12.8Mbps down with 5.7Mbps up. Still its nothing compared to Vodacom at 1800Mhz.
 
Last edited:
Running on 2100Mhz must be in certain areas only it seems.
Telkom normally operates on 1800Mhz and 2300Mhz - you can set your router to use either band
or
You could set it to "4G only" and let it use carrier aggregation.

When doing your download test, you should see the Huawei router Homepage display 4G+
See if it helps.
 
Blindwitness said:
Hey guys. So I have a Huawei B618s with a Vodacom Sim on contract that I normally average 15-20Mbps speeds comfortably with sometimes hitting up to 50Mbps. After running out of data this month I decided I would try Telkom Mobile because their 4G only prepaid prices are very competitive compared to Vodacom's top up per gig. My B618s is connected to an Xpol-6-10M. I live in Palm Beach, KZN.

Popping the sim in and resetting the device, I get full signal on the 1800MHz band but the speeds during the day are poor. Getting 5Mbps down at best and but a solid 20Mbps up. I tested it after midnight last night and was getting very good speeds, similar to the experience on Vodacom. I had a very frustrating experience trying to speak to Telkom support. First spoke to them on chat and was told to reset the device and set it to manual network selection which I did but it made no difference. I then called Telkom and the agent basically told me that there is nothing they can do, the performance is what you get, end of story. This is very unsatisfactory and terrible customer service. They made no attempt to check that the performance was related to the network (it is cause I know what Im doing but had I been a layman it might be a different story) and just tried to get me off the line as fast as possible.

I think I'll just pay the extra to Vodacom next time because this customer service along with the poor speed of the connection and the hassle of getting a sim and swapping it all over is just not worth it.

Has anyone had anything similar?

Edit: So switching to 1800+2100Mhz with 2100Mhz upload seems to give me the best performance. 12.8Mbps down with 5.7Mbps up. Still its nothing compared to Vodacom at 1800Mhz.
Click to expand...
If you have the B618-22 it does not support Band40(2300Mhz)
Only the B618-65 does. For for Telkom you need the B615-65 one.

Over on the Telkom thread you see guys getting over 100Mbps.
 
Mr M said:
Running on 2100Mhz must be in certain areas only it seems.
Telkom normally operates on 1800Mhz and 2300Mhz - you can set your router to use either band
or
You could set it to "4G only" and let it use carrier aggregation.

When doing your download test, you should see the Huawei router Homepage display 4G+
See if it helps.
Click to expand...
So if we can set it to 2100 we will get something solid ?
 
"D" said:
Unfortunately not. It still propagates through the air, which is of course a gaseous substance.
Click to expand...
I don’t understand this I’m a little slow ... can you repeat that in English please ?
 
We have the inverse here.
My Telkom LTE sits at 34Mbps average download. Vodacom can't even climb to 10Mbps at times.
 
Maybe I'm just fortunate, but my Telkom LTE is minimum 70mbits always. I'm.in Pretoria though.
 
Try setting it to a specific band and then do a speed test after each config change.

Then change it to "4G Only" and see what the response it like.
 
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