Vodacom 7.2 Mbps HSDPA

With these speeds one can expect to complete a 1 GB download in around 30 minutes, significantly faster than using a 4 Mbps ADSL service
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R 289 in 30 minutes, nice! Effectively forcing the customer to BUY MORE bandwidth.

If you are upgrading your "backhaul" why not do something useful like double the data allocations VC?

Oh wait, yes that would mean less money, sorry mistook you for a consumer-centric organisation.

We don't need faster, we need to be able to USE IT MORE!
 
While I'm not about to say that Vodacom does not make plenty money, nor say that I'm happy with my Vodacom bill. Bandwidth coming into ZA is controlled by only one beast. Vodacom is doing something about the one thing they (sort of) have control over; speed.

Well done guys! Can anyone say 0.3Mbps from the beast?
 
We've discovered with the 7.2 service that the speed tests do not tell the true story anymore and seems to break down at readings exceeding 2Mb/s.

As rpm indicated, by using a multi-threaded download manager we can sustain off-net (i.e. from the internet, not from Vodacom's network) speeds of over 5Mb/s easily peaking at 7Mb/s!

To test the 'speed stability', we downloaded 5 different Linux ISO images and 5 versions of OpenOffice concurrently! Over the whole download period the speeds averaged 5.2Mb/s. And the DU Meter graphs was pretty flat.

This was in office hours, on a very busy tower.

What I've found myself doing on this service is not to download and save a file before executing it, but to rather execute it straight from the server as you're beginning to see the same response as if the file is local.

By the way, all these tests (including rpm's) were done on an E220 upgraded to 7.2 firmware. I got similar results on an E272.
 
vodacom3g said:
We've discovered with the 7.2 service that the speed tests do not tell the true story anymore and seems to break down at readings exceeding 2Mb/s.

As rpm indicated, by using a multi-threaded download manager we can sustain off-net (i.e. from the internet, not from Vodacom's network) speeds of over 5Mb/s easily peaking at 7Mb/s!

To test the 'speed stability', we downloaded 5 different Linux ISO images and 5 versions of OpenOffice concurrently! Over the whole download period the speeds averaged 5.2Mb/s. And the DU Meter graphs was pretty flat.

This was in office hours, on a very busy tower.

What I've found myself doing on this service is not to download and save a file before executing it, but to rather execute it straight from the server as you're beginning to see the same response as if the file is local.

By the way, all these tests (including rpm's) were done on an E220 upgraded to 7.2 firmware. I got similar results on an E272.
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Is a Vodacom version ready for download yet?:)
 
carudden said:
While I'm not about to say that Vodacom does not make plenty money, nor say that I'm happy with my Vodacom bill. Bandwidth coming into ZA is controlled by only one beast.
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I disagree with you regarding the pricing. Since ISPs can buy bandwidth at less than R50/gb that will definitely means that Vodacom can buy it at least for the same money. Charging like R100/gb after your 2gb seems fair to me.

Me also thinks we need more, not faster...
 
Saule said:
Is a Vodacom version ready for download yet?:)
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No, not yet. I've managed to brick an E220 by upgrading it, so we're not keen to release it yet.

Could've just been the one incident but we're going to err on the cautious side and test some more.

Remember, you'll gain nothing by upgrading your modem as you also need to be provisioned for the 7.2 service, in the same way that you were provisioned for the 3.6 service.

And we'll only be provisioning when the backhaul starts approaching something decent.

So please do not load just any firmware you find on the net.
 
zamicro said:
Since ISPs can buy bandwidth at less than R50/gb that will definitely means that Vodacom can buy it at least for the same money.
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Correct, and again I don't want to look like I'm defending a company I have to pay +-R1000 to every month on my cell bills, but we cannot compare the ISP's to Vodacom, It's costs loads to run each of the towers (a scary amount), an expense the ISPs simply do not have to incur. AND mobile data is meant to be considered a 'luxury'.
 
I have seldom seen a company whose ideas agree with mine. I am talking about waiting to improve backhaul before launching commercially...and that is what VC has done. And if the competition is going to try to fool people by launching an unrealistic service, you just hold live trials to prove that you also have the capability...and leave it at that. Well done Vodacom.

On the other hand however, Vodacom has to clarify how it intends to differentiate wimax from hsdpa. From what they say, wimax will be an adsl replacement with all those wonderful speeds as touted. Now hsdpa is promising to offer the same results and it soo...expensive. What the customer wants is good internet access, the technology used is of little importance as long as the service is good.

This boils down to two questions really:-
1. Is VC wimax performance significantly lower than VC hsdpa (in reality), or are they on par?
2. Assuming they are on par, is Vodacom intending to significantly bring down the price of hsdpa? (At the current rate and the new speeds, the costs are plain crazy i.e. R578 per hour!)
 
if Vodacom can offer something similar to IS offering of uncapped at a certain rate it will be great. Vodacom should also offer Static IP addresses on the modems.
 
eltherza said:
sad that wireless is now faster than telkoms wired solutions :(
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We actually had a similar situation a while ago when ADSL was at 1Mb/s and we launched HSDPA 1.8.

It did not take Telkom long to launch 4Mb/s after that and I often wondered if there was any correlation.

Now with HSDPA 7.2, it'll be interesting to see if 8Mb/s ADSL is on the way.
 
all this great speed for extra, i'll pass.
 
brilliantt said:
I have seldom seen a company whose ideas agree with mine. I am talking about waiting to improve backhaul before launching commercially...and that is what VC has done. And if the competition is going to try to fool people by launching an unrealistic service, you just hold live trials to prove that you also have the capability...and leave it at that. Well done Vodacom.

On the other hand however, Vodacom has to clarify how it intends to differentiate wimax from hsdpa. From what they say, wimax will be an adsl replacement with all those wonderful speeds as touted. Now hsdpa is promising to offer the same results and it soo...expensive. What the customer wants is good internet access, the technology used is of little importance as long as the service is good.

This boils down to two questions really:-
1. Is VC wimax performance significantly lower than VC hsdpa (in reality), or are they on par?
2. Assuming they are on par, is Vodacom intending to significantly bring down the price of hsdpa? (At the current rate and the new speeds, the costs are plain crazy i.e. R578 per hour!)
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You're right in that the positioning between WiMAX and HSPA must be clearly stated and communicated.

I assume we'll see this information when Vodacom Business launches later this month.

One differentiator I can think of is the symmetrical nature of WiMAX which is often critical for businesses.
 
rpm, have you had any feedback or have you been able to do a similar test on MTN's 7.2 service?
 
Nice work vodacom! Lets hope MTN follows suit. What would be nice is if Voda provided the areas which are running on 7.2MB so I know weather to update my firmware or not :)
 
Mike_De_Lange said:
Nice work vodacom! Lets hope MTN follows suit. What would be nice is if Voda provided the areas which are running on 7.2MB so I know weather to update my firmware or not :)
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Mike, as indicated above it won't help to update your firmware until such time as we provision your data sim for the service.

Even if you are in range of a tower with sufficient backhaul, you'll be limited to the 3.6 service.
 
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