Vodacom HSUPA tested
Vodacom recently launched its much anticipated High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) service, complementing its 3.6Mbps HSDPA offering. The service promises uplink speeds in excess of 1Mbps, making the service more responsive and improving the general Internet experience.
The HSUPA service comes free with any 3.6 HSDPA profile which in turn costs an additional R49 per month for an upgrade from the standard 1.8 Mbps HSDPA offering.
Actual performance
As with most best-effort services the advertised speeds and actual performance of the service can vary significantly.
We did three sets of speed and latency tests to establish whether the new HSUPA service is worth it. It should be noted that these tests were performed after hours and over the weekend to minimise the effect of network congestion. (More comprehensive testing will be performed in future).
Local download speeds varied between 2 546Kbps and 231Kbps, with an average local downlink speed of 1 682 Kbps. In the local upload department speeds were very consistent between 1 141Kbps and 1 240Kbps, averaging out at 1 171 Kbps.
International download speeds peaked at 1 656Kbps with a low of 464Kbps and an average of 1 069 Kbps. International upload speeds varied between 647Kbps and 118Kbps with an average upload speed of 351Kbps.
International latency was impressively low for a wireless service with an average ping time to Google of below 300ms and below 400ms to BBC. Locally ping times were around the 100ms mark.
Overall the Internet felt more responsive on the new HSUPA profile.
Value for money
Many current 1.8Mbps HSDPA subscribers may ask themselves whether it is worth R49 to upgrade their downlink speed to 3.6Mbps and their uplink speeds from the current 384Kbps to 1Mbps+.
For a 500MB or lower monthly usage limit it is most likely overkill, but for higher usage limits, typically 2GB or more, it is certainly a worthwhile investment.
Just like the upgrade from DSL 512 to DSL 4Mbps, the difference in speed is easy to notice and the overall Internet experience far better than on the lower speed profiles.
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