Broadband22.08.2013

Neotel LTE tested

Neotel launched its commercial LTE service today, offering 2Mbps, 5Mbps, and 10Mbps speeds with uncapped data.

Neotel said that its commercial offering is initially available in a concentrated area of Gauteng with 50 base stations, using spectrum on the 1,800MHz band.

Neotel’s LTE service is uncapped and unshaped, and its priced at R999 for a 2Mbps service, R1,799 for 5Mbps and R2,899 for 10Mbps.

Neotel LTE tested

Neotel provided MyBroadband with an LTE service to test, despite the fact that our office is not in a good coverage area.

The lack of coverage meant that the standard Huawei B593 LTE router, which sits inside the office, would not work.

Huawei B593 LTE CPE

Huawei B593 LTE CPE display panel

To overcome the coverage challenge, a hi-gain external omnidirectional antenna was installed outside the office.

The antenna installation was quick, and because it is relative small it is not too unsightly.

Outdoor LTE antenna

Performance

As mentioned, the MyBroadband office was not well covered by Neotel’s LTE network, which means that the performance might be expected to be sub-par. However, the performance was surprisingly good considering the coverage challenge.

Download speeds ranged between 2Mbps and 3Mbps, while upload speeds were very consistent at around 800kbps.

Neotel LTE speed tests

Latency to local servers typically ranged between 15ms and 30ms, with the usual spikes associated with a wireless service.

International latency ranged between 180ms (to the UK) and 300ms (to the US), depending on the destination server. The latency was very stable, which is not always expected from a wireless product.

Neotel LTE latency

We used Neotel’s LTE service for most of the day – instead of our usual load-balanced ADSL lines – and the performance was close to what we were used to.

MyBroadband journalist Jan Vermeulen was also able to do a few quick tests at the Neotel LTE launch event in Midrand where coverage was much better.

Under those conditions the service delivered speeds of 5Mbps and 10Mbps on local speed tests. On a 10Mbps account, tests to MyBroadband’s international Speedtest.net server achieved a download speed of just under 6Mbps.

For day to day online tasks and general Internet usage Neotel’s LTE service proved to be on par with, or better than most broadband services currently available in the country.