Cell C LTE tested
Cell C will launch its LTE network on 1 October 2015, along with a number of promotions to mark the occasion.
Although the official launch has not taken place, Cell C’s LTE network is live for subscribers whose SIMs have been provisioned to access it.
To roll out LTE, Cell C said it migrated its 3G subscribers from its 1,800MHz spectrum to the 900MHz band, and its 2G subscribers from 2,100MHz to 1,800Mhz.
It kept 5MHz of spectrum in the 2,100 band for 3G subscribers, but the rest it has used for LTE.
This means that to use LTE on Cell C, you will need a device that supports frequencies in 2,100MHz, also called Band 1.
Devices at our disposal that supported Cell C’s LTE network were the ZTE Blade V6 and LG G4. We were also able to conduct speed tests at Cell C’s HQ on a Samsung Galaxy S6.
We were able to achieve much faster speeds on the Galaxy S6 than on the other two devices. Cell C is aware of the issue and is looking into it.
Cell C LTE speed test from a Samsung Galaxy S6
War Drive
Despite not being able to squeeze the best performance out of Cell C’s LTE network, the LG G4 managed to achieve respectable speeds.
Driving from Cell C’s headquarters in Buccleuch to Monte Casino, the phone dropped back to the HSPA network once.
Speed tests conducted in traffic jams yielded download rates of between 12.74Mbps and 38.55Mbps, with the average around the 20Mbps mark. Upload speeds were steady at around 20Mbps.
Inside Monte Casino, speeds varied wildly between 4.64Mbps and 21.54Mbps – depending on the location and time.
All speed tests were conducted from Ookla’s Android app against Cell C’s server in Johannesburg.
Videos, browsing
To see how Cell C’s new LTE network handled real-world usage, we tethered the LG G4 to a laptop via USB and browsed the web and watched some videos.
YouTube videos streamed in 720p and 1080p without buffering.
At the location we tested inside Monte Casino, speeds were not steady enough to stream 2K or 4K content without stuttering, though.
Ping tests
Cell C LTE ping to Google
Cell C LTE ping to Reddit
Cell C LTE ping to MyBroadband
Cell C LTE ping to BBC
Cell C LTE ping to CNN
Testing pings to various websites showed that Cell C is hitting various local caches, including Google and the content delivery network serving Reddit.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Cell C is pulling from the content delivery network MyBroadband uses, which has nodes in Teraco’s data centres.
Update: The high latency between Cell C and MyBroadband appears to have been an issue at the content delivery network and not Cell C, and was subsequently rectified.
Disclaimer: Cell C provided us with a ZTE Blade V6 and a SIM with 10GB of data with which to test its network. We used almost 4GB of data in the speed tests alone.
More on Cell C’s LTE network
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Crazy Cell C LTE data launch deal announced
Cell C LTE network launch announced
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