{"id":139790,"date":"2015-09-29T13:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=139790"},"modified":"2015-10-05T17:59:49","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T15:59:49","slug":"cell-c-lte-tested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/139790-cell-c-lte-tested.html","title":{"rendered":"Cell C LTE tested"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cell C will launch its LTE network on 1 October 2015, along with a number of promotions to mark the occasion.<\/p>\n

Although the official launch has not taken place, Cell C\u2019s LTE network is live for\u00a0subscribers whose SIMs have been provisioned to access it.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It kept 5MHz of spectrum in the 2,100 band for 3G subscribers, but the rest it has used for LTE.<\/p>\n

This means that to use LTE on Cell C, you will need a device that supports frequencies in 2,100MHz, also called Band 1.<\/p>\n

Devices at our disposal that supported Cell C\u2019s LTE network were the ZTE Blade V6 and LG G4. We were also able to conduct speed tests at Cell C\u2019s HQ on a Samsung Galaxy S6.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Cell<\/a>

Cell C LTE speed test from a Samsung Galaxy S6<\/p><\/div>\n

War Drive<\/h3>\n

Despite not being able to squeeze the best performance out of Cell C\u2019s LTE network, the\u00a0LG G4 managed to achieve respectable speeds.<\/p>\n

Driving from Cell C\u2019s headquarters in Buccleuch to Monte Casino, the phone dropped back to the HSPA network once.<\/p>\n

Speed tests conducted in traffic jams yielded download rates of between 12.74Mbps<\/strong> and 38.55Mbps<\/strong>, with the average around the 20Mbps mark. Upload speeds were steady at around 20Mbps.<\/p>\n

Inside Monte Casino, speeds varied wildly between 4.64Mbps and 21.54Mbps – depending on the location and time.<\/p>\n

All speed tests were conducted from Ookla\u2019s Android app against Cell C\u2019s server in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n

Videos, browsing<\/h3>\n

To see how Cell C\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

YouTube videos streamed in 720p and 1080p without buffering.<\/p>\n

At the location we tested inside Monte Casino, speeds were not steady enough to stream 2K or 4K content without stuttering, though.<\/p>\n

Ping tests<\/h3>\n
\"Cell<\/a>

Cell C LTE ping to Google<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Cell<\/a>

Cell C LTE ping to Reddit<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Cell<\/a>

Cell C LTE ping to MyBroadband<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Cell<\/a>

Cell C LTE ping to BBC<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Cell<\/a>

Cell C LTE ping to CNN<\/p><\/div>\n

Testing pings to various websites showed that Cell C is hitting various local caches, including Google and the content delivery network serving Reddit.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t look like Cell C is pulling from the content delivery network MyBroadband uses, which has nodes in Teraco\u2019s data centres.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong>\u00a0The high latency between Cell C and MyBroadband appears to have been an issue at the\u00a0content delivery network and not Cell C, and was subsequently rectified.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer:<\/strong> Cell C provided us\u00a0with a ZTE Blade V6 and a SIM with 10GB of data with which to test its network. We\u00a0used\u00a0almost 4GB of data in the speed tests alone.<\/em><\/p>\n

More on Cell C\u2019s LTE network<\/h3>\n

Cell C LTE contract and prepaid device deals<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Crazy Cell C LTE data launch deal announced<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C launches Wi-Fi Calling<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C LTE network launch announced<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is how Cell C\u2019s new LTE network performs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":139724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[355,35,18116],"class_list":["post-139790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-long-term-evolution-lte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139790"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139790"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140882,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139790\/revisions\/140882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}