{"id":84889,"date":"2013-08-22T06:57:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T04:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=84889"},"modified":"2013-08-22T08:22:39","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T06:22:39","slug":"neotel-lte-tested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/84889-neotel-lte-tested.html","title":{"rendered":"Neotel LTE tested"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neotel<\/a> launched its commercial LTE<\/a> service today, offering 2Mbps, 5Mbps, and 10Mbps speeds with uncapped data.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Neotel\u2019s LTE service is uncapped and unshaped, and its priced at R999 for a 2Mbps service, R1,799 for 5Mbps and R2,899 for 10Mbps.<\/p>\n

Neotel LTE tested<\/h3>\n

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

The lack of coverage meant that the standard Huawei B593 LTE router, which sits inside the office, would not work.<\/p>\n

\"Huawei<\/a>

Huawei B593 LTE CPE<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Huawei<\/a>

Huawei B593 LTE CPE display panel<\/p><\/div>\n

To overcome the coverage challenge, a hi-gain external omnidirectional antenna was installed outside the office.<\/p>\n

The antenna installation was quick, and because it is relative small it is not too unsightly.<\/p>\n

\"Outdoor<\/a>

Outdoor LTE antenna<\/p><\/div>\n

Performance<\/h3>\n

As mentioned, the MyBroadband office was not well covered by Neotel\u2019s LTE network, which means that the performance might be expected to be sub-par. However, the performance was surprisingly good considering the coverage challenge.<\/p>\n

Download speeds ranged between 2Mbps and 3Mbps, while upload speeds were very consistent at around 800kbps.<\/p>\n

\"Neotel<\/a>

Neotel LTE speed tests<\/p><\/div>\n

Latency to local servers typically ranged between 15ms and 30ms, with the usual spikes associated with a wireless service.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Neotel<\/a>

Neotel LTE latency<\/p><\/div>\n

We used Neotel\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For day to day online tasks and general Internet usage Neotel\u2019s LTE service proved to be on par with, or better than most broadband services currently available in the country.<\/p>\n

Neotel LTE articles<\/h3>\n

Neotel uncapped LTE launched<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom CEO\u2019s strategy explains Neotel acquisition plans<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom last man standing in Neotel acquisition?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neotel launched its new LTE service today; MyBroadband tested the service to see how it performed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[35,2490,107,19677],"class_list":["post-84889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","tag-headline","tag-lte","tag-neotel","tag-neotel-lte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84889"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84941,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84889\/revisions\/84941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}