Telkom New 1800MHz LTE

cavedog

cavedog

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So from what I have tested so far,

Uncapped and prepaid simcards works on both 1800MHz and 2300MHz.

Towers can have both frequency running at the same time.

There are tons of extra towers now enabled for FDD-LTE 1800MHz but not TDD-LTE 2300MHz check with a phone that supports LTE band 3 which is MOST phones sold by MTN and Vodacom as it is the same frequency their LTE.

Tested both frequencies and 1800MHz is significantly slower due to the lag of spectrum I would imagine.

Very interesting developments. :)
 
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Personally I think it is a good and bad move.

Now suddenly all the LTE enabled phones will be loaded on the towers all shared with the capped, uncapped and prepaid LTE users.

If your tower was not congested before well brace yourself because the congestion is incoming!

Good thing is now that if you have a LTE phone on band 3 you will have access to LTE but won't be that fast because of congestion and very limited refarmed spectrum.
 
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So with even more users being able to connect with LTE the back haul from the towers will be even more congested this is not looking good for us
 
Dennis said:
So with even more users being able to connect with LTE the back haul from the towers will be even more congested this is not looking good for us ��
Click to expand...

On a positive though the 1800Mhz band has very limited frequency so they probably won't be able to bring a tower to it's knees if it's a tower that offer both bands. It will slow the 1800MHz band down a lot I reckon if I understand it correctly so I stand to be corrected on the above but no way the 1800MHz would have equal amount of spectrum as the 2300MHz band
 
cavedog said:
On a positive though the 1800Mhz band has very limited frequency so they probably won't be able to bring a tower to it's knees if it's a tower that offer both bands. It will slow the 1800MHz band down a lot I reckon if I understand it correctly so I stand to be corrected on the above but no way the 1800MHz would have equal amount of spectrum as the 2300MHz band
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Also remember, 1800MHz in general will give you a better signal strength then 2300MHz. So your router might see 1800MHz as a better option, which in turn with limited spectrum on 1800MHz would mean you are connecting to a sector with reduced capacity, so the sector will be more congested than a 2300MHz sector running at 4 times the spectrum.
 
Dennis said:
So with even more users being able to connect with LTE the back haul from the towers will be even more congested this is not looking good for us
Click to expand...
They can lower priority of uncapped traffic, so when congestion hit a trigger point, they will be cut off. Total throughput of the tower will increase, as LTE capable devices use radio resources in more efficient way. It is a good news for everybody if implemented properly.

As for better penetration of 1800MHz, it is not a big difference comparing to 900MHz vs 2100MHz.
 
My iPad 4 just got lte for the first time.

Nothing to write home about imho

0fc7222fe37fb2dc38ac19735ec3db76.jpg
 
Sinbad said:
My iPad 4 just got lte for the first time.

Nothing to write home about imho

0fc7222fe37fb2dc38ac19735ec3db76.jpg
Click to expand...

Yeah it's pretty much going to be like that for most people when connecting to Telkom LTE 1800MHz. Just not enough spectrum available there to give it a wow factor.

I just wonder how it would compare to Telkom 3G. Guess the upload speed would be much faster but download speed won't be that much faster.

Faster upload speed for LTE phones basically just means faster Whatsapp media sending a photo uploads.
 
sajunky said:
They can lower priority of uncapped traffic, so when congestion hit a trigger point, they will be cut off. Total throughput of the tower will increase, as LTE capable devices use radio resources in more efficient way. It is a good news for everybody if implemented properly.

As for better penetration of 1800MHz, it is not a big difference comparing to 900MHz vs 2100MHz.
Click to expand...

You say this is good news for everybody. I don't see how it is good news for uncapped customers if they are cut off when congestion hits a "trigger point" as per your above post. Or maybe I am missing something.
 
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cavedog said:
Yeah it's pretty much going to be like that for most people when connecting to Telkom LTE 1800MHz. Just not enough spectrum available there to give it a wow factor.

I just wonder how it would compare to Telkom 3G. Guess the upload speed would be much faster but download speed won't be that much faster.

Faster upload speed for LTE phones basically just means faster Whatsapp media sending a photo uploads.
Click to expand...

3G to same server from same device

d3391a23331a999b9572866278742d2a.jpg


Quite a difference
 
Azg said:
You say this is good news for everybody. I don't see how it is good news for uncapped customers if they are cut off when congestion hits a "trigger point" as per your above post. Or maybe I am missing something.
Click to expand...
It is a good news for uncapped users, that they can use 1800MHz band together with capped users. As they tend to use network resources wastefully, they wll be throttled or cut completely if they start to complain. ;)
 
Just did a speedtest right next to a LTE tower.

1800MHz gave me max 21Mbps on my Samsung Galaxy S5
2300MHz gave me 86Mbps on my Meizu M2 Note

Same tower, same cell id, same speedtest server same place. So yeah the 1800MHz band has limited spectrum but not bad gives people options I guess.
 
cavedog said:
Just did a speedtest right next to a LTE tower.

1800MHz gave me max 21Mbps on my Samsung Galaxy S5
2300MHz gave me 86Mbps on my Meizu M2 Note

Same tower, same cell id, same speedtest server same place. So yeah the 1800MHz band has limited spectrum but not bad gives people options I guess.
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Noticed my uncapped LTE setup at the office was connected to a new antenna across the road: xxxxx6 (I get amazing speed from xxxxx4 and so-so speed from xxxxx5) - a speed test only gave me 15mb/s down - this is the first time I have seen this cell_id ending in 6 so I am guessing it is an 1800mhz one on the tower.

After changing to in-built antenna and then back to external, my router jumped back on to xxxxx4 and gave me 60mb/s speedtest.

If only the B315 would show which MHZ it was connected on and provided a way to lock on to the 2300mhz
 
FlashSA said:
Noticed my uncapped LTE setup at the office was connected to a new antenna across the road: xxxxx6 (I get amazing speed from xxxxx4 and so-so speed from xxxxx5) - a speed test only gave me 15mb/s down - this is the first time I have seen this cell_id ending in 6 so I am guessing it is an 1800mhz one on the tower.

After changing to in-built antenna and then back to external, my router jumped back on to xxxxx4 and gave me 60mb/s speedtest.

If only the B315 would show which MHZ it was connected on and provided a way to lock on to the 2300mhz
Click to expand...

Yeah that is going to be the biggest problem for fixed LTE users. The switch between Band 3 and Band 40 since all Telkom routers support both bands and the towers are starting to offer both bands too.

How epic would it be if Telkom allows you to set your LTE Band in the onnet.8ta.com control panel.

My tower too. 2300MHz cell id is 8555520 and 1800MHz cell id is 8555530
 
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cavedog said:
The switch between Band 1 and Band 40 since all Telkom routers support both bands and the towers are starting to offer both bands too.
Click to expand...

Is 1800MHz Band 1? I thought it was Band 3, with Band 1 being 2100MHz.

Whatever it is it was nice to get the surprise of working LTE on my phone.
 
km2 said:
Is 1800MHz Band 1? I thought it was Band 3, with Band 1 being 2100MHz.

Whatever it is it was nice to get the surprise of working LTE on my phone.
Click to expand...

Sorry my bad I'm confusing Cellc being band 1. :o Thanks for correcting me. :)
 
Interesting, Telkom installed a 3G repeater in our house 4 months ago, we had no signal.. The past week we started to get full LTE signal..something has clearly changed
 
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