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Appropriate Speeds

  • 23-08-2011 10:35am
    #1
    Sully
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 24,056 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    Quick question. Herself uses o2 Broadband in Waterford, and lately noticed that in the evening around 11pm the connection signal and speed is just below 1mbps or just above 1mbps download with a much lower signal strength (two bars). She watches TV streams online and never had any issues before, but since the connection was down for over a week the speed has been rather poor.

    Now, o2 are telling me that the speed test results I got were very good for mobile broadband and that the techs are likely to just close the case as a result. I found this a bit strange considering she lives in the city, its not a busy time for the network, is in an area with official excellent coverage. Plus these issues only arose after a large network outage.

    Would o2 be correct in saying that the 1mbps download speed is great for the area that I am in and perfectly normal, even though they advertise it as ("up to" I know) 7mbps and she is getting absolutely nowhere near that speed? I personally thought different but you guys are more experienced and would be able to give me a clearer answer.

    Iv started to keep a log of connection speed at various times. When I called o2 yesterday at about 6pm I was getting 5mbps roughly download speed. Right now I am getting around 2.32mbps. Signal strength pretty good.

    Thoughts?


Comments

  • #2
    watty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32,417 ✭✭✭✭watty


    They are good speeds per mobile.

    A city has MANY masts. Each one only supports a few users watching video. Your modem will likely only able to choose between 1 and 3 masts depending on location.

    It only takes for a few more "fixed" users on Mobile in one place to cause speeds to drop to sub Mbps. After all the shared capacity of a sector (at best) is 1/2 to 1/10th of a WiFi point (worse with range).

    A Rural Cell might have strong signal at 1km. A Urban cell due to higher mast density will typically have that level of signal at 100m to 300m.

    They plan the locations and density of masts to have roughly the same usage no matter if Rural or City.


    The clue is in the name. 3G, HSPA and LTE are designed for users "on the go" making short term bursts of access. Not for people at home or Office using it like Broadband. To do that even poorly would need x10 as many masts.


  • #3
    Sully
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 24,056 Mod ✭✭✭✭Sully


    Long time no see watty :)

    Thanks for the reply. So its possible the slow speeds is down to traffic on the network then, at 11pm? Right now my download speed is 0.19mb and 0.05 upload. Ping is 222ms


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