topic Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed in Get Support

4G plan with slow upload speed

DennyCrane — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:38:45 GMT

A few days ago I switched my wife and I to one of the new 4G plans, and it looks the the throttle has now been removed. Is it expected results that the upload speed is still capped though? It's not even hitting the 3 Mbps speed, let alone 4G speed. Is this a separate throttle that may need to be removed still?

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

JL9 — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:40:15 GMT

What day this week did you make the change? Is it reflected in your self serve. It takes up to 48 hours to kick in, if is beyond that you can reach out to a CSA to investigate any speed issues as it should be 4G at that point

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

DennyCrane — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:43:42 GMT

I made the change on August 16th, to be effective at renewal on the evening of the 17th. I knew about the delay to remove the throttle, which was reflected in my speed tests up until this morning where you can now see the download speed is as I would expect. I'm curious why the upload speed wouldn't improve at the same time?

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

hTideGnow — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:46:53 GMT

HI @DennyCrane Speed could take around 48 hours to come.

AFAIK, Upload speed is not capped, at least not capped at 3Mpbs. I would wait another day, try it at different area again and see if you see any better upload speed. And your download speed should be higher too

If the speed is the same by tomorrow, open ticket with CS agent

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

dabr — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:51:05 GMT

@DennyCrane It's weird, because looking at the details for 4G speeds, I only see mention of download speeds:

"¹Plans with 3G speed may reach download speeds of up to 3 Mbps, and plans with 4G speed may reach download speeds up to 100 Mbps, with the coverage and reliability of the LTE network. Speed and signal strength may vary with your device, configuration, Internet traffic, environmental conditions, applicable network management and other factors. For more information about speed experience in our rate plans, please see

https://www.publicmobile.ca/pdfs/Wireless_Video_Experience_Optimization_fr.pdf

edit: even odder that the link is in French!

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

dust2dust — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:50:59 GMT

Is there a need for faster upload? Videos, streaming from your phone (not to phone), large file uploads?

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

Haiggy — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:55:34 GMT

If promised "up to" a certain speed, they tend to use that as an excuse for any realized speed slower than what is advertised after those words.

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

DennyCrane — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:55:37 GMT

Yeah i looked at that as well. I've been with TELUS for many years before PM, and upload speeds were always way better than what im getting right now. I will wait another couple days before logging a request though.

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

DennyCrane — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:58:52 GMT

Not really relevant to my question, but yes there is. Many people focus solely on download speeds, but uploading is important if you're sending files. On Public's 3G plans it would be quite cumbersome if I ever tried to send a video over WhatsApp for example. Video calls also require a good upload connection.

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

Korth — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 19:19:23 GMT

@DennyCrane

Mobile networks are asymmetrical. A lot of bandwidth is dedicated to download because it's designed to support a lot of simultaneous downloads for a lot of users. Not so much bandwidth is allocated to upload because most user activities are primarily download-based. People don't submit large files from their phones - just little stuff typed onscreen or "background" stuff snuck under the radar from scripts, apps, telemetry, spyware. Even painstakingly typed pages of office documents representing many hours of work will take up a tiny fraction of a single Megabyte.

You need a lot of download bandwidth to provide an endless glut of webpages, video streams, audio streams, animated boxes, etc. Mbps.

You don't need a lot of upload bandwidth to send search requests, page requests, feedback, logins, tweets and twits. Kbps.

You don't need big upload speed unless you plan to do a lot of uploading from a mobile device. Use it as a webserver or P2P filesharing/seeding node or whatever - it would be technically challenging, expensive, and stupid to do such things across cellular data instead of across some sort of wired connection.

If you don't believe this then I challenge you to find any "normal" real world usage where your "slow" upload speed is actually throttling performance. Synthetic benchmarks (like Speedtests) are not meaningfully representative examples of actual, practical, real world performance.

I wouldn't condemn the marketing. It plainly states "download speed" several times. It makes no promises about upload speeds - those are consumer assumptions. Unnecessary assumptions. Like thinking perhaps that your car should be able to hit the top speed displayed on the dashboard when it's in reverse gear.

@dabr

French - https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/on/pdfs/Wireless_Video_Experience_Optimization_fr.pdf

English - https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/on/pdfs/Wireless_Video_Experience_Optimization.pdf

Telus - https://www.telus.com/en/support/article/wireless-network-experience-optimization

ENEA (OEM) - https://owmobility.com/press-releases/openwave-mobilitys-video-optimization-platform-improves-user-experience-35-percentage-poin/

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

computergeek541 — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 19:08:14 GMT

Removed nonsense reply

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

DennyCrane — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 19:09:05 GMT

For sure. And im would never fault them for not providing the max speed, but clearly my upload speed is still being throttled. I'll give it a couple days and then make a request if it persists. Maybe it's by design, but if so their marketing should be updated.

I'm curious what the experience is of others who have 4G plans.

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

dabr — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 19:17:09 GMT

@Korth Thanks for the link in English. I'm just not sure why the details page have the link in French as I just copied it from the same page I pasted the info from..

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

DennyCrane — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 19:17:14 GMT

That's a lot of generalization happening there. Though this doesn't apply to me specifically, we're in a world where people upload their lives to TikTok and YouTube while they're mobile, so yes "people" do require a decent upload speeds for that. I agree that the majority of mobile traffic is down, but that's not to say up isn't also important.

In any case i didn't intend to have debate on how people use their phones or why. My questions are quite simple:

1) What are expected and/or max upload speeds on a PM 4G plan? Seeing as this doesn't appear to be available on the PM website, I'd appreciate some first hand experience over speculation.

2) Is the upload throttle a separate throttle from download throttle? It's clear to be my upload speed is being throttled (whether intentional or not), as I have first hand experience with both TELUS and Rogers 4G networks and can confirm they have much greater upload capacity than 3Mbps.

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

dust2dust — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 19:28:34 GMT

You're right. I forgot about video calls. People do that.

Indeed, there's no mention of upload speeds here.

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

will13am — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 19:38:32 GMT

The fine print seems to suggest the higher speed applies to download only. It would be a shame that upload speed is still artificially capped.

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

sheytoon — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 20:42:19 GMT

There are separate limits on your profile for DL and UL. Last time I looked at it, it was 3008 kbps for DL and UL.

I'm pretty sure they would increase the UL limit at the same time, but I haven't verified this as I don't have the new plan.

UL can get to 70 Mbps on LTE for a 20 MHz channel when there is no CA, if there isn't much load on the cell and your signal is good. Your signal didn't seem great, and I'm not sure what band you were on. Have you never been able to get above 3 Mbps?

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

hTideGnow — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 20:47:47 GMT

@dust2dust wrote:
You're right. I forgot about video calls. People do that.
Indeed, there's no mention of upload speeds here.

But I think 1 or 2Mbps upload speed is sufficient for video calling on phone

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

DennyCrane — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 20:48:35 GMT

Good call, I will try some tests in better signal areas. Here is right now, same location. Band 5 and the up speed has improved for the first time. Still not where I'd expect it to be, but significantly better than this morning.

Re: 4G plan with slow upload speed

sheytoon — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 20:50:43 GMT

Makes sense.

B5 is only 5 MHz, max UL would be around 17 Mbps. If you can get a good signal on B7 or B2, you'll see better UL speeds.