topic Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed? in Get Support

Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

Eug — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 20:49:30 GMT

I set my wife up on Public Mobile and it is working well for her. However, I've noticed that the max download speeds are more limited than I was expecting. They're decent and more than sufficient for her, but still, not quite what I might have expected for Telus or Koodo. (She was on Koodo before.)

Thinking it might just be luck of the draw for wireless conditions right at those times tested, I looked online, and it seems a few people have done comparative tests between Public Mobile and Koodo side by side, and Public Mobile is consistently slower. Well, at best Public Mobile is sometimes similar, but most of the time Public Mobile is slower. For example, one test had two Galaxy S6 phones testing Koodo against Public Mobile tested side by side. Koodo was over 100 Mbps, but Public Mobile was 20ish Mbps. Others have done maybe 5 tests in a row with the same phone models and again, Public Mobile usually was slower. Furthermore, I have never seen a Public Mobile speed test benchmark out there hit over 100 Mbps. In fact, over 60 Mbps seems to be rare.

Are Koodo and Telus given priority over Public Mobile in terms of download (and upload speeds), or is Public Mobile actively throttled (but still provided LTE speeds)? Or is Public Mobile using a more limited LTE feature set? Or is this all just by chance? To be fair to Public Mobile, I don't think I've ever seen truly scientific speed test comparisons between Public Mobile vs Telus/Koodo.

BTW, my iPhone 7 Plus on Fido is consistently slower than Public Mobile on my wife's iPhone 6s for upload speeds in my house, with my Fido consistently in the 1.5-2.5 Mbps range, and her Public Mobile in the 8-15 Mbps range. That's a pretty huge difference, and I'd rather have the faster uploads. This is her iPhone 6s on Public Mobile, to show the decent uploads.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

McLaren — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

As long as you're happy with real world testing - ie Web browsing, streaming etc then who cares about the numbers. The more important number is the dollars in savings every month!

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

Eug — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 14:08:51 GMT

I care about the numbers for two reasons.

1) Intellectual curiosity. Public Mobile seems to be positioning itself to take Wind customers, but not to go head to head against like companies like Virgin or Fido. Perhaps this is one way they've limited PM to still be way better than Wind but not better than its sister brand Koodo. Or not.

2) For my wife it's fine. For me it's also usually fine, but sometimes on business trips I need to tether my phone. In this scenario, my question may be more important, esp. if I'm sitting in a hotel with a bunch of other Telus or Koodo users also tethering.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

PublicMobile101 — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 14:16:48 GMT

Wow this is interesting for sure, however I have never really had a problem with my data speeds with public mobile.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

PublicMobile101 — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 14:19:01 GMT

I found that wind used to be good but now their prices seem a bit overpriced for what you get. They used to have things like pay by minute but now their cheapest plan is $25 which isn't bad except for the fact their service is only available in a select few areas.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

Eug — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 14:29:10 GMT

I'm not sure Wind has ever been good, at least not in a consistent fashion in Toronto. Anyone I've ever known on Wind has always said Wind was cheap, but never said it was actually good. Wind's network just isn't up to par, and their LTE rollout is not going to magically make it good enough to compete against the big three any time soon.

But that's a different discussion.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

jamestneutron — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 14:39:59 GMT

The problem too with Wind is they sell it as LTE, but not all LTE are the same. The AWS band they use is so weak it has trouble penetrating concrete...not good in a big city. Theoretically there speeds are legit if you are stanging under the tower...but the service is not useable in a practical world. I suffered it for 2 years thinking ...hey it's cheap. I will not miss the frustration of deadzones in areas which should have good coverage...and also I love that I am able to put on a cartoon or something for the kids if we are waiting at the doctors office and they aren't feeling too hot...sickly toddlers+buffering=STRESSED OUT ! haha

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

bmendes — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 14:50:36 GMT

Well, I haven't really noticed. But when I was with Virgin/Koodo, I disabled LTE for fear of going over my very small data limit faster. Ever since PM, it's been plenty fast, so no complaints. (Even faster than my home internet)

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

kav2001c — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 15:03:55 GMT

I suspect the app is not optimized

Try downloading a large file and you won't see any slowdown

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

rkd — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 15:36:13 GMT

i ran a speedtest on my Galaxy S6 and got 47.09DL 40.31UL. i got a buddy i was with who is also on public mobile to do it on his nexus 5, and he got around 27DL. i originally thought the slower speeds were because he had an older phone, but looking at your wife's iphone 6s results i don't know what to think anymore

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

jchlo — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 15:17:16 GMT

I would like to know too

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

rkd — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 15:38:54 GMT

@jchlo wrote:
I would like to know too

well, why don't you first start with running a speedtest on your phone and sharing the results here?

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

Fr3lncr — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 16:30:40 GMT

A friend and I both switched from Virgin to Public this week and we both have found our speeds to be slower now that we are on Public than when we were on Virgin (and as Bell and Telus share their towers, I assume these connections and speeds should be relatively consistent).

While trying to download a 500 MB file Friday night, I noticed the progress was just crawling. So, I terminated the download, rebooted, and did a speed test and even with an LTE connection, I was getting about 2 Mbps DL and 0.02 Mbps UL whereas a friend who was on Telus had a much better result.

I've been monitoring it since and the best I have gotten with HPSA connection is around 10 Mbps DL and 1 Mbps UL and on LTE about 20-30 Mbps and 3-5 Mbps UL.

These are about half of what I had on Virgin.

To be fair, the best comparison would be to find a Telus/Koodo subscriber and try their SIM in my phone to see if the speeds were any different to know for sure. Unfortunately, no one I know close is on Telus/Koodo to test.

Also it dosn't help that Bell and Telus LTE coverage in Ottawa (Nepean, Barrhaven) is really not that good (one of them really needs to install some new towers) but again, it is still worse so far on Public than Virgin..

Generally, I don't care too much about DL speed but of course, when you do need it, you want it to be there and the other night, it certainly wasn't for me.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

srlawren — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 16:39:10 GMT

@Eug it's been asked to PM staff in the past and they insist there is no throttling or de-prioritization of PM traffic vs. Koodo or Telus.

These comparisons are really hard to do correctly. They have to be done on the same phone or phone model running the same apps and OS, at the same time of day, in the same location, etc. etc. They can vary a lot from moment to moment.

I also suspect @kav2001c may be right that the apps may not know how to treat PM and might treat it differently than Telus/Koodo? I'm not sure if that's a factor at all but I could see how it might be.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

srlawren — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 18:01:44 GMT

@Eug my PM is actually faster in my home than my Shaw WiFi!

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

Eug — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 19:32:04 GMT

Good to hear the reps claim there is no throttling for PM or prioritization favouring Telus & Koodo.

However, why would the benchmark apps treat PM any differently?

I'm using Speedtest on iOS 10.1.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

kav2001c — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 20:04:12 GMT

@Eug wrote:
Good to hear the reps claim there is no throttling for PM or prioritization favouring Telus & Koodo.

However, why would the benchmark apps treat PM any differently?

I'm using Speedtest on iOS 10.1.

@Eug there have even been cases of certain vendors cheating on benchmarks (optimizing code to work better on specific phones).

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

PBForMe — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 21:55:47 GMT

I get about 20+mbps on HSPA and 40+ mbps on LTE, and that's with a 4 year old phone. If there is any throttling I don't see it.

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

bryanbreguet — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:39:51 GMT

@McLaren I disagree that this is all the matters. A big argument to switch to PM was that it was using the same network. If we are being limited or throttled, I want to know

Re: Is Public Mobile's LTE throttled vs Telus/Koodo? Who here has the fastest Public Mobile speed?

kav2001c — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 01:11:49 GMT

@bryanbreguet McLarens point was to test it in real world situations instead of relying on a generic benchmark. Heck the internet abounds with posts if you google about Telus throttling home internet as well (which they don't, and if they did you could file a complaint against them).

Don't beleive every conspiracy theory online