topic Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan? in Get Support

What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

dev_chris — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 23:15:10 GMT

Just picked up the SIM. I noticed that LTE seems to work too. Is it faster if I keep my iPhone on LTE or should I switch off the LTE and just use 3G?

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

will13am — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 21:02:47 GMT

@dev_chris, the 3G speed plans are referred to as LTE lite to many. It actually is LTE data with the speed throttled to 3.5 mbits/s. The latency for the LTE lite plans is great and with the exception of large downloads, there is very little impact to user experience.

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

dev_chris — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 21:01:39 GMT

Cool... so 3mbits/s, I just googled that into mb/s.

So is it correct that that is 125kb/s ? Is it the same for upload speed too?

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

will13am — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 21:06:13 GMT

3.5 mbits/8=438 kbytes/s (0.438 Mbytes/s). I am not sure about the upload speed. For most wireless applications, upload speed is not that important.

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

ellenyw — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 21:10:11 GMT

I used to have a grandfathered LTE plan but due to moving away from Canada for a while, I am now on a newer 3G plan. To be honest, I can't really tell a difference between before and now so I would say there isn't a noticable difference in speeds (unless you need LTE for a very specific purpose).

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

dev_chris — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 21:11:22 GMT

Yea, that's my perception too. Sorry you lost that plan.

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

srlawren — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 22:17:05 GMT

@dev_chris the other thing to note is that after activating a new plan on 3G (brand new activation, or moving from a 4G plan to a 3G-speed plan), it can take up to 72 hours for the cap to be applied/removed. So in your case, you may be enjoying full-speed LTE at the moment, but it will eventually be capped to the "3G-like" speed. The delivery, as @will13am noted, will still be over LTE (with fallback to HSPA+ if needed).

@will13am I notice you said 3.5Mbps. I thought the 3G-speed plans were capped to 3.0Mbps? Was something changed? I don't recall an announcement.

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

will13am — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 22:20:37 GMT

@srlawren wrote:
@dev_chris the other thing to note is that after activating a new plan on 3G (brand new activation, or moving from a 4G plan to a 3G-speed plan), it can take up to 72 hours for the cap to be applied/removed. So in your case, you may be enjoying full-speed LTE at the moment, but it will eventually be capped to the "3G-like" speed. The delivery, as @will13am noted, will still be over LTE (with fallback to HSPA+ if needed).

@will13am I notice you said 3.5Mbps. I thought the 3G-speed plans were capped to 3.0Mbps? Was something changed? I don't recall an announcement.

I thought it was 3.0 mbits/s as well. I did post that and thought I should verify by doing some checks. I went to RFD and people were reporting 3.5 mbits/s. So, I edited my post. What's +/-0.5 mbits/s among friends? I have my 3G plan set up just now. I will be testing away for the next little while until I run out of data. I will share my own personal experience when I have meaningful statistics.

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

srlawren — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 22:27:45 GMT

@will13am yeah I'm sure there is a margin of error but to the best of my knowledge, the published expectation is still a cap of 3.0. So, while some may experience some test scores above that, I think we need to set expectations accordingly (3.0) to avoid disappointment.

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

persaudrd — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 19:33:20 GMT

One thing to note is that if you do decide to drop your phone down to 3G by turning off LTE in your settings your speeds will actually increase beyond ~3.0 down as advertised, but your latency will also increase.

This means that you'll download information at a faster rate but generally you'll also experience more of a delay when doing things like browsing. The other side effect is that generally you'll experience a better battery life on your phone too.

Otherwise, as previously mentioned you're fine on LTE as Public Mobile puts a speed limit on the 3G plans, but otherwise they're on the LTE network.

Re: What are the 3G speeds on the 4GB plan?

computergeek541 — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 19:44:43 GMT

@persaudrd wrote:
One thing to note is that if you do decide to drop your phone down to 3G by turning off LTE in your settings your speeds will actually increase beyond ~3.0 down as advertised, but your latency will also increase.

This means that you'll download information at a faster rate but generally you'll also experience more of a delay when doing things like browsing. The other side effect is that generally you'll experience a better battery life on your phone too.

Otherwise, as previously mentioned you're fine on LTE as Public Mobile puts a speed limit on the 3G plans, but otherwise they're on the LTE network.

I believe that the advertised speeds of LTE data networks are merely for bragging rights and because higher numbers sound impressive in the marketing materials.

If I knew absolutely for certain that 3g plans users would receive full HSPA+ speeds simply by turning off LTE, I would almsot certainly do it myself. It just that you never know if Public Mobile plans to patch this up.

There's a certain point when using cellular data that increased speeds over little (or even no benefit) to the customer. While this speed may be higher tha 3Mbps, all have a 300Mbps download speed is going to do for most users is make them use up the data amount much faster.

As for the difference in pings between 3g and LTE networks, I would say that the difference is minor. I'm checked some speed testing results on my phone and the network is usally around 35 ms for me, while the ping on LTE is around 20ms. To simply start loading a regular webpage, I am struggling to as to whether a person can even perceive a difference.