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4G service after almost a month - who has switched & how do you find it?

bluejaywpg
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

So it's been almost a month since PM (re)introduced 4G service options. Who has switched, & how do you find unthrottled 4G compares to throttled-to-3G-level service?

 

My renewal is coming up in 3 days, & I'm considering trying 4G service for at least a 30-day period to see if it's worthwhile, since it will only add $6.25 to my bill. And bonus - an extra GB if I need it, though I may not even use that much.

12 REPLIES 12

bluejaywpg
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@computergeek541 looks like you are probably right. I was under the false impression that the 4G service was uncapped, when in fact it appears PM DOES cap the speed to 100 Mbps (according to https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/on/get-help/articles/upgrade-22) & 4G uncapped should go as high as 300 Mbps down & 75 Mbps up. And that speed test I ran today was nowhere near 75 Mbps - it checked in at a pathetic & miserable 1.5 Mbps up. Obviously there's a major throttle!!!

Once again, disappointment over & over & over again with our pathetic cell companies that give me the impression of an oligopoly. 😡 But I do wonder how the 4G services compare against each other. I'm sure that Canada continues to rank as close to, if not the very worst for expensive cell service that is subpar vs. other wealthy countries.


@bluejaywpg wrote:

So it's been almost a month since PM (re)introduced 4G service options. Who has switched, & how do you find unthrottled 4G compares to throttled-to-3G-level service?

 

My renewal is coming up in 3 days, & I'm considering trying 4G service for at least a 30-day period to see if it's worthwhile, since it will only add $6.25 to my bill. And bonus - an extra GB if I need it, though I may not even use that much.


I'll be quite honest when I say that I'm disapponted with the speeds. I appreciated that Public Mobile brought back "4g" and that the $55 plan is a reasonable offering, but I do not believe that this is the "4g" of old.  On the Self Serve pages, Public Mobile stated that the maximum speeds for these plans is about 750Mbps (although real-world speeds would likely be less).  However, it's been my experience that Public Mobile is pretty much strictly sticking to the 100Mbps maximum speed mentioned on the plan advetisement page.  Sure, that's more than fast enough for what most people need, but that's not what Public Mobile used to offer. Speeds of more than 300Mbps used to be common on the old "4g" plans but I don't anywhere clsoe to that on the new "4g" plans.

 

Another concern is with the really bad upload speeds. I suspect that some type of extreme traffic shapping is taking place here.  Upload speeds used to be in excess of 50Mbps. That never happens any more.  I understand that performance can very from place to place and from location to location, but I almost never see upload speeds of even 10Mbps any more.

 

I am wondering if Public Mobile may now have two different tiers of "4g" service, or if there has been some type of large configuration change across the board even for people on the old plans.  A bunch of years ago, Public Mobile got called out for artificially limiting the speeds to about 60Mbps.  Then one day, the restriction got lifted.

 

My concerns are if Public Mobile made a change and/or if Public Mobile now have two different tiers of 4g (100Mbps vs. the old uncapped speeds).

 

@J_PM 

Does Public Mobile have a comment about these observations?

bluejaywpg
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Well 4G unthrottled is nice. Due to a couple of unanticipated reasons, I was on my way to using all 4 GB even though I've never used more than 3 GB of data in a given month. And then in the end, another unexpected reason caused me to use almost no data altogether in the last week. I probably should just go back to the old 3G plan (only because there is no lower 4G plan than 4 GB) but I never made the change so another month of unthrottled 4G service here we come.

bluejaywpg
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@darlicious Good point. Though I did the test today & the data usage according to PM in My Account was no more than about 170 MB.

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@bluejaywpg 

Don't do any speed tests until Day 30 unless you can spare 400+MB of data at the moment.

bluejaywpg
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

So I did decide to switch to the lowest 4G plan to try it out. It's most noticeably faster when loading pages with a large amount of data, or a lot of pictures say in the Facebook app. Beyond that, it's not terribly noticeable. Especially when I tried updating an app the day after my 4G plan started - it loaded at 1 MB per few seconds & then it stopped & said failed to update! Not sure why. I might try again just to see what happens.

I should also run a speed test when I'm not home & not connected to WiFi (or I can just shut off WiFi temporarily).

Andro3d
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I just switched yesterday. It is definitely a noticeable difference in speeds. My bill has only gone up 5$ and I now have an additional GB and the new 4G speed. It is a worth while switch in my opinion because you do notice faster loading times right away.

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@bluejaywpg 

Lol...it is. Another member called it the slim $13. I also call it the unlucky $13 plan. But many used to call it the $10 50/50 plan because it described its features....50 texts and 50 minutes. I'm not done yet so I am not fully ready to concede its permanently priced at $13.

bluejaywpg
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@darlicious yes except I don't have any bonus 2 GB data. I had been saying previously that I would've upgraded to 3 GB sooner had PM offered the bonus data to all customers rather than just new customers. I eventually upgraded to 3 GB because I started using more data the last 2-3 months. Depending on my work this fall, my data usage may or may not drop back.

 

What is a full speed 50/50 data plan? Never heard of that. For some reason I thought you were on some grandfathered $10 (increased to $13) plan or something like that. Unless that's the same thing. 

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@bluejaywpg 

Did you not say you had the $35/3gb+2gb of promo data? I believe you will lose your 2gb of promo data if you switch to a 4G plan? I think that was the final word on the matter unless I missed something....? I have full speed data on my 50/50 plan account and I don't see much difference with the everyday activities other than its a bit snappier at loading web pages.

bluejaywpg
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Lots of different things - browsing, SM, videos, live TV, etc. No games - or at least not any that require high bandwidth & low latency. Right now I limit my video watching for the most part & wait until I am on WiFi at home or elsewhere. But sometimes I forget about videos I was going to watch later. Would be nice to watch them when I'm not home with a little extra data too. Occasionally I might share my connection with my own laptop or my wife's phone.

Internet usage is not too slow for me right now. Yes sometimes I'm waiting & waiting for pages to load if they have lots of pictures for example. Videos usually play fine over throttled data, but once in a while cut out a bit.

As I said, it would be for trying it out since it's easy enough to switch back to throttled data after 30 days if I want, & without much extra cost involved.

softech
Oracle
Oracle

@bluejaywpg  I think the question is more like what are you using Mobile Data for.  Just browsing? Video? Game?  Do you hotspot share?

 

And  do you always find the internet slow ?

 

yes, try it for a month and see if you feel the difference

 

Personally , I only use it for browsing and I am ok with the current capped speed at 3Mpbs 

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