Another thread with "up to date" info on this topic to embellish that found here: https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Plans-Add-Ons/Share-Your-3G-Real-World-Experience/m-p...
This time round I had an iPhone 5 running on LTE and an iPhone SE on 3G set up side by side and both connecting to PM's LTE network. In my home PM's signal is relatively weak (1 or 2 bars). Ran several speed tests and typical results are show below (3G on the left). The LTE tests, using Ookla, consumed about 60 megs/test and the 3G only 12.
I cannot see any difference in performance when "Googling", managing email, or watching videos. No testing this time but expect, as in previous tests, uploading will be much slower on 3G than LTE.
Then I streamed a video from GoPro on each phone tethered by USB to a Macbook. Each was trimmed to match each other.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaMLV5DslHg for 5 on LTE
- https://youtu.be/gKX7r_l692A for SE on 3G
EDIT: Well those videos created confusion so here are two more "raw" recordings. These were made tethering the Macbook by USB to each phone. The sequence you see is: clear the cache, reload the site, pick the video, click play and stop after about a minute. My conclusion is that streaming videos/movies is fine with "3G" data.
- https://youtu.be/KgLTmZkJh5M for SE on 3G set for LTE network
- https://youtu.be/culYuEpCeVo for 5 on LTE
Yet another data point while lunching at the local mall eatery. Typical results, quite uneventful which is good. If only this plan provided a materially significant improvement on data usage, I would seriously consider giving up my 2016 fall promo. The flexibility of 90 days is worth more than 500 megs of data. Maybe the next promo will up the ante further.
@srlawren wrote:
@will13am wrote:
@will13am this second screen shot over HSPA seems to indicate PM may have finally "fixed" the missing speed-cap when using HSPA/HSPA+. When the "3G"-speed data plans first launched and the oracles at the time (which then included me but did not include you, so I don't blame you for not knowing this!) discovered that if you forced your phone to prefer 3G or disabled LTE/4G, you would get full speed, not capped HSPA/HSPA+ speeds. This was clearly a bug/loophole, but I guess they have fixed it.
Was this a case of loose lips sinks ships? Shhh. I suppose I have a duty to report results since I am using a carrier sponsored test plan. Back on the topic of 3G. Even if LTE lite were to be 3G or even 3G lite, it would still be fine. Up until a couple of months ago, I was still sporting a Tbaytel 3G plan. That plan was pure 3G but without speed throttling.
@will13am wrote:
@will13am this second screen shot over HSPA seems to indicate PM may have finally "fixed" the missing speed-cap when using HSPA/HSPA+. When the "3G"-speed data plans first launched and the oracles at the time (which then included me but did not include you, so I don't blame you for not knowing this!) discovered that if you forced your phone to prefer 3G or disabled LTE/4G, you would get full speed, not capped HSPA/HSPA+ speeds. This was clearly a bug/loophole, but I guess they have fixed it.
I have some more results to report today at a much more challenging location for the Bellus network. I did the same tests as yesterday, watch some 1080p videos, did some speed tests. The video results were identical. The speed test results as well were similar. I was dropped off of LTE to hspa+. That presented a challenge in reaching the throttle limit for upload. This is NOT a condition attributed to LTE lite. It's a network thing and if I was using a full speed LTE plan, the same thing would happen if there's a switch to hspa+. I do get thrown off of LTE all the time when I use my full speed LTE plan at this location. I frequent this location a lot, so the conspiracy theories about favoring full speed LTE plan is not supported by evidence. The testing at yesterday's and today's sites were intentional to demonstrate the independent effects of the throttling and network.
That's all the testing for today. I am going to run out of data if I don't control my usage. Already one gig used in only a handful of days.
I should mention also the hspa network is fine. The latency is good. At this location once I getting kicked off of LTE, I never go back. I don't really notice any difference in performance.
Here is my recent test results of LTE vs 3G. This is done using the same account ($40/4GB 3G speed data) before the throttle came into effect and after. The testing is done at the same general location inside a building and outside at the parking lot. The towers in this area offer good connectivity (both signal strength and data speed). So this testing should be purely a comparison of no throttling vs throttling with the congestion effects taken out. The test was conducted with a Oppo Find 7 which has only 2 compatible LTE bands, B4 and B17. Most of the time, the phone is connected on B4.
This is full LTE speed outdoor.
This is LTE lite indoor.
This is LTE lite outdoor.
To the eternal optimists, this service appears to be 3.5 mbits up and down. To those who are a little more conservative with the numbers, call it 3.0 mbits up and down.
Speed tests only offer numbers, great wow factor for full speed LTE. What really matters is how does the service hold up against real world data usage on a mobile device. At the same location, I watched a 1080p video to see if there was any buffering during playback. This is likely the most demanding task on a mobile device after calls which are QoS protected. The video was just under 4 minutes long, 30 Mbytes in size. Playback was done using newpipe.apk which is a free, open source version of YouTube with all the advertising junk removed. At the beginning, there was about a 3 second pause to build up the buffer before video playback started. Once running, the video was never interrupted by buffering. The download was always way ahead of the playback.
On closer examination, the average bit rate for the playback was all of 1 mbit/s. This is just a fraction of the max bit rate for LTE lite. My conclusion is most users will never really see a difference with the throttling. The only time I think there might be a bit of anxiety involves downloading a very large file. In situations like this, my biggest angst would be how much data am I going to chew up. Putting the video playback in a different perspective, a typical 4GB wireless plan would support all of 18 minutes of video playback each day at 1 mbit/s bit rate. At full LTE lite speed, this drops to 6 minutes per day! Imagine that, at full throtlled bit rate, we can use up all our data with as little as 6 minutes of downloads each day.
My take away from this testing and assessment is that the LTE lite speed is fine for probably 99% of mobile data applications. If there is a problem with mobile data, it's not with the data speed but the amount of usage. Once we got past the UMTS days back in the early 2010s, data speed has gotten way ahead of usage. It will be a real travesty when in a couple of years time, carriers in this country will be offering 5G plans with a few gigs of usage each month. Any meaningful discussion about data should really focus on the tiny amount of usage in typical cellular plans. As it is right now, we already have access to V12 Ferraris but are allotted only a litre of gas in the tank each month. Don't run out of gas backing the car out of the garage!
