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3G Speed not right

zaptor99
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Screenshot_20180528-154053_Speedtest.jpg

 I'm not complaining about the speed and not sure how I got 319 Mbps, but I switched from 2gb 3g plan to 2.5gb 3g plan, and decided to do a speed test.

 

I got 319 Mbps.  I thought maybe it's wrong, so I checked data usage on my phone (s9+) and also on the PM portal, one speed test ate .5gb of my 2.5.  Ouch. 

 

What's happening here, how can I get 319 Mbps? 

20 REPLIES 20

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@jackzhj wrote:

Did the speed test again, and I can confirm the speed is throttled now.


@jackzhj not shocked, but thank you for following up anyway!  🙂


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jackzhj
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Did the speed test again, and I can confirm the speed is throttled now.

jackzhj
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Thanks @GinYVR ! It's good to know what to expect.

@jackzhjYes they will throttle down your speed to 3Mbps in about 2 - 3 days.

jackzhj
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Hi,

 

I just signed up with PM today and just like @zaptor99 I did a speed test and got 182 Mbps and used ~200M of data. Should I expect the throttling to kick in in 72 hours? Please note I'm a band new user, not switching from a full speed data plan to a 3G speed data plan. It is a bit surprising, but I will enjoy the full speed while I can. 🙂

boopvanner
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

I'm near London Ontario.....my speed this morningScreenshot_2018-12-20-05-57-38-1.png

 

jedivision
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Seems like true speeds are fine for what I need. I’ll stick w PM for the great price and ability to earn money for paying my bill with autopay, referrals and community forums. 

torontokris
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@jedivision wrote:

My 3G throttled plan gives me speeds that are great for what I use my phone for. Instagram, mail, browsing, transit directions. Haven’t had a problem but I am curious how fast it can get and if PM will ever stop throttling. Does it really affect the network?


3G speed plan is up to 3mbps currently. They may raise that in the future they may not

 

pm won’t stop throttling 3G speed plans otherwise they would be LTE full speed plans which pm charges more for. It’s not about the network (the network can handle it) throttling pm it’s about being a 3rd tier line and who it’s competing against (and not competing against 2nd tier Koodo directly)

Telus appears to want pm be competitive against chatr who has 3G speed plans as well. It appears if you want full LTE either pay more or migrate to Koodo.

 

jedivision
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

My 3G throttled plan gives me speeds that are great for what I use my phone for. Instagram, mail, browsing, transit directions. Haven’t had a problem but I am curious how fast it can get and if PM will ever stop throttling. Does it really affect the network?

sa7375
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

Thanks @srlawren. That's exactly what I was looking for.

 


@srlawren wrote:

@sa7375 wrote:

Hi,

I am considering to subscribe for the 3G Data but a bit skeptical about the speeds. I’ll appreciate if you (or anyone else) can write here the average speeds you have been getting with your 3G / 2GB plan. Also if you can write what city were these conducted in.

Thanks


@sa7375 I no longer have my 3G-speed plan, but while I had it, speeds were quite consistently around the capped 3.0Mbps both for uploads and downloads.  The service is still delivered over LTE, which is capable of far faster; so keeping up with the capped speed is possible nearly all the time.  This was in the greater Vancouver area, but I would expect it to be pretty consistent nation-wide. 


 

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@sa7375 wrote:

Hi,

I am considering to subscribe for the 3G Data but a bit skeptical about the speeds. I’ll appreciate if you (or anyone else) can write here the average speeds you have been getting with your 3G / 2GB plan. Also if you can write what city were these conducted in.

Thanks


@sa7375 I no longer have my 3G-speed plan, but while I had it, speeds were quite consistently around the capped 3.0Mbps both for uploads and downloads.  The service is still delivered over LTE, which is capable of far faster; so keeping up with the capped speed is possible nearly all the time.  This was in the greater Vancouver area, but I would expect it to be pretty consistent nation-wide. 


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Anonymous
Not applicable

@torontokris wrote:

@zaptor99 wrote:

 

 I'm not complaining about the speed and not sure how I got 319 Mbps, but I switched from 2gb 3g plan to 2.5gb 3g plan, and decided to do a speed test.

 

I got 319 Mbps.  I thought maybe it's wrong, so I checked data usage on my phone (s9+) and also on the PM portal, one speed test ate .5gb of my 2.5.  Ouch. 

 

What's happening here, how can I get 319 Mbps? 


Why even mention it just enjoy 😃


Yeah...shhh! 🙂

torontokris
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@zaptor99 wrote:

 

 I'm not complaining about the speed and not sure how I got 319 Mbps, but I switched from 2gb 3g plan to 2.5gb 3g plan, and decided to do a speed test.

 

I got 319 Mbps.  I thought maybe it's wrong, so I checked data usage on my phone (s9+) and also on the PM portal, one speed test ate .5gb of my 2.5.  Ouch. 

 

What's happening here, how can I get 319 Mbps? 


Why even mention it just enjoy 😃

sa7375
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

Hi,

I am considering to subscribe for the 3G Data but a bit skeptical about the speeds. I’ll appreciate if you (or anyone else) can write here the average speeds you have been getting with your 3G / 2GB plan. Also if you can write what city were these conducted in.

Thanks

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@will13am save @zaptor99's, his download speed bested me by > 50%!  Upload speeds were closer, though his or hers was still quicker in that direction too.

 

EDIT--forgot to add:  @zaptor99 yeah I agree that there isn't much that could be done to prevent people from chewing through their data using speed tests.  


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@srlawren wrote:

@zaptor99 first of all--CONGRATULATIONS, that's officially the fastest mobile speed test I've ever seen.  What model of phone is that?

 

Secondly--it can take up to 72 hours for the speed throttling to take effect when changing from a full-speed data plan to a "3G speed" data plan.  Try again in a few days, but yes be careful of your data usage.  You can see in the test result screen shot you posted, it shows the amount of data it used for the upload and download part of the tests, on the right.  And yes, those add up to over a half a GB, sadly.

 

EDIT: for reference, here's the fastest I've gotten so far on my OnePlus 5T, on Koodo (same Telus network as PM), near downtown Vancouver:

 

Screenshot_20180501-084527.jpg


Save this screen shot just in case Telus may need a spokesman to shill how fast their network is.


@zaptor99 wrote:

Thanks @srlawren for the reply and the info.  I'm using Galaxy S9+ and it always shows I'm connected to LTE+.  I'm in Toronto, and at the time of the test, I was standing next to a building with many cell towers, so that could explain some of it.

 

As you mentioned, the speed test did use that amount of data.  I won't be testing again, maybe till last day of the cycle 🙂 

 

I think PM should have a way to prevent this from happening.  If someone is on the 500MB plan, the test would have used up their limit on day 1. 


With respect to the comment that the phone is always on LTE+, 3G plans are actually throttled LTE plans.  Even when the traffic shaping comes into effect in a couple of days, the data will still come from a LTE connection where available. 

 

Lesson learned, don't do frivolous speed tests on a plan with limited usage.  Personally, I only do the occasional speed test to see what is happening when my data connection is all bunged up.  In situations like that there is no risk of taking a big bite out of the usage allotment in a single test.

Not much PM can do to prevent tests from consuming data.

 

They could somehow whitelist the Speedtest sites/IPs, flag them off the billing system.  But I think this would be misused and abused - people will run "free" tests everywhere they go, maybe not everybody but probably enough to still ruin things for everyone else - and mobile bandwidth ain't free (even for PM/Telus), so I doubt this idea would be sustainable in practice.

 

They could redirect or block Speedtest sites/IPs, simply refuse to connect to them or replace them with some kind of "permission denied on this network" webpage.  But imagine the outrage and conspiracy theories that would ignite.

 

They could redirect Speedtest sites/IPs to their own homebrewed speed test.  But again, people would want independent confirmation/comparison and be angered or suspicious if it's locked out.  In addition, Telus has always had weak and awful software, I wouldn't have faith in them implementing such an ambitious network-wide project successfully.

 

And remember that Telus still hasn't been able to fix all the mundane and recurring bugs in PM's websites and billing systems ... imagine how much worse things could be if they attempted to increase complexity or divide their efforts across tangentially-linked projects.

zaptor99
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Thanks @srlawren for the reply and the info.  I'm using Galaxy S9+ and it always shows I'm connected to LTE+.  I'm in Toronto, and at the time of the test, I was standing next to a building with many cell towers, so that could explain some of it.

 

As you mentioned, the speed test did use that amount of data.  I won't be testing again, maybe till last day of the cycle 🙂 

 

I think PM should have a way to prevent this from happening.  If someone is on the 500MB plan, the test would have used up their limit on day 1. 

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@zaptor99 first of all--CONGRATULATIONS, that's officially the fastest mobile speed test I've ever seen.  What model of phone is that?

 

Secondly--it can take up to 72 hours for the speed throttling to take effect when changing from a full-speed data plan to a "3G speed" data plan.  Try again in a few days, but yes be careful of your data usage.  You can see in the test result screen shot you posted, it shows the amount of data it used for the upload and download part of the tests, on the right.  And yes, those add up to over a half a GB, sadly.

 

EDIT: for reference, here's the fastest I've gotten so far on my OnePlus 5T, on Koodo (same Telus network as PM), near downtown Vancouver:

 

Screenshot_20180501-084527.jpg


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