4G and inconsistent speeds

  • 11 December 2014
  • 6 kommenttia
  • 19 katselukertaa

Hi!

I have been having problems with poor speeds with my Sonera 24Mb/s home broadband, so the past weekend I went to a Sonera shop and came back home with a 4G modem.

The 4G connection works, but the speed seem inconsistent, e.g. the other afternoon speedtest.net gave a 72Mbps, then 56 yesterday and now for example ~30.

Is this normal? The contract (well, I am evaluating for 14 days first) is for 4G Max, which should have speeds of up to 150/50. Signal is 3 bars; why am I seeing inconsistent speeds, and why am I seeing speeds considerably lower than the advertised ones? Also the upload is much lower, at around 10/11 rather than something closer to 50. Why is that?

Another problem I have seen is that at times the connection stops working for a brief amount of time, e.g. if I am watching something on Netflix and wife is watching something on Yle Areena at the same time.... I was told in the shop that there are no limits whatsoever with this contract. Is this true?

I am in Espoo, Viherlaakso area.

Thanks!

6 kommenttia

Hi Sisupoika!

4G Max is working on the 150/5 speed, not 150/50. In 4G network speed will vary 10-80 Mbp/s. So all speeds that You wrote are within 10-80 Mbit/s. Speed ​​is dependent on the number of concurrent users. So if sometimes there is many users on the same area, speed might be lower.
Hi Merja!

I was referring also to the page http://www.sonera.fi/nettiyhteydet/liik ... ajakaista/ which I think says 50mbps: "Sen maksiminopeus verkosta käyttäjälle on jopa 150 Mbit/s ja käyttäjältä verkkoon 50 Mbit/s".

In fact I have seen my upload consistently higher than 5Mbps.

On the concurrency of multiple users, uhm, will Sonera add more capacity or do something as the number of users increases?

Thanks!
Vito
Hi Sisupoika,

In your subscription, Aito 4G Max, the upload speed has been limited to 5 Mbps, download speed has no limitation. If you are getting higher speeds, that's good!

There should still be plenty of unused capacity in Sonera's LTE network also in the Viherlaakso area, so the biggest issue with inconsistent speeds would be signal strength and the device in use. Are you using the connection via Wi-Fi or via cable?

// Sami
Hi Sami :)

yeah that's good if I get higher upload speed! I am using the cable with my router. Does the strength of the signal also affect the speed? (sorry this might be a stupid question, dunno).
At the moment I see 2-3 bars.

Thanks 🙂
Hi Sisupoika,

Yes, the signal strength is an important factor with download speeds. If you can try your router in a place where you get a stronger signal, download speeds should be closer to theoretical maximum.
Thanks, I will definitely try this 🙂

Vastaa