What sort of speed should I expect from 3G

Just run a speedtest on my three dongle and getting about 1 meg up and down yet connection says 7.2mbps this normal?

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1420878087.png

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1420906543.png

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1420957698.png

Edited by Banger (Sun 07-Aug-11 03:54:07)

About 5Mbps is the most you can expect with no one else using the same cell.

1~4Mbps I would say is normal.

Cheers for that.

My 3G dongle connects at 3.6mb, i get around 50-150kb/s then downloading from filehippo. Needs must till new line installed, does the job

Yea know the feeling till my phone line is fixed.

Have tried 3, T-M and VF from this London borough, the connexion is usually too slow to complete the speed test in less than 15-20 minutes (unlike with a LAN connexion on real BB, with the same computer) - have tried the different port no.
Nominal speeds for a small file download are 2-5 KBS. Is this common experience?

On the one occasion I did have a successful test - the speeds seemed remarkably exceptional,
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/1...

Evidence of a throttle on decent speed tests
http://www.strateias.org/throttle.jpg

of slow non boradband downloads inside London
http://www.strateias.org/throttle2.jpg

Comments from others on this please?

In reply to a post by charles_TH:

Comments from others on this please?

I get about 2.5Mbs at about 4 miles from the nearest mast with an omnidirectional antenna on the roof and cable down to my 3 3G dongle into a wireless 3G router.

Good times are generally first thing and mid-late evening other times can be pretty painful.

Things seem better since the last firmware upgrade to my TP-Link router although this may be my imagination.

BT unable to provide BB although Virgin could at 7km down the same copper. Maybe it was due to the branch that had eroded the line and eventually took out my phone communications as well!!! Openreach BB guy said no go for BB. Openreach phone guy fixed the eroded line 3 months later. Left hand....Right hand etc :>)

Well your not on 3G! See bottom left of the connection manager (throttle.jpg
) you're on GPRS so you'll only get dial-up speeds.

There isn't really any "expected speed".

Where we are we get 5 to 6Mbps down and 0.5Mbps to 1.7Mbps up with Three with an E367 modem though I plan on getting an antenna put on the chimney to improve the 47% signal strength.

The downstream is mostly solid, the upstream variable.

However if I plug in an Orange dongle I'll see maybe 2Mbps down 1Mbps up, O2 wanders in and out so you might get 2.9Mbps down then horrendous packet loss for a while. Move one mile to the east and that would all change around.

I'd always buy on a PAYG basis to start with and try it out and then you can take it back if it's useless, presuming there's an alternative - here, we have none - the 5Mbps down is OK, but 5Mbps is pretty slow anyway as far as "broadband" goes.

I have often noticed the icon changes, but it frequently shows a 3G connexion. The speed isn't much different.
The download speeds are well below advertised ones.
I have noticed also two other phenomena: 1/ rapid, temporary acceleration on connnecting to the speed tests on this site (often 10x or more in excess of usual speeds) 2/ absolute throttling.
I strongly suspect these tests are being manipulated by the ISP.
Data from screenshots on request. Comments please.

In reply to a post by charles_TH:

I have often noticed the icon changes, but it frequently shows a 3G connexion. The speed isn't much different.

I don't run the actual Three app, the modem is connected to a router and that manages it (performance is identical to that when plugged directly into the PC) but when I have run it in the past, it does not flick between 3G/HSDPA, it just sticks on HSDPA. Wonder if you're in an area with two cells both a little marginal and it's flipping between them? That's what O2 does here. To be fair their coverage map says "not recommended" and that's why.

In reply to a post by charles_TH:

The download speeds are well below advertised ones.

Only cable gets anywhere near the advertised headline speeds. Or a leased line

In reply to a post by charles_TH:

I have noticed also two other phenomena: 1/ rapid, temporary acceleration on connnecting to the speed tests on this site (often 10x or more in excess of usual speeds)

The speed tester at Speedtest.net sometimes looks like that - it either flies straight up to 4Mbps and then rapidly climbs to just below 6Mbps - or - it sticks briefly at about 1.2Mbps and then shoots up to the same top speeds. But in both cases the higher speed is then sustained, it doesn't drop back down again.

In reply to a post by charles_TH:

2/ absolute throttling.

I can't say that I really notice throttling, but then it's pretty slow anyway at 5Mbps to 6Mbps. The one thing which has always been consistently slow is iTunes, which I rarely use, but downloading a movie from there has never gone much above 2Mbps. But, at that time, the other chunk of bandwidth remains available. I've always assumed that was down to Apple's servers but rarely use it anyway.

I don't use P2P so can't comment on that, the upstream of 1.5Mbps is too slow to fire something like that up and even at those speeds I'd end up getting through an allowance pretty quick if I got hold of anything other people wanted to download.

What do you think is being throttled?

Thanks.
Throttling. I am not sure how it might work technically, though as you allude it's well recognsied with P2P applications on all networks and I can understand why given the amount of bandwidth consumed.
What I am seeing repeatedly is that when I run the speed test, sometimes after an initial burst of activity, sometimes from the beginning is a complete flat line - often not one byte downloaded for many minutes, which is uncharacteristic even for this kind of dial up speed connexion, and this despite uploaded signals (presumably prompts) and decent signal strength. Perhaps its a browser or java fault, but it looks more like a block on bad tests - perhaps I am being over suspicious, I hope so.

I usually get 3mbs with my Iphone with vodafone.

Ah - now, having gone back and looked at your speed test result - it's T-Mobile.

I did try a T-Mobile dongle, and the speed testers did indeed behave oddly with it.

Sorry, I'd almost completely forgotten, as I bought it on a whim to try out since the signal strength is supposed to be good here.

I did only use it once. Speed tests were odd; results seemed consistent - I think - about 1Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up (really). IIRC what used to happen is that the speed tester would seem to give up very very quickly and return the same results every time. And yet the actual speed didn't seem bad at all, latency seemed very low.

In addition I noticed a rather flawed inserted script tag in web pages put in by the connection manager which would actually break some web pages altogether. Presumably it's some compression thing.

T-Mobile worked out very expensive, the best deal I ended up being offered was something like a 5GB/mo package for 24 months and I use more than that anyway.

Three just works like quite a fast (cough) ADSL connection here and nothing appears throttled, no images get compressed (like they did on T-Mobile and O2). Of all the networks it was the only one which was an ADSL alternative (actually 4x faster than ADSL here)

Example from the early hours of the morning - just a tiny bit quicker than the "normal" 5.4Mbps down:

http://speedtest.net/result/1386241242.png

Thanks, impressive speeds if you're ready to burn the midnight oil.
Perhaps I should try 3 again, with a new USB device, I started with them 3 years ago - had a fantastic service and then found I was paying progressively more for progressively much less, despite protest. I wish I'd know about the speed test sites then, as I would have had more evidence to show them.

One advantage of the pay as you go is being able to try everybody's best before plumping for one. Overall I think we're still in the data dark ages - O, for the dawn.
Best wishes.

Perhaps this would be of interest then..

That's a good speed for 3 I have tried several times and cant get over 1mbps on mine. What 3 dongle do you have Anon?

It's an E367 modem. It is position sensitive, if I put it inside, I won't get more than 3Mbps (walls of this house are very thick). It won't work at all downstairs indoors.

However if I put it in the "right" place just outside the window (have a router also, so extended reach versus just with a USB cable to PC) it hits circa 4Mbps.

If I then rotate it and get it "just right" then circa 5.4Mbps to 6Mbps down.

The upstream will hit 1.77Mbps (fastest I've seen here) but it has to be in precisely the right position.

Used to have one of the old E220 modems and never saw above 3Mbps with that regardless of how it was positioned.

To add - one aspect of 3G which potentially makes getting the positioning right is contention, since from one test to the next you're bound to get some slight fluctuations in performance.

Just for amusement - test just now, as it had rained so heavily I had to bring the modem back in yesterday and put it back outside today. Must have been lucky with the positioning, as this is the fastest downstream I've seen:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1440140685.png

Wow not bad. Actually testing my ZTE modem with a file and I get about 2.5 mb indoors.