VodafoneIN 3G !! Yuck !!
- Thread starter YashBhatt
- Start date
I am a Vodafone Gujarat subscriber and use a prepaid connection in my data card. My 3g data pack works on 3g signals properly everywhere in India (that I've been to) except Bangalore (the place where I need to travel to the most). Everytime I am in BLR my data card works on EDGE networks - Vodafone stores in BLR couldn't help me out. It works on 3g only at the BLR airport where it shows Airtel HSDPA. Is there some special setting that needs to be done for 3g data packs in BLR?
N
NotMyRealName
If you glance over at the opensignal.com site for Bangalore you see very few Vodafone towers, Airtel has the most.
In certain areas of the city you find others.
How accurate do you find opensignal for where you are in Gujurat ?
This is the one doubt i have about that site, how comprehensive or not it actually is.
my sister funnily has the opposite problem. She's running 2G on her galaxy spica, and am running 3G on my atrix 2. I have full range with 3G, and she hardly gets data connectivity at all at the same place. A colleague with an S2 running on 2G has the same issue as my sister. All of this on vodafone
So thats a 10% improvement on 3G for how much more ?
You're getting EDGE and at 200kbs is good enough for browsing.
Many years ago i was productive with just 48kbs wired and a good hosts file. The speed did not bother me it was the constant disconnects each time the power went out that drove me nuts.
N
NotMyRealName
???
As i said before, the browsing is crap, nothing to do with the bandwidth. and it doesn't seem to be the dns, because i've tried a few free dns servers. sometimes pages don't even load at all for a long time. downloads however, are another matter. once a connection is established it works awesome. this seems to be running at the max capacity of edge too ~236kbps. and there's no cap of any sort, just that it's properly capped when on a 3g signal at 240kbps.
one big difference i've found is with the latency. >200 ms on 2g and <100ms on 3g.
27KB/s with EDGE
30KB/s with 3G
10% speed increase with 3G
You pay Rs.245 for EDGE. How much more does 3G cost ?
Ah, now i understand, there are elements on a web page which if they dont get loaded then the page does not come up at all. This is why i suggested a hosts list, it knocks off the ad servers so the page loads faster. You need to run a miin-webserver though.
The latency might be playing a role here as well, there is no way around that.
N
NotMyRealName
Aah, I should have been clearer. This is the same 2g/edge/gprs data plan. 245 for 10gb. on a 2g signal its ~27kB/s but when connected on a 3g signal it's faster. same 2g plan. An actual 3g plan is something like 252 bucks for 1.25GB/month. 10GB of 3g data would cost Rs. 1,099. The 3g signal is extremely poor - about 10% where I live, speeds were ~1mbps, but not sure now, haven't used their 3g packs for a while now.
I'm running a decent hosts file with more active ad blocking in my firewall and adblock extension in chrome. I hardly see any ads at all. What i figure is there are too many packets being lost somewhere and the servers keep kicking my connection because of that.
Isn't the BSNL plan you're using giving you almost the same speed as your 2G/3G plan? Why aren't u using that? Frequent disconnections, limited bandwidth etc?
N
NotMyRealName
You mean the bsnl broadband plan? Well, yeah, at 500 bucks for 512kbps up to 4GB, then 256 kbps, it's about the same as two of the Rs. 245 10GB 2g vouchers but since i use my phone as the hotspot advantage of using the 2g is i take my phone with me when i go out. otherwise i'd anyway have to get a small mobile plan. It almost makes sense since browsing is such a pain. I miss bombay and the awesome mtnl broadband plans.
Right, so to get 10% speed increase you have to spend over 3X more for the same data.
I agree that 2G is the VFM option here.
Thing is you say the browsing with 2G is bad.
If one needs browsing more than data, it would appear that 3G is the option to have. That is provided one actually can get 3G in the area of operation to begin with.
Subscribing for 2G and then trying to switch to 3G allows one to evaluate what the 3G experience will be while only paying for 2G. If it turns out better the company will bill appropriately anyway.
Why bother subscribing for 3G at all in that case ?
Yeah, been trying to figure this one out and cannot get an answer.
If you ping servers which do not come up do you see lots of packet loss ?
that would explain the mediocre browsing experience.
More 2G towers for cheaper means more people on 2G which means overloaded network and higher latency for everyone. That is to say those with latency sensitive apps are not well served on 2G.
But the way you phrased this makes me think otherwise.
You say 'a steady 30kB/s' if on 3G, implying that the 2G isn't steady. If 2G isn't steady then you have a fluctuating bandwidth and that will also adversely affect browsing. Reading a paper on GPRS, i got the impression it isn't so much packet loss but the fluctuating bandwidth that affects the overall experience.
For downloads this isn't a problem but browsing and that too browsing sites that aren't optimised to deal with somebody accessing from a mobile connection means you may need a mobile optimised browser. Say like Opera that can fool the website by sending requests for all the page elements as simultaneously as possible.
Though this might provide some improvement the real limit is the website itself, if it expects a steady stream of requests it just won't handle a 2G connect as well.
The problem isn't 2G in this case but the website
When Vodafone first introduced 3g I was getting 10Mbps on my android. After the recent price drop on 3g package by both Vodafone and airtel the speed has dropped to around 1Mbps. They have capped the speed on purpose.
Yeah but i think 3G speeds varies according to area where you are accessing, i get around 1.2 Mbps in home and 3 Mbps on central locations of Delhi.
N
NotMyRealName
No, using a 2g data plan on a 3g signal will not give you 3g speeds. Just better speeds than on a 2g signal. Probably because of the 'better' protocols and technology. The bandwidth is capped at 240kbps. If it was 'proper' 3g it would be in mbps. I hope this is clear now.
Btw, the browsing isn't that great on the 3g either. Addressing this in the next section.
It has nothing to do with specific sites/servers. Just that after some use, all packets are lost. But any connections already established and especially p2p traffic like torrents which directly communicate with user IPs via tcp or udp, work at full speed. It's just time related really. In this same state, if it was a proper 3g connection browsing would be better simply because the higher (mbps) bandwith would load pages quickly, probably before the connection decides to take a coffee break.
But yeah, latency is definitely better on 3g. Another thing i should mention is that when i was using vodafone 2g at this same location earlier (there was and is no vodafone 3g coverage here, the only one apart from bsnl is idea and even that is a <10% signal), i could make viber calls clearly. I can't do that even on bsnl's 3g. Which means vodafone's 2g has very decent quality. The only reason i'm not using it now is because they don't have a cheap high GB plan like i'm using now.
By steady i meant that on the 2g signal, the transfer fluctuates between 25-27kB/s. I'm using bwmeter for analysing my transfers, so i'm not talkign about what's shown in the download box or in my torrent client.
If this helps clarify, on the 2g signal, i can download about 80, max 90MB in an hour, on the 3g signal, it's about 107-108MB.
I use the 3g signal only when I need something really fast, or if i have some important browsing to do. At other times i'm fine with the 2g signal because the 3g drains my battery faster than the usb can charge, The phone will fully discharge in about 8-10 hours. Note that this is because of the especially weak 3g signal here, if it's above 50% or so i don't think the battery will drain at this rate.
That's the part i'm trying to figure out. Once you have a download going the variation is just 10%. If there was a bandwidth shortage i'd have expected it to vary by as much as 50%. But that isn't happening and i take it there aren't too many disconnects.
A web server can handle a 10% variation, but from what you're saying the browsing works in fits and starts. it works now but 5 minutes latter it hangs, then comes back and so on. 3G it would appear is no better, just that a faster connection gets you the page quicker but 5 mintues later the same problem might crop up. To me that is not much of an improvement.
I was thinking this has to do with congestion in the network. Best time for you to do your downloads is off peak hours 11pm-8am say. lunch or early evening is peak time and a bad time. Voice is going to get priority over data. I've known people that were on lesser networks to be unreachable during those hours, by that i mean a voice call. They never get the call.
Thing is i want to browse during working hours, off peak hours there is no need.
Provided one happens to be in the area with their towers nearby. But I will have no control over my location, if i'm on the road and want to browse.
yep, very small and hopefully not too many disconnects.
Good, that confirms the connection might fluctuate a little but on the whole it is stable.
Power consumption is another factor, it limits the time one has. I'm thinking a good 2g network would be best, if one can find the right provider. This is going to take some experimenting.
N
NotMyRealName
I would say overall, for voice and/or (mobile) internet vodafone is the best provider in the country. service is good and cost is also correspondingly high. For roaming internet though, i think reliance would be the best.
For all other uses at a fixed location, some trial and error would show the best provider for that location and usage model.
For all other uses at a fixed location, some trial and error would show the best provider for that location and usage model.